Brave New World 12 | South By Southwest | Fine Art Prints

Upon waking though, The Savage, remembering the drugs or orgies… or Lenina…. or his mother… for some reason hanged himself. John’s was the first suicide in so long, the media forgot the laws forbidding the report. It broke while we were laughing at footage, and I grew sick. I calculated the odds of retaining my position, when the police arrived to deport me. I’d preached against the supernatural my whole life, but never believed in it. Yet as I was led away, I saw ghosts, just as Thomas had described, as real to my eyes as the cinematographers, and I know they were more than just hallucinations.

I try to remember Helmholtz Watson, right before he went to the Falklands, and keep his same attitude. But I was happiest when I ruled the living…not creating artworks from afar… and I fear I will be forever miserable, like Bernard. At least the natives and exiles on the island enjoy my paintings. I can also read and discuss The Tempest openly. But unlike Prospero, my jailers are not people who betrayed me, and I won’t be embarking on any glorified karmic justice. My keeper is the ghost of an innocent young man I mistreated, whom I can never ask for forgiveness, and will haunt me from beyond the ocean’s horizon line until the day I die.