Gemotions

"Another one," Marco muttered, the words barely audible. He tossed his phone onto the worn table, the screen displaying yet another stranger sporting his geometric patterns. The designs were his lifeblood, the way he made sense of the world, rendered onto canvas with painstaking precision.

He felt a tightening in his chest, a sensation of being crowded. He picked at the corner of a chipped paint tube, his fingers tracing the dried pigment. He hadn't slept well in days, his mind a restless echo chamber of lines and angles.

His gallery agent, a slick man named Julian, had called earlier, a voice thick with forced enthusiasm. "Think of the exposure, Marco! Free advertising!" Marco found himself unable to meet Julian's gaze, the cheerfulness grating on his nerves. He felt a profound sense of isolation, watching his soul bleed out onto strangers' skin.