The exhibition...

This story came to me fully formed at three o'clock this morning. It wasn't a dream because I wasn't asleep, I couldn't, it just popped into my head so I wrote it down. Then I stayed up another hour to illustrate it. Sometimes it's like that. Sometimes things come out of nowhere and take me to the zone.

Anyway, here it is. I think it was worth spending the night in the zone and losing a night's sleep over.

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“Hello.” She said as she walked towards me.

I had an idea that I’d seen her before - not through these eyes, but through some others.

“Are you here for the exhibition?” She asked.

“Exhibition?” I replied. “I guess I must be. Whose exhibition is it?”

“Yours.” She said with a small smile. I was both pleased and concerned in that same time. My own exhibition after all these years and me not quite yet able to even draw properly despite trying.

“Is it all my own work?” I asked with a grin.

“Yes, all yours.” She nodded.

“And is it good?”

“Mostly.”

She led me to a room. It was tall and very square. Two pictures hung opposite and facing each other, one to the left and the other to the right. We entered the room. In front and facing us was a blank wall. Behind us the door through which we had entered, now closed and (somehow I knew that it would be) locked.

“Only two pictures?” I asked.

“Only two.” She replied with that same and small smile.

I looked to the right at the canvas hanging on the grey wall. It was blank - or maybe it was painted white. To the left the other canvass seemed just as empty but was deepest black.

“Just two?” I asked her - already knowing how she would respond.

“There were others.” She replied. “Many, many of them - an almost infinite number, of every colour and every shade from blankest, whitest nothing to blackest, darkest nothing, all colours, all shades, a lifetime of painting, a full experience of that time -- but in the end just these two, only these two.”

“Who are you?” I asked.

“You know who I am.” She replied with that same small, comforting, disconcerting smile.

And I did.

I knew her name. It began with ‘D’ and ended with ‘H’ - but it wasn’t Delilah. She hadn’t come to my exhibition to cut hair.

“Time to go? Time to leave my exhibition behind?” I asked.

“Yes.” She replied

And together we walked forwards towards the blankness of that other wall.