Melanoia: A Collection of Short Stories

01

Prompt: Prized Portraits (the image is the one above)

There was a thing lurking in the darkness.

It was ancient, and cruel, and paced in the shadows, leashing his mind. It was not of his world, and had been brought here to fill him with its primordial cold ever since his wish once upon a time. Some invisible barrier still separated them, but the wall crumbled a little more with every lost memory and as the thing stalked along its length, testing its strength.

He could no longer remember his name.

That was the first thing he'd forgotten when the darkness enveloped him weeks or months or centuries ago. Then he'd forgotten the names and faces of the others who had meant so much to him. He could only recall the horror and despair of that thing's victims—only a solitary moment that interrupted the blackness like a beacon: a few minutes of screaming and blood and the thud of skin and bone on wood. They were still there, watching him—no, watching them with their hollow eyes, mouths set into a silent scream on paper and canvas—

Watching, as if they were still alive.

A fragile child once, with tuffs of chestnut hair and round emerald eyes like the green paint the thing was painting onto canvas. It was not the child's fault, even if he could not fully remember how the child looked like. But it was the fault of the creature which now invaded his mind and body.

There was nothing in the darkness beyond the moment when the child's head thudded to the ground. There was nothing but that moment, again and again, and again—and that thing pacing nearby, waiting for him to yield, to break, to let it in. A monster.

He could not remember if that thing was the monster or if he himself had once been a monster. It was likely. If he were no monster, he would not have allowed that child's head to be cut off. If he was not trapped, he would have stopped the blade. If he were human, he would have saved the child.

Yet he had not saved such youth, and he knew there was no one coming to save him.

There was a real world, full of bright colours beyond the shadows of his shop of canvas and brushes. He was forced to participate in it by the thing who had ordered the slaughter of that lovely child. Forced to wear a smile and welcome those who stepped foot onto his domain. And when he did, no one noticed that he had become hardly more than a marionette, struggling to speak, to act pass the shackles on his mind. He hated them for not noticing. That was one of the emotions he still knew.

Please ... don't do this! All of the thing's victims had said that—and then they died. They should not have entered his shelter, and he should not have welcomed them. He should not have dipped his paintbrush into their blood and painted their portraits, only to look at them and their writhing faces and remember that he did this. He deserved this darkness, and once the invisible boundary shattered and the waiting thing pounced, infiltrating and filling him ... he'd have earned it.

So he remained bound in night, witnessing every scream and the blood and the impact of flesh on wood. He knew he should struggle, knew he had struggled in those final second before the creature's wispy form had forced its way through his mouth and into his mind.

But there was a thing waiting in the darkness, and he could not bring himself to fight it for much longer.