The Black Palette, The Red Paintbrush, The White Paper and the Two “Artists”

The color of roses stung the dense whiteness. It stung like drinking fresh grapefruit juice in the winter when your lips are chapped. It burned like the juice reaching the tip of your lips, all peeled off and sore. You could feel the pain of how that human paint was engraved into the frozen ice. The blood carved itself slyly into the hard sheet of white. Imagine the paintbrush cutting and splattering their paint atop the lake, like a regular piece of artwork. Isn’t art all about devouring all the different colors and paints while creating and crafting? The white sheet in the end will be covered in paint dispersed in an intricate yet creative manner. Is this sheet of ice a piece of art or something derived from mere insanity?

You could find this white lake in the outskirts of the Aokigahara forest: the suicide forest around Mt. Fuji. Everyday this lake reads something different. Sometimes a written story, sometimes a poem, and sometimes a drawing; depending on the amount of paint Burakkukirā- which means “black killer”- had in his black palette. Oh everyday we hope he doesn’t have that much. It’s scary enough waking up in the morning knowing that you might be next. Though I’m glad I haven’t been chosen for a long time. Though the problem is, no one knows who exactly Burakkukirā is. Everyone suspects he does all his painting at three o’clock in the morning when the stars are awake. I have never been so scared in my life. I saw him with his black palettes; he consumes all of the red paint in them until there’s not even a drop left. He uses one brush every time, which is almost drowned in the color of red when it is in his hands. I once witnessed that while coming back from a friend’s house. I was never so traumatized in my whole life. Thoughts were brushing up to my mind, I kept telling myself to stop. I thought:” Stop it! Stop it!”. I thought my soul stepped out of my body out of distress. I told himself to stop and go away but he wouldn’t listen. He kept staying. I couldn’t let myself out. I saw him writing this exact poem on the cold white ice:

The people dance,

My paintbrush dances along

Brushing the dancers

White paper,

Shouldn’t be white all the time

What else could it be but white? We ought to change it To what color?

Well why not the fresh color of life?

The color of the liquid flowing through your veins

The color of chapped lips

The color of red pomegranates The color of skin when its devoured open

This is beautiful isn’t it?

Just like art,

The lake will forever sting with the scent of my paint

And will forever melt into the souls of the dead

The lake will forever burn in hope that one day it will be left blank

I woke up groggy and dazed. That morning my neighbours came to my house. Akira bashed in screaming: “Sakura went missing!”. I was so tired, I couldn't quite comprehend what she was trying to say. Her eyes were all over the room. She looked quite nervous. She glanced at all my paintings. She especially stared at the one where I drew Mt Fuji from the Chureito Pagoda. I remember how I painted it. I used my finest brush and my white palette. It took me about four hours. I paint almost everyday. It’s one of my greatest passions. I love the feeling of creating something on a completely blank paper, and then seeing that it’s all been painted with color. Seeing the white paper transform into a colorful piece of art is my greatest pleasure. Though my other friend only likes the color red. In my mind, I tell him to use something else. As always, he never listens to an ounce of what I say. Anyways, I tried to remember what Akira said. The other kept blocking me from hearing it. I’m glad no one knows about him. He’s a real creep. I also couldn’t remember anything about last night. Who knows what I was doing. I probably got drunk while drinking outside.

I tried to comfort Akira but it didn’t work. While deep in thought, I saw a knife in the kitchen sink. I’m not quite sure but I think it was all bloody because I forgot to wash it after I made steak for me and my other friend. Though when I try to think about him, I always forget who he actually is. I guess my memory isn’t that good. Oh well. Though I’m still afraid of Burakkukirā. It’s so scary to think that he could come at any moment. No one knew what he looked like, that made it even harder. At that moment, I felt a disturbing tingle in my body. It went through my legs towards my head. Then everything went blank. I thought I was dead. What if Burakkukirā took me with him? Where was I? After a while, I realised I was in Akira’s house. I heard muffled noises all around the room. I saw Akira and her friend Akio. Akio said that he found me lying somewhere in the forest with a spot of blood on my hands. For some reason, my hands felt sore. Not because they were hurt or anything, they just ached a lot. Maybe because I painted a lot the previous night? Though I always have trouble remembering nights. Especially after midnight. The blood also wasn’t mine. That made me skeptical about one thing. What if the Burakkukirā passed by, and splattered some onto me? I had chills going down my spine the moment I thought of that. Anyways, Akio told me that another person went missing. It was the unfortunate husband of Sakura- and she went missing a couple of days ago. We all knew who it was. Well at least they’re together now… After a quick breakfast, we decided to go to the white lake. That’s what everyone called it. It was a thin sheet of ice in the winter, clothed in frost. When we came, we were terrified at the scene. Burakkukirā had left his palette. This was a first. It looked gruesome. The pure, white lake was screeching. Where had all its purity gone? Down the drain with all the paint? I felt bad for the lake. The only thing that was interesting about it was that it maintained to be white for a whole, rough winter. It made the dark nights seem white, and the days seem black. It was so bright. But it had lost that peculiar glow now. It looked sad in a way. I genuinely felt bad about it. The poor lake had done nothing to deserve all this. The lake soaked in all the paint. It consumed the shrieks of the dead horrifically. The whole white lake turned into a cornucopia of human paint. Hulled palettes everywhere. I won’t tell you the rest as you probably understood how agonizing the scene was.

Finally came dusk with its pitch black sky. No stars were to be seen. I was painting something my other friend told me. I sometimes listen to what he says. I drew a man looking into his reflection in the water. He was staring into his reflection while scrutinizing the red paintbrush in his hand. The paint was conspicuously made from red autumn leaves. He looked sinister in his reflection. It was five minutes past midnight. After that I didn’t recall anything. Everything went white again. There was a colossal mist hugging my body. Nothing was visible. I opened my eyes slowly. I was shivering. Listening to the clattering of my teeth which sounded like a broken record, I saw a patch of red. I felt as if my teeth could fall out at any moment if I kept on with the clattering. I realised I was holding something firmly in my hands. I stared at it with my blurry vision, seeing all the sharp edges of my now red paintbrush. The sharp edges hosted the red paint. I saw my own reflection in it, I was terrified. I never felt so scared of myself. I saw a monster in that knife. At the moment I was still feeling those disturbing, tingly sensations. The other was trying to come back. That was when I noticed who the other was. I had no reason to be afraid of someone else. I was afraid of myself. I held the knife in determination, and I shrieked as loud as I could. I screamed for everyone to call the police, while staring at the mess I created. I was no different from the other. The other is me, and I am him. I had to protect everyone from my other, the monster who I secretly am, but never knew I was. I held up my paintbrush tenaciously. I was scared, but I had to do it to finally conquer my other. My other, who thinks he is an artist, is actually a monster. I brushed myself with it and felt the red paint soaking my body. I was both the white paper and the black palette, holding the paintbrush dipped in red. An artist at some point has to feel and become what he paints. I was an “artist” at sometime, but now I have become the source of his paint: I became the black palette and have dissolved into this lake.

For the first time in a while, I heard the white lake sing: ”Oh the death of two artists…Which were actually one… let us melt please, for we have beared too much. Let us stay white for once.”

Ending note:

Sadly Yuta Nakamato realized in the end that he was schizophrenic. This character is diagnosed with severe psychopathy. He is actually still alive and only psychically well in the mental institution of Fujiyoshida. He was actually mentally fine too, when I met him. But that was only for a year. He is actually no one but an insane person diagnosed with schizophrenia who creates most of his non-existent life events in his head. Him being capable of creating all of these merely in his head, is much scarier than the actual events themselves. He had a traumatic childhood, his father was a serial killer and his mother also had schizophrenia. He wrote this when he was sixteen. Again, he thought all this to be true and a segment of reality. This was one excerpt from his psychological journey. There’s more to come.

From Psychiatrist Sakura Nakamato

Isabelle W.