Member-only story
The Figure Who Escaped the Painting
What if we could really escape and leave our true identity
This is a love story.
Not a tale of passion, but of love.
It is not a dramatic story, nor a tragic one — though it may seem so to those who fail to grasp the beauty of love in its purest form, that noble and rare sentiment which, sadly, does not grace every human soul.
The story takes place in a museum. It matters little where or when, for love stories such as this transcend time and place. They do not need to be found; they linger in collective memory, preserved by the emotions they once stirred.
This one, however, is a fiction — yet that does not strip it of beauty. If anything, it grants it an even greater allure, for is there not a unique magic in what could have been?
It is the story of an old man who still felt young and a young man, trapped within a painting, who felt ancient — perhaps even older than the very man who kept him company, day after solitary day, as an oil figure on a nameless canvas, in a nameless museum.
Many visitors passed by the painting, but only one returned, day after day: the old man, who smiled warmly at every guest, though no one ever truly saw him. He was the only familiar presence in the young man’s…
