Inanimate Insanity Lightbulb X Paintbrush Novels & Stories

I say without meaning. It is late. The rest of my home is silent. All the sound and activity concentrated in one room. Above my head, the light fitting has captured dead moths in the bowl of there is frosted glass. Inside there is a light bulb, a fragile glass shell, and a glowing filament. People often use light bulbs to represent ideas. Not me. My thoughts begin as pencil marks on a white page, soft abstract outlines. Slowly the lines grow clearer and acquire light and shade, depth, and clarity. "I have never met the killer," I say, turning my chair towards Blanche, "but suddenly I feel as though the assassin has sprung from within my mind, flesh and blood, with a voice that echoes in my e

if I had a light bulb above my head I bet it would have lit up. Mary flicks my forehead then scrunches up her face. Before we knew it we both started laughing for no real reason. After a few minutes and wiping away a stray tear from the laughter I decide I should try figuring out how to make my own light appear. Try as I might, nothing worked. I tried thinking of the different shades of purple, sizes and trails. I then started thinking about other colors and trying them. No matter what I did or what color I thought about all I got were sparks. “This is so frustrating.” as I fell back onto the straw looking up at the ceiling.

She remained calm, observing every movement I made with unsettling attention. I felt my patience begin to wane. I stood up abruptly, pacing the room, my gaze sliding over the objects scattered about. I paused for a moment in front of a painting. A dark, tormented piece, almost macabre, that radiated a malevolent energy. "This painting…" I said, pointing to the artwork. "It’s fascinating. But it’s also… disturbing

I murmured, studying my work. Lucas examined it, turning his arm to catch the light. The paint shimmered, responding to his body heat with subtle variations in brightness. Then he grinned. Mischievous and dangerous. "My turn." Before I could protest, he'd dipped another brush into the gold paint. "Lucas, what are you—" "Fair is fair," he said, eyes dancing with amusement. "You painted me. I paint you." My heart skipped. "That's not necessary, I was just testing the—"

She’d painted that first body, an older woman, in a trance, horrified when she’d stepped back at the end. After the second time it’d happened, a black teenager, she packed up her paints and canvases and decided not to paint for a while until whatever was going on in her mind blew over. Her shrink upped her antidepressant. It didn’t help, made her slightly manic, keeping her up night after night with nothing to do.

I screamed at the empty walls. I raised the painting over my head. I saw the vibrant honey colors and the broken fence. I saw the lie of the light. With every ounce of strength I had, I threw the canvas at the white brick wall. The sound was deafening. The wood frame snapped with a sharp, violent crack. The glass that protected the oil paint shattered into a thousand tiny diamonds. They rained down onto the hardwood floor, clicking and sliding into the corners. The canvas slumped against the floor, a jagged tear running through the center of the sun. The Honey Light was gone. The frame was in pieces. The silence returned. I was the one who had broken it this time.

I can see… I can almost envision the chaos, the madness and the destruction…I can almost taste the destruction. The brush glides on the canvas leaving a trail of black behind it. “Poor Davi…poor, poor Davina.”

I felt the purple fire in my blood rush into the pen. "You can't use that!" the boy hissed. "Only the Author can use the Master Pen!" "I am the Author of my own pain!" I yelled. I stabbed the pen into the white paper floor. I didn't write a word. I just poured all my hate, all my love, and all my revenge into the ink. I imagined a world where there were no wires. I imagined a world where shadows had no teeth. A giant crack appeared in the paper. It wasn't black ink that came out it was a blinding, sapphire light. The light hit the gold wires holding Bryan, melting them instantly. He fell forward, the black tape on his mouth dissolving into smoke.

His absence was a weight the house carried, an emptiness too deliberate to be coincidence. “Business,” Afsana muttered when I pressed her. Nothing more. Business. That could mean anything. A deal. A body. A war. I tried not to think about it. Instead, I painted. The new paints Leina had ordered waited on my desk, unopened tubs of color bright and too clean. I dipped my brush into them anyway, dragging lines across the canvas until the shapes turned restless. Gold bleeding into black. Light trying and failing to push through shadow. My hand shook more than it should have, but I didn’t stop.

Flashes. A brush in my hand. Paint on my arms. The smell of turpentine and fresh canvas. Killian watching from the hallway while I laughed about a mistake I made on a painting. Bianca showing me how to set prices on an artwork. Emily helping me choose frames. Zack bringing pizza and soda while I cursed over a failed background layer. Tears welled up in my eyes before I even realized I was crying. Then… Darkness. Everything went blank. Like someone pulled the cord out of the wall and shut the whole world down.