She scuffed the toe of her shoe along the sidewalk as she made her way in the vague direction of her house.  The heavy grey sky made the city look as if it had been painted with a pallet of uniform monochromes that only served to perpetuate her mood further.  It is true, as many people say, that misery loves company, and at that particular moment Lillian was perfectly content to stay on the damp grey street with her sullen grey mood for the rest of the evening until the inky night finally showed up to blot out all feeling from her being with the blissful reprieve of uncaring sleep.

Lilly knew that if she went home she would be expected to help with dinner, make conversation and plaster on a pleasant mask so as not to offend anyone, but tonight even just the thought was too much for her to bear.  She had never fit into her perfect plastic family with their lying smiles, and how do you do’s, and cheap finery only for the public rooms of the house.  Lilly just didn’t understand why her mother couldn’t simply accept their situation and stop trying to make them out to be something they just weren’t and never would be.  As for Lillian, she much preferred to wander the streets and spend what little money she made buying a can of paint here and there to create the art that was the only thing that made her smile and lifted her briefly from her acknowledged sullen existence.

The sharp contrast of the blues, reds, yellows, purples, all the bright colors on the dead grey world made Lilly feel briefly alive.  In those moments that she was painting Lillian could feel every nerve in her body as if it were on fire; her every thought came immediately to life hindered by nothing but the time it took for her arm to cast the idea onto her infinite canvass.  But those moments were far and few between.  Most of her life was this: a dull monotony of pretense and bars to cage her in.  Her mother was her jailer, her many siblings the chains weighing her down.  No one cared for her and in turn Lillian cared for nothing in the world.  Her painting was her life; her life was her slow and painful death from which there was seemingly no escape.