Drawn upon a page were several figures, human in shape, and–excepting one–ideal in form. The figure who was not ideal wasn’t abysmal to look at; he was only of moderately lesser beauty than the other figures. The figure, himself, wasn’t at fault. He had simply been handed the unfortunate circumstance of being drawn first.
The Hand that had created the figures had not been confident when drawing the first figure, so his lines weren’t as brisk as they might have been. Seeing the first figure, the Hand could see what needed to change to make the other figures prettier. Hence, the latter figures came to have clear, crisp lines that looked considerably better than the shaky, unsure strokes that made up the first.
The first figure hated seeing what he was meant to have been. He would have looked fine enough on his own, he knew, but he looked quite wrong when compared to his fellows.
“If only I had been drawn upon a different page!” he often thought to himself. “If I was all alone, there would be no one prettier than me, and no one uglier than me, and I’d be none the wiser of what I don’t have!”
The figure tried very hard not to blame the Hand that made him. He knew that the Hand hadn’t made him uglier than the others to spite him. The Hand hadn’t intentionally chosen him to be the first. The Hand hadn’t deliberately denied him choice, either. How could something–even something as powerful as a Hand–ask something that didn’t yet exist what it wanted to be?
Yet, despite all his trying, the figure still found himself bitter towards the Hand consistently. Yes, he knew it wasn’t the Hand’s fault, but it was easier to have something to be angry at. It was easier to have something to blame and hate, and if he hated the other figures–or if he hated himself–he would never be free of hatred, for he was always with himself and the other figures. If he hated the Hand, instead, then he hated something he never saw, and could sometimes forget his hatred.
The first figure had tried to explain this to the latter figures, who didn’t understand his hatred of the Hand.
“The Hand has been good to us; to all of us!” they would cry. “The Hand made us, and made us well, and made many of us so we aren’t lonely. Even you, while not being as sharp as the rest of us, are not bad to look at. How can you hate such a kind master?”
The first figure, with his blurred lines, couldn’t understand this, just as the others couldn’t understand him. How was “not being as sharp” as the rest any different from being “bad to look at”? What separated looking different from looking wrong? And how did they know the Hand was doing acts of good, rather than doing merely what it pleased?
Seeing all the others love the Hand made the figure feel even more wrong, and he was envious of the ease with which they could love instead of hate. As the line between envy and hatred blurred, the figure felt more and more ashamed of himself. To keep himself from hating his fellows, he had to direct his hatred towards the Hand, but hating the Hand more made him even more envious of the others, which in turn bred more hatred.
So, the figure hated the Hand, and he hated his fellows. Most of all, he hated himself. He hated himself for being wrong. He hated himself for blaming the Hand. He hated himself for being jealous of the others, or for being angry at the others, or perhaps for not knowing the difference between jealousy and anger. He hated himself for being unable to feel anything but hate.
Humans can’t sustain hatred, and neither can the figures modeled after them. Like a man’s anger, the figure’s anger had to change to despair. The figure cried tears of thick, black ink. The tears swallowed the page around the figure, yet he couldn’t see the damage he was causing, for he was too lost in his grief.
The other figures saw the first, and stepped forward to comfort him. However, as soon as they got close, the tears would swallow them, and their crisp, beautiful lines were lost to the black puddle of ink. They tried to run away, but the first’s tears continued to flow and chase them to the edge of the page. There was nowhere to go, and so the ink swallowed them all.
The figure could cry no longer. His grief had run its course, and he could see again. As he looked around, he could see nothing but the darkness. He knew only that there were no more lines, blurred or otherwise, and that he was alone on the page.