Excerpt from "The Unfortunates" Narrator: Iris #3

Iris

As you found work growing less and less important, you had a lot more free time to go and tend to your garden. It had been through much pampering and its borders had expanded to about the square footage of your flat.  You grew strawberries that were just tart enough to balance out the sweetness, lemons that made your thick lips pucker, and all sorts of wildflowers. These breathtaking blossoms had a larger variety in color than all of the different strings in Mordecai's shed, than all the paint in your alleyway. It was beautiful. It was home.

The more time you spent with your flowers, the less you needed money. Eventually, upon your daily wanderings in search of more wildflowers, you came across some sort of metal box on wheels. The inside of it had the same sorts of furniture as your flat did back in the village and was about the same size. No one seemed to be occupying it, and if they were, it didn't show. There was almost nothing in the box that wasn't nailed to it.

You sold your flat. You packed a bag full of your meager belongings and took it to the box near your garden. It didn't take long at all for it to begin to feel like home.

And then, the paint consumed you. You were a maniac. Your hands were always coated in paint of all colors--crusted and dry or dripping wet--and your eyes were constantly bloodshot; a curious combination of sleep deprivation and the effects of the rolled chemicals  the other painters offered you after the stars had been out for a while. Your voice remained enticing and melodic despite all of the blunts you'd inhaled, one right after the last. Your eloquent latin had blended deliciously with the sharp, precise speech patterns of the locals. 

You'd been stealing, too. It kept you up at night and when it granted you sleep, it planted seeds of guilt into your once pure soul, but you stole, stole, stole. You've collected jars and cans of the frothy paint that transforms your thoughts into extravagant dictations, and you stash the containers wherever you can. You wear three jackets, worn down and abundant in pockets and buttons that hold your brushes, chalk, and spare pieces of ripped cloth. It stains the fabric, but you don't care much. You could always steal more jackets.