Gemotions

Sweat beaded on Elara's forehead as she stared at the gallery wall. Her canvases, vibrant and wild, were hung, but not by her. They were accompanied by a pretentious blurb about "untamed expression" and "emerging genius." A bitter taste coated her tongue. She’d fled her suffocating life, a life choked by expectations, only to see her escape, her art, used to suffocate her all over again.

She clenched her fists. The room pulsed with a forced cheerfulness; a champagne flute shattered somewhere in the back. Elara wanted to scream, to rip the paintings down, but her feet were lead. She felt as though she’d been put under a bell jar.

A woman approached, cooing about the "bold brushstrokes." Elara forced a smile, a muscle already aching. "Thank you," she managed, the words a hollow echo. The feeling of being suffocated by her own creations, on display for the consumption of strangers, tightened her chest.