The Writer And The Painter - Chapter I: The House

She stared.

Never before had a mere building so forcefully imposed a personality upon her. If ever an inanimate structure could have personified loneliness, this was it. The house didn't seem to care for the world of which it was a part.

She felt the angry reluctance of it's walls, anguished at being forced to co-exist as a bridge with the world instead of being left alone. She wondered what purpose the walls served. Did they serve to protect and contain the fears and insecurities of the one who resided within or did they just accentuate his despair and gloom?

It stood alone, blank, immune to all hope and ambition. It carried the putrid odour of a thousand dreams buried; It was a house that revelled in nurturing the supreme miseries of life.

And yet the ordinary observer would have noticed nothing. He would merely have seen one of the finest mansions in the country, renowned as that belonging to the most famous writer in the world, one who had outsold every author in history and inspired millions of people with his gift of word weaving.

Thats what most people would have seen. For most people can only observe reality. But she, unfortunately, was one of the few who could feel it as well.

Of all the asymmetries of life that she recollected this was perhaps the most skewed. A house such as this, and a writer such as the one she was to meet.

No one else, she was sure, would have had a stranger task ahead...