"Still Falling"
In the chilling shadows of a Hong Kong brothel, Luli's nights dripped with a profound sorrow that stained the very air she breathed. The brothel's flickering lights cast distorted shadows on her chiseled features, each contour telling a story of survival etched in bruised hues. Behind a curtain of feigned smiles, she maneuvered through a maze of anonymous encounters, where desire was a currency exchanged in the dimly lit corridors.
The city outside, an indifferent metropolis of excess, mirrored the emptiness behind her eyes. Luli, a character in her own gritty narrative, endured the relentless grind of flesh and fantasy, a pawn in the unspoken game of vice that thrived in the obscure corners of urban decay. In the quietude between encounters, she confronted the echoes of her own silent despair, a prisoner to the sorrow that lingered in the spaces where true intimacy faded.
The city's pulse resonated through the walls, mocking the hollow beats of her shattered heart. Each heartbeat was a drumroll in the symphony of escapism, a relentless rhythm that masked the cacophony of thoughts echoing within her mind. She stared into the cracked mirror during those stolen moments of solitude, the reflection of a woman she barely recognized staring back.
Survival had become an art, a dance choreographed to the whims of strangers. The men who sought solace in the dark corners of Luli's world were mere actors, their faces interchangeable masks that concealed the hollowness that mirrored her own. In the sterile pause between clients, she allowed herself the luxury of introspection, tracing the lines on her palm as if searching for answers etched in the creases of her skin.
The city outside raged on, its heartbeat a pulse of decadence that reverberated through every brick and alleyway. Hong Kong, a metropolis of paradoxes, where skyscrapers kissed the heavens while the denizens below sought solace in the basest of desires. Luli was a paradox herself, a fractured soul navigating the fractured cityscape.
Her encounters were transactions, not connections. Each touch left a residue of emptiness, a reminder that intimacy had become a phantom, a specter that haunted the recesses of her numb soul. The men who fumbled with her, their faces lost in the shadows, sought an escape, a fleeting moment of forgetfulness. Yet, Luli couldn't forget; she was a prisoner to memories that clung like shadows to the walls.
As the city's symphony of indulgence continued outside, Luli knew she was but a footnote, a casualty in the margins of a story written in the ink of vice and despair. The flickering lights, the faceless men, the cold sweat that glistened on her skin — they were all part of a script she never consented to, a narrative where she was both protagonist and casualty.
This is Luli's story. She is the subject of this drawing. The drawing is graphite, charcoal and ink on paper.
