The eyes of the inmate amplified into machines, and his gaze resuscitated the current before him. The current painted the wall with a polychromatic scheme as the electrons ran from crevice to crevice, allowing the scheme to flood from corner to corner. The colors splotching the surface merely gave birth to the creatures, the products of artistry in motion.

The scheme clutched his shoulders in the wake of dawn, even though the colors were to later retract into the uncertainty of the night. But one thing, day in and day out, remained certain—the creatures would always return. As long as the jail cell caged him, the creatures always would. His survival depended on them, and they knew not else but to concede to his passions. They had already vowed to return with every passing day.

And for twenty years, they had not yet failed the man. And thank goodness they hadn’t. The inmate couldn’t hold onto anything else but the figments of his dreams. Everything once grounded in reality had floated into the air and renounced its substance. And of course, the wife was a topic he loathed entertaining. But alas, he couldn’t help but do so. He never wanted to hold onto her, but her ghost always chose to hold onto his peace.
Two decades earlier, his wife had sustained him as butter sustains bread. He swept the streets while she preserved the property of the Governor. The Governor of the province stood the administrator of administrators and she the maid of maids. Their inmate and his wife had found what they needed in their combined livelihood and had found what they wanted in each other. Their daughter had left the city in the name of fortune, but only months into their contented phase of marriage would the man have guessed that his wife craved fortune as did the girl. Who knew his sole companion had been chasing the past all that time?

She chose to win the love of the Governor in hoping to reclaim history. She wanted no
administrator, however—she wanted the life that had slipped from her hands. In her decadence, she had linked her passion to that of the Governor yet had kept her husband in sight. She wanted to be an administrator’s daughter once more and don the finest garb. Her bankruptcy had thrown her into the clutches of indigence and the presence of those she viewed unworthy of the world. In seeking to find her way up the ladder again, she grabbed the sweeper and granted him her vows in hoping to find the steadiness that would supplement her effort.

And alas, landing a job with the Governor demanded that she straddle her steadiness with her ambition. Was she to choose the journey or the dream? The grit or the gold? Her husband had allowed her to reach the verge of redemption, but the Governor would make way for the quantum leap. She had hoped that the journey and the dream would ready her for the leap, and that she could maintain her marriage alongside her newfound life. But of course, her sin allowed her neither love nor life.

In finding that her dichotomy drained her, she left the Governor and settled solely for the sweeper. Yes—she had lost the dream, but that she could reclaim. As long as she maintained the journey, the past would once more be her own.

Although she found faith in her renunciation, the Governor found reason to avenge the loss of his passion. And what to take in losing one’s passion? Perhaps a life.

And the wife’s life his agent did. But no one deemed important was around to validate the act, although the sweeper saw the gun in his hand, the bullet in his wife, and the world seeping from his head.

All the continents and seas and hills and valleys had seeped from his perception and into the air once he realized that the blame belonged to no one and everyone. The attributes that he had assigned to people blurred into confusion, as did, consequently, the realities he had assigned to the natural world. What was he to believe? Nothing came with definition anymore. Was his wife the devil for momentarily eradicating his sole source of support, or was the agent, for slaying the exemplar of redemption?

Or better still—was he? For failing to guard a redeemed woman? For leaving her to the hands of whim? Or was he an angel, for handing the devil to her death?

To lose the capacity to examine his situation, the capacity to string events to one other, was to paint his consciousness with the wisps of a vacuum. When everything of value to him had blended into a whir, in which direction was he to walk? He would remain enshrouded by the tempest of chaos regardless of where he traveled. Every individual and detail that had led to this crisis had lost its identity in joining the ever-enlarging tempest.

But the sweeper saw no crisis. Once everything in the world had lost its definition, so had he. By disrupting his continuity, the murder had thrown his philosophies and ideations into the tempest along with all else. The loss of his peace proved the loss of his mind.

Unsure of the validity in protesting the accusations pelted into his conscience, but cognizant of the omnipresent tempest, he no more lived with purpose. What to enjoy, what to prize, when his once illumined objects of passion had dissolved into a haze? He had already arrested himself before the Administration could arrest him, the only man left at the crime scene, or perhaps—the only man to surrender.

Within the confinements of a cell, the inmate chose to draw definition over the abstraction of his wife, the abstraction that would plague him otherwise. The wall just so happened to play his canvas. The current brought on the scheme, the scheme brought on the creatures, and the creatures brought on the illusion. The universe had lacked structure for twenty years, and the inmate saw no harm in contriving structure of his own. He had assigned colors, shapes, ambitions, achievements, and failures to every being traversing the wall. The inmate talked to them because he was convinced that they were his friends. After all, he had to amuse himself. The creatures gave him a reason to be.

But of late, they met none of his needs. The wall had begun to sink into the dreariness that it always was as time wiped away the splashes of his dreams. The years had grown old and weary and had exposed the searing blackness of his world. The inmate had lost the energy to conceive definition. He now wanted to receive definition. He now wanted the past.

But thankfully, death pulsated through his veins. Time had begun to tear him down, but mortality was already wrapping its arms around his waist. Today was the day to die.

Perhaps his future would prove his regression. In the days leading to his farewell, he had to but question whether his wife, who had snatched his purpose, meant good in leaving the Governor. She had drained the sweeper as much as she had seemingly tried to save him.

But the dichotomy had racked the inmate’s brains long enough. He chose to save the last bit of his sanity for his departure. Why did he want to think? As long as he left for the past, his wife would be good again.
And the world would once again brim with form.