Graffiti Girl // Michael Clifford

|| 3 ||

Thank you for feeding us years of lies. Thank you for the wars you left us to fight. Thank you for the world you ruined overnight. But we'll be fine, yeah we'll be fine.

«Thank You» MKTO

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Two hours. Two fucking hours is how long it took us to get all of the guys' equipment to the fifth floor, are with all six of us.

Luckily, we are finally done and I can get to work on my painting while the guys did their own shtick. I walk over to the wall I had begun on and pick up a lighter green than I had been using to begin the shading on the continents that I had sprayed on the days before. It is already looking decent and coming along nicely. The basic two-color globe with minimal depth and shading had already been set and I even was able to start the peeling layers from the center so it looks like the world is opening to a black hole, at the moment.

Anyhow, I slip my mask on and raise my hand to the coast of Italy. Just as I an about to press down on the top to begin the first stroke, a voice wakes me from my concentration.

"So what are you makin' over there?"

I roll my eyes and turn around to see Ashton who I had presumed to be preoccupied with setting up his drum kit in the opposite corner. I take off my mask as I see he will most likely want some sort of conversation to occur. This is why I don't like people.

"Trying to make a pretty picture," I say, somewhat patronizing his question.

He just scoffs and rolls his eyes. When I think he had decided to leave it alone, he starts strolling over to my side of the room.

"Well I was actually wondering what that 'pretty picture' consisted of."

"Look at the sketch over there," I say in a bored tone and point over to my notebook laying open on the drawing with my set out cans of paint. "That's what it will turn out looking like, anyways."

He bends down to look at the sketch in his hands. When he seems satisfied he rises and walks back over to stand in front of me. I never realized how tall he was, and found myself leaning on the wall with my arms crossed to make it appear I'm not as short as I was standing up straight. I'm not actually that short, however, making his height even more impressive and admittedly, slightly intimidating. I'm a solid 5'7" maybe 5'8". That makes him at least six foot.

"Seems cool. Is it just like the center of the earth or something?"

I let my shoulders fall and roll my eyes, walking over to pick up the notebook. He follows me over and turns so that we can both see while I explain it.

"No. It represents the world we see as a shell of what it really holds. See the outer part is the pretty greens and blues and colors we associate with what we expect the world we live it to really be, but when you peel it back, it actually holds this run-down essentially dystopian society that plagues reality."

I look up to see if he understands my meaning behind the work, and see him nodding in a manner of what I assume to be acceptation.

"That's a cool idea. But I can't help but notice a slight cynicism in its idea...?" he trails off, laughing slightly.

"I like to think of it as realism. It isn't putting a cover over what it really is. It just shows it like it actually is."

"But that's just your opinion. What if it actually isn't all darkness hidden in light?"

"Because it is. Sure there are patches here and there of the purity the world began with, but essentially society has corrupted most everything. It takes what the world originally gave us and turns it into what it intends to be better than how it started and just ends up destroying everything that was with the darkness that is. They then use the light it used to hold to cover up what has become of it."