It was desire that killed icarus

There is no greater sin than playing God.

Those who try will fall,

Fall,

Fall to the depths of hell and its eternal torture.

Yet the painter truly believed himself to be a divine creator and the woman who whispered and flickered in his dreams like a ghost, she was his eternal muse. He will not rest until he immortalises her in the tangibility of paint; a reincarnated Icarus straining to reach the sun, whose invisible wings heaved with the weight of his desire. A desire to capture the creature of grace and beauty who torments his sleep in glimpses and glimmers. Yet there on the canvas were mere ravaged fragments of her perfect rosebud lips, her eyes the colour of Odyssean seas and the contours of her tulip nose which he compiled from his odd reverie’s. He was a mad man chasing this vision whom his eyes had not yet encountered despite his mind having been fettered in devoted obsession. What was worse was that she seemed unreal, like an echo that could never be trapped. A beauty that did not exist in what lived and was mortal, only haunting his consciousness and teasing the outskirts of his craft.

He tried looking for her in the real world, his gaze following the women who carefully exited golden carriages in layers of tulle and piercing whalebone corsets. His heart stammered after the women who walked in torn dresses holding baskets of tarnished clothes along the cobblestone streets. In them he found nothing worth giving immortal life, withholding his artistic powers from their imperfection. He could not paint these false deities who looked nothing like his true muse, could not trap their lives in a painted legacy that did not belong to them. Thus he spent all those long days under the searing sun and all those long nights with the hot glow of lanterns and glittering stars searching amongst the absence of his muses’ mortality.

Yet, on this day, as his patience wanes and darkness strangles his thoughts, he passes the gnarled trees which guards the quaint local cemetery. Perhaps, he ponders, he must visit death itself to attain the immortal beauty he seeks. So he follows the pebbled path and epigraphs with a wandering curiosity. Each name that once held such weight and history is now nothing but ash and devoid misery. The wind whistles the call of death and the moon begins to glower as divine silence is threatened. The Painter wavers at the small paintings which are embedded in stone, depicting forgotten faces, searching for her heart to call his. Each step he takes makes the graves hum and whisper, ethereal spirits rustle the leaves and the trees groan warnings which fall deaf to this Icarus' ears. Listen past their aphasia and in solemn choirs they sing “Desire will be your undoing!”, as he scowls at each painting that hides his path to her.

One grave after the other, his sisyphean soul trapped in a curse that can not be broken until his eyes find hers.

The next grave holds the smile of an old baker woman.

The next grave holds the dimpled face of a young duchess.

The next grave holds her eyes.

The next which…

He walks back to the grave before and he realises what his straining eyes missed at first. It was her, in all her glorious beauty. A small black and white picture, its edges slightly torn yet her aphroditic divinity was ever radiant, just as it was in his dreams.

The painter kneels over the grave of his beloved muse, mind torn with indecision. What is he to do with her trapped under the layers of hellish dirt, how can he paint her from the faint ghost that exists in her aging picture? It will not do.

So he pulls up his sleeves and begins to dig, his nails filling with a microcosm of dirt as he throws handfuls to his side. He works as blood webs the tips of his fingers and sweat drips down his back, until finally his coarse nails hit the hardness of a wooden coffin.

He reaches for the coffin, letting his body hang into the darkness as he tries to unclasp the lock, but his balance is lost and he falls,

Falls,

Falls into the darkness, making the coffin

splinter under his weight.

The man groans as he rolls onto his front and crawls back to see what injury he had made to her sweet peace. The hole he has created allows him to see her face. She remains preserved like a saint, except for the left side of her head where parts of a pearly white skull begin to be visible under a thin layer of skin. A ghostly white gown sticks to her peeling flesh as Mother Earth seeps in through the cracks and cradles this visionary death, trying to protect her body from his vile hands.

But it was her, mostly intact and now his. His vision staggers and his heart seems to implode, the dreams were true and she was real…

…Back in the atelier, a corpse is propped on a chair. The painter sits before his canvas, truly believing himself to be a divine creator and she the muse, as he immortalises her in the tangibility of paint. Each stroke of colour brings the dead back to life, threatening the universal equilibrium as what was buried

is now exhumed on paper. For even as the mortal body decays, art lives forever. Every freckle and strand of hair mapped and calculated to the utmost accuracy before the brush is pressed gently onto the canvas, his bated breath and precision echoing Galileo who traced the stars of the skies with that same tentativeness in his face.

Yet God would soon bring death upon this Painter, making him fall,

Fall,

Fall to his end.

For there is no greater sin than playing God.

Written by Jiya Jamu

A lover of written tales and who aims for the stars with attempts to write a debut novel. Storytelling is what makes me who I am, agonising poetry and whimsical narratives is what I wish to impart as my literary legacy.