The Gallery after hours, Nox through a broken door frame, walks into the mouth of the lion. We hear what amounts to a scoff from his rebreather.
“He’s clumsy, careless, common, and his direction appears as simple as ever. He picks his muse and looks to make his masterpiece. It drives him, it becomes his obsession, and he can’t let it go.”
Nox kneels noticing a camera placed errantly on the floor and we hear him let out a raspy chuckle.
“At least he’s mixing his mediums, at least that’s a change. But the more the little things change, the more the big picture stays the same.”
Nox continues his Odyssey through Jasper’s Gallery an unflappable intruder walking with a cocky confidence. He walks into the room that once housed the Embrace of Pain.
“Like a sadistic house cat, he plays with his muse, he toys with it until… like Jackson Cade, CJ Thorpe, Harold Attano, they escape leaving him empty and unfulfilled. His masterpiece incomplete. So, he seeks another muse to satisfy that itch he has to fulfill his macabre art form. That’s the big picture for him, innit? Jasper wants to have that grandiose opening while crowds look on in horror at exactly what he’s done.”
Nox turns his focus to one of the Gallery’s hidden cameras holding up a sealed vile between his thumb and forefinger. At the bottom of the vile is liquid the rusted color of dried blood emitting crimson fumes which consume the rest of it.
“That’s the difference between you and me, Jasper.” Nox begins directly addressing Redgrave as he stares deeply into one of his cameras. “We’re both artists but your art is all broad strokes it’s motivated by one muse after another. While my art dives into the minutiae. Your work is all surface level while mine is at the atomic level. I am sorry, I forgot, you’re not my equal. So let me make this simple for you. My work is the equivalent of realistic watercolour while you’re stuck finger-painting, and I must say, my good man, you’ve made a fucking mess of everything.”
*Tink!*
*Tink!*
*Tink!*
Nox flicks the vile as his eyes light up.
“And this is my proof of me being the Superior Artist. I call it the Red-Gray-ve, all you need to do is breathe it in and your world will lose all definition and you will see nothing but muted tones of gray. No muse will be able to motivate you, your desire for that masterpiece, will be nothing but a distant memory and a forgotten future as your mind is cast into a grave of its perceptions.”
The near-muffled cackle let out by Nox at his last statement is enough to make one’s skin crawl.
“It’s my masterpiece because it’ll be enough to drive a man like you to self-delete. Something that perceived “great men” like CJ Thorpe, Jackson Cade, and Harold Attano were never able to do… take you out. All because your muse needs to a someone and my muse is the result… and at the end is where you’ll find me observing.
-Cut-