Eye of the Beholder — Matthew Allen Dickerson

From the day he was born, Logan never knew love in any form. Suffering from verbal and physical abuse from an early age led to a teenager who was slowly fading away, awaiting death's embrace. When he asked for a reason to live, he had a vision of a woman who inspired him to escape his tortured existence. Since then, Logan's artistic skills have developed over a decade of practice, as he tried to recreate the vision that drives him. Now a respected artist, each gallery he presents is filled with an expression of the depths of his passion felt for a woman he believes only exists in his mind. For Kimberly, love was nothing more than how the body was affected by hormones or electrical charges in the brain, explained away by emotionally detached parents. Her one escape from the rigid life of her youth was her drawings of a boy she dreamed about, which kept her creative spark alive. As the young girl developed into a mature woman, Kimberly found sanctuary as an artist for a global comic book industry, becoming famous for the mysterious man always appearing in the background, teasing the audience as to who he might be. Two lives, both unaware that the other existed, yet each fixated on the other's image, not realizing their connection. It is not just beauty found within the eye of the beholder, but a gateway into the unknown. Could the heartfelt wish of a young girl have beckoned the arrival of a traveler from another world, reaching beyond boundaries of reality to be with her? A fairy tale provides happily ever after, but our world has proven time and again that heartbreak is often the conclusion of a romantic tale. The solution is to blur the lines between fantasy and reality, discovering a path born from the depths of one's imagination and brought to life by the strength of one's soul.