An Unhappy Picture
written by: Sid Senthilvel
Let’s paint a picture. It won’t be a happy picture, but we’ll paint it anyway.
Let’s dip the brush in melancholy together—begin the first stroke. Beautiful. You’ve got a real talent for this. I hope you never have to use it.
It starts with a boy. Older than you, but not by much. He’s looking into a stream, paused for a brief moment, his sneakers scuffing against the concrete path. They’re nice sneakers, against a nice paved path, in a nice neighborhood. Nicety upon nicety, forming a picture of their own.
Evening’s setting in, the buzzing summer bugs beginning to make themselves known. A couple of yards down the road, his parents talk amongst themselves. But the boy is not aware of any of that.
He’s looking into the stream, wondering how it would feel to drown in its depths. To lie down and let nature do the rest. Would he kick? Would he scream? What lay beyond the pale of reality, beyond what any had seen before?
His foot inches closer.
Oh dear, I’m scaring you. There, there—it’s alright. I’m here with you right now, aren’t I? That’s all that matters.
Now, another stroke. Let’s fill the canvas.
The boy’s parents call him—they are too far ahead of him, now and forever. He runs towards them, the lengthening shadows biting at his heels. His nice sneakers are flecked with mud; a stain gained straying from the path. The boy’s parents ask him why he’s running, but their questions fall on deaf ears.
He looks back at the stream. For a moment, he could have sworn he saw the face of Death in the water.
A powerful drug, melancholy. It seeps behind the eyes and colors the vision. It drips from your fingertips and infects everything you touch. This boy has only seen it in passing, but he will know it well.
Another stroke, then. Let’s dip this one in loneliness. Be careful not to get any on your hands. It’s potent.
It starts with a ceiling fan. Three unlit lamps and three wooden blades that blur together. The curtains are open, letting amber streetlight wash over the windows. There’s a boy curled up on the floor, clenching and unclenching his fingers in the carpet. He’s too old for this; he sobs silently into the floor, too old to be crying so much. The floor has no answer for him, unfeeling as it is.
He can’t be loved by anything, it seems. Not even the floor cares about him.
Above him, the ceiling fan spins silently, and the boy wishes with all his heart he could be as stoic as the fan. The fan didn’t cry when it wasn’t included in plans, the fan didn’t cry over all the pretty boys and girls who don’t look its way. The fan just existed.
Shuddering and shivering, the boy feels something new well up inside him. Something black and beating like a drum, it pounds a new rhythm across his skin. Seeping between the spaces in his heart, between every shaky breath, it is cold, so cold.
The ceiling fan spins unflinchingly, but the boy doesn’t want to be like the fan anymore. He doesn’t want to be like anything, he wants only to get this awful feeling out of his chest. He wants, not for the first time, the sweet release of the blade he’s hidden away. The one he’s always been too afraid to use. The one he’s hidden in the bathroom sink. The one he stares at for too long to be comfortable. He opens his reddened eyes, seeing a shadow over the amber light from the window.
Death is looking down at him, waiting.
I know it’s scary. Sometimes, we need to look at scary things to understand them. If we never looked at scary things, then we’d never be able to learn from them, would we?
Here, one more stroke, and then we’ll turn in for bed–just one more, to tie the picture together.
It starts with a room. A new room, in a new house, in a new city. Everything screams new, from the carefully manicured lawns to the white brick houses that gleam in the sunlight. The boy is standing in this new room, his new room, if you could believe it.
Death stands across from him, leaning against the windowsill. It’s an old friend by now, one that has chased the boy since he put his feet in the mud all those years ago. To even picture it is difficult, let alone paint it. All we can do is make approximations, reapers with yellowing skulls in dark robes, ghouls with long faces and bloody hands. The real thing is much harder to describe.
Death asked, as Death often did, if the boy was ready. The boy replied, as the boy often did, that he was not. Much can be said on why Death had to ask and why the boy had to reply, but in the end, that was that, and this was this. The black pulse, that never seemed satisfied even all these years later, seethed, but the boy was used to denying it pleasure by now. Some days, when times were hardest, it would seem he tracked mud wherever he walked. Other days, he could hardly feel its presence. Years of practice kept it steadily at bay, patiently waiting. And for now, it will keep waiting.
Death would eventually come. But not today.
And there. It’s a work of art. I told you that you had a talent for this. One day, I hope you can look back at this painting—and not relate in the slightest.
Perhaps that would be too much to dream of.
Goodnight, my child. Sleep well.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:
Writing this piece was deeply cathartic, and I hope you draw from it a modicum of the same enjoyment that I did. Remember that your life is always valuable, no matter what anyone tells you (including yourself!)
- An Unhappy Picture - March 12, 2026
- Dead Fish - October 9, 2025
