The walls of my studio are more alive than I am. Every corner wears a mask of chaotic splashes and muted streaks, like scars on a battlefield long abandoned. The floor, a patchwork of smudged acrylics and fragments of broken brushes, creaks beneath my weight—a tired whisper echoing the relentless nights spent wrestling with the canvas. Shelves buckle under the weight of forgotten palettes, their edges crusted with hardened paint that flakes like scabs. A single, dim bulb dangles above, its pale light swaying in tandem with the city’s breath outside, casting shadows that crawl and coil across the walls. This room is my mausoleum, and I am its restless ghost.
Online, I am “x30arSyn0Ex.” To the digital void, I am little more than an anonymous conduit of obsession, selling pieces of my soul one pixel at a time. The gallery of my agony lives on a site where artists’ dreams go to starve—a space where adoration and criticism are served in equal, hollow portions. My paintings speak of things I dare not say aloud. And they sell. They sell because I’ve described, in no uncertain terms, the power I hold—the truth no one believes until they hang my work and watch their world shift.
The commission arrived as most do, with a polite message layered in desperation.
“Your work speaks to me like no other. I’ve read everything you’ve written about the… effects. I need your help. Please. Money is no object.”
The username was generic: “HelpingHands247.” A laughable veneer of warmth, masking the unmistakable scent of desperation. They attached photos—a smiling child with hollow eyes, a hospital bed surrounded by tubes and monitors, a weary man’s hand clutching the limp fingers of someone unseen. The request was clear. They wanted salvation.
I stared at the message for hours. My cursor blinked like the heartbeat of an executioner’s clock. Outside, the city’s hum pressed against the window, a distant choir of sirens, horns, and footsteps—the rhythm of life I had long abandoned. The thought of painting again made my chest tighten, as though the walls themselves were closing in, their colorful scars bleeding into each other.
But I replied.
“Send the details.”
It wasn’t altruism. No, altruism had been stripped from me years ago, peeled away with every canvas that ruined someone’s life, with every piece that whispered nightmares into their homes. This was compulsion. This was an addict reaching for the needle.
They wired the money immediately. Enough to pay rent for months, not that I cared. The transaction was another shackle on my wrists, binding me to the inevitability of creation. Their details followed, spilling out in frantic words about hope and urgency, about love and pain. They didn’t care about the price; they only cared about the outcome.
I didn’t ask what they expected. I never ask. The less I know, the less the weight presses down. My job is to paint, and the universe does the rest.
The canvas stood in the center of the room, a stark twenty-four by thirty-six inches of emptiness staring back at me. The first stroke came like a knife to my chest, the brush dragging against the surface with the resistance of wet sand. Every movement after felt heavier, as though I were clawing through layers of my own flesh. The colors blurred together—Vermillion like arterial blood, chartreuse like bile, obsidian like the void behind closed eyes. I didn’t plan the composition; it unfolded on its own, each stroke guided by a force beyond my comprehension.
The image that emerged was not of a child, or a hospital, or love. It was something abstract, grotesque, and mesmerizing—a swirling mass of shapes and hues that seemed to pulse with life. Staring at it too long made my head throb and my stomach churn, yet I couldn’t look away. It was done. I had done it again.
I shipped the painting without ceremony. A nondescript brown package left at my door for a courier to collect. There was no note, no explanation, no farewell. Just the silent transaction of a curse sent into the world.
Days passed. Then weeks. The emptiness grew heavier, a suffocating presence that wrapped around my chest like iron chains. I checked my messages obsessively, refreshing the site to see if “HelpingHands247” had written back. Nothing. The silence was a void I could not escape.
I dreamed of the painting. In my sleep, it hung in a room bathed in sterile white light, its colors writhing like living creatures. Voices echoed around it, fragmented whispers that coiled into my ears like worms.
“Why did you do this?”
I woke in cold sweats, my hands trembling as though I still held the brush. My walls seemed to close in further, their shadows darker and more oppressive. I painted nothing. I barely ate. My only companions were the distant wails of the city and the mocking glow of my screen.
Then came the final message.
“It arrived. Thank you.”
No explanation. No details. Just two words that rang with the finality of a gunshot. I stared at them until my vision blurred, until the screen became a smear of light in the darkness. Had I saved them? Damned them? Both? I would never know.
I turned off my computer and sat in the suffocating silence of my studio. The walls loomed around me, their tears more vivid than ever. I could hear the city surrounding me, alive and indifferent. I was still here, a ghost haunting my own life. And somewhere out there, my work had taken root, its tendrils spreading into the unknown.
I picked up a brush, staring at the blank canvas before me. The cycle would begin again. It always did.