Picture this

What if walls could talk? Picture this.

The question that plagued the top of the museum’s historic building, the mosaic like spokes at the top, though the more keen observer would notice that the ceiling was not in tip top shape as it was caving in at an angle on the right.

‘Oh, my! What a genius! The next Banksy!’ The art collections curator gushed to the manager as the hoards of eager art fanatics swarmed into the museum that was once decaying, resembling what could be described as a dying old tomb it was now brought back to fresh life.

It was titled:

Picture This.

and it was nothing. You go to a empty white room and see nothing. The artist took trouble to have the first half of the title removed initially from the sign in the front of the building, as that wasn’t his vision. They never took it down.

The nothing exhibit was cherished like a motherly womb. Like resting inside of a honey comb in a honey bee’s nest, since honey bees were becoming extinct. They used to only be endangered. But now they are almost extinct. But, no one cares about that. They were too busy gawking at the nothing room. Some said when they went inside they felt like they went to a new place, a new world, a realm between space and time. A glowing, ethereal, mysterious, romantic, warm dream world.

Until, on the end of the monthly anniversary of the nothingness, the trap door sprung open at the corner of the white nothing room and the artist leapt out with his brilliantly sharpened hatchet to quietly lop off single pieces of his admirers. He didn’t do this with an explanation or expression, or with expertise. Just hacked, and then went away with the piece.

They all were so glad to be apart of the installation and saw the Pollock-like splitting and splatters on the white walls, and were just excited to be a part of something greater than themselves and their silly social media day-to-day drudgery that they thanked the artist and didn’t alert the authorities or the staff who were alarmed at the people coming out with armless and legless and earless personages—-but didn’t question it.

They were gaining ground in the modern art world and they were getting ready to take the world by storm.

The customers that came in the next day with bandaged up stumps were disappointed to find their blood splatters cleaned up.

It was found that the artist didn’t want to be Pollock, after all.

No. He wanted to be bigger than that.

The devil moon had come out to play, the artist messaged out throughout all of his social media accounts. Get ready for the faceless white snow to tumble over the river of your feasting fat divide.

It was imperative that there was a legal waiver that was supposed to signed after the tickets were purchased since the inception of the installation.

Foot prints were banned and even finger prints. You had to wear a mask to hide your breath.

Sterile, antiseptic, cool, like the ether in the atmosphere. Clear, cool and white. Way above the clouds and way above your head and your aching, grief filled heart.

The artist does not care about your mortal heart.

In fact, the last person that came in had their liver and spleen taken from them in a special manner. They didn’t refer to how it was done.

The next one, they came back for more—-this time, their stomach intestines.

He did not need a heart.

Legally speaking, he was in the clear. Artists could do anything in the boundaries of their installation as long as they had the building’s owner and the curator signed off on it, for however long it was to run, the customer’s signature and date on the notarized document.

The “nothing” exhibit became a world wide phenomenon. A huge hit. Many found it reprehensible but the fans argued that no one was forced to see the installation.

It made Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi (c. 1500), look small in comparison. $450.3 million for an old painting, such a paltry amount, small change, nothing. This was worth ten times that, pending an outside New York examiner to grasp the worth. Nothing was what made it so good, so they kept it going.

He hollowed out the entire museum and painted everything the same white color, to everyone’s surprise, for the last week of the week of the installation.

He tore down the stairs. The elevators were not opening, they were painted over, speckles of tiny nail bits and human encasing sticking to edges, sloshed over by egg white ether.

It was glorious.

One large, hollowed, ether based, egg white, nothing hall.

They went inside and felt like they were stuck in a dream. They lifted their heads and saw the drips of ether trickling down in different areas of the dangerously caved in ceiling(it was old but also badly managed by the city) and stuck out their tongues, it was like fresh blooming snow.

“Loook!” One yelled in a joyous tone, closing her eyes, with a smile that was full and soft, “I have it on my lashes! So pretty like when we had snow days!”

They all started clawed at the nothingness in ecstasy and with ravenous hunger but realized it was not enough. That terrified them.

Nothing was not enough. And yet, it was too much.

They all started to claw at each other.

And they mixed with the paint and became the ether themselves with their hands and bloody noses and screaming tongues. Until it was a moppy, goopy mess of one plot.

Picture this. Nothing.

They all grasped that what reverberated and bounced back like talking radio waves was that these walls had nothing to say just like their empty lives, only empty because they wanted to fill it up with so much nothing. The nothing filled them with a sense of order in a chaotic world.

It was sweet, the artist thought as he breathed in the egg white ether nothingness. Oh how it was so sweet.

Soon, the artist died in the spot he was hiding in for the trap door and became one with the nothing, too.