Dull Pain

It’s after sundown by the time I get back to my apartment and the pain is nauseating, stabbing into my back and trailing a searing pain along my spine. I chew four painkillers—two more than I should—while drawing a bath. The tall man with a hole where his face should be is standing in the corner of the room mumbling curses at me.

The pain had started early that day. I should have known when I woke up three times the night before, sweat dripping down my face as I felt it bayonet its way up and down my back each time I gained consciousness, that I shouldn’t strain myself too hard. Probably should have called John and told him I was sick, but I was short on jobs that month and John bringing me on for his construction jobs are the only reason I get by. 

The first two times, I just tried to go back to sleep. Sometimes I just need more rest and the pain will die down, but by the third time I wake up—back feeling as if electricity is rushing through it, burning down my nerves—I pull myself out of bed, down a few painkillers my doctor had prescribed me for “emergencies only”, and then watch TV until it’s time to meet John at the work site. It only takes five hours for the meds to wear off. After that my muscles twitch all over, trying to find a position that can avoid the throbbing, but I’m working, so it never does.

I lower myself into the tub of hot water slowly and with great care. My back suddenly feels as if it’s exhaling a long-held breath, the tension leaking out of my pores and into the water. I don’t like sitting still, but I force myself to because this is the best I’ve felt all day.

I close my eyes and, before I can stop myself, I’m dreaming. I’m back in school—college—standing in front of my dorm at night. I’m in my pajamas and a glacial wind plagues both me and the trees in the area. I’m panicked, looking for Jolene. I rush into the building, but its pitch-black inside, there’s a blackout, but I’m not waiting for the lights to come back on.

Inside, the dorm is labyrinthine and every corner turned reveals a confusing complication: a teacher asking for a late final, a monkey throwing textbooks, a giant caterpillar blocking the path being fed palm leaves by two braying students. I don’t stop running, searching for Jolene, as hallways extend for what seems like forever. Door open into rooms I was just in. Stairs bring me to the edge of bottomless holes. I run aimlessly until somehow, I’m in her room. She’s not there, but a man is, shouting noises I don’t understand and flailing his arms. I feel a flash of rage and charge him. We both go through the window and fall four stories into the bushes and concrete below. 

I jump when my eyes open and see the tall man with a hole where his face should be standing above me in the bathtub, pushing a knife into my stomach—slowly, deliberately.

The water turns red as I feel my flesh part in opposite directions, the knife’s cold edge contrasts against the hot water.  “You fucking wish,” I hiss through gritted teeth and suddenly he’s standing in the corner of the room, knife in hand, staring at me. There’s no cut in my stomach, no blood in the water, but the pain shoots through my body like electricity, my muscles popping in agony, looking for a way to make it stop. All I can do is wait for the moment to pass and the pain to drop back down to its normal frequency.

I get a text that night while still in the tub. An unknown number. They know one of my former clients and want to meet—tomorrow, 6:00 PM, and gives me directions to the employee parking lot of Kellerstern Tower.

The pain is still going strong and it’s prickly sharpness forces me to shift in my seat constantly as I drive two and a half hours from my apartment on the east side to the center of the financial district. It takes two security checks to get my beat up 86 Chevelle into the parking structure and I can already feel my patience waning. I want a smoke, but it’s not allowed indoors anymore. Two more security guards escort me up to the fifty-eighth floor where my client’s office is. In the elevator, the pain begins to thrum along to the elevator chimes as the metal box passes each floor and I let myself rest against the cold circular handrail. It’s not comfortable, but at this point, different is better than more of the same.

The slender woman with a hole where her face should be stands next to me. The guards can’t sense her, but I can hear her mumbling curses at me under her breath.

We walk through a quiet lobby and into a waiting room where a secretary in a pencil skirt and tight-fitting blouse then leads me into the main office—too many rooms just to get somewhere.

“Mr. Lim?” a youthful man with salt-and-pepper hair gives me a firm, exact handshake. I can tell he was older, but maybe it’s the diet, the exercise, or the plastic surgery, but it doesn’t show on his face. 

“Present,” I say, looking around the office. It’s covered in leather seating, wooden tables, and postmodern sculptures.

“Would you like a drink?” the man asks. Thomas Kellerstern, his family owned the building, as well as the entirety of downtown and a prime residential stretch forty-minutes south, deep in the suburbs. Thomas is the current CEO of Homestead Realty, inherited from his father Edward seven years ago after the billionaire was shot and killed by a disgruntled employee.

“I don’t drink on the job,” I say, my tone was a bit shorter than I’d intend, but the pain is clawing at me stronger than before.

“Oh, yes,” Kellerstern says, “of course.” He motions to a leather-bound couch in the center of the room. I sit down and he meets me there with a glass of whiskey in his hand. “I guess we’ll cut to the chase.”

I nod.

“I need you to find something for me,” Kellerstern says. “Recently someone stole a painting from me, I want it back.”

“Did you report it to the police?” I ask. “Or are you not supposed to have it.”

Kellerstern is taken aback for a moment before smiling awkwardly. “I’m not supposed to have it.”

“When was it taken?”

“Four days ago, from my living room. My wife and I have been on vacation for the past two weeks, they stole it while we were away.”

“A robbery?” I ask. “Was anything else taken?”

“No,” Kellerstern says. “Nothing else was missing.”

“Do you have security footage?”

“The footage from that entire day is gone, deleted from even the back-up hard drive. Most of our security goes with us on vacation, so the staff in the house was roughly thirty percent of what it normally is.”

“So, whoever took it knew your schedule, your general house protocols, and how to access your security system,” I muse. “Do you know anyone who’d want the painting? Someone in your social circle? Someone who works for you? Or perhaps someone who’s approached you about the painting recently?”

“No one who works for me and no one in my social circle,” Kellerstern says. “I told everyone it was a reproduction I’d paid for and…well, most of my friends think the thing looks creepy, not something that they’d want in their homes. Technically, it’s the property of Estonia, but I don’t think any nationals know the painting is in my possession.”

“Can I see the painting? Do you have a photo of it or something?”

Kellerstern retrieves a manilla folder from his desk and hands it to me.

I almost choked when I see the picture. A man lays floating in the shallows of a lake in the middle of a forest while the silhouettes of other people surround him, standing amongst the trees or standing in the lake around him, staring down at him. Each one of those standing was painted ghostly white in drab, darkened clothing with their faces replaced by gaping black holes. My eyes flickered over to the slender woman with a hole where her face should be, standing amongst the sculptures on the west side of the room—obscuring the sunset.

“Haunting, isn’t it?” Kellerstern asks after seeing my reaction to the painting. “It’s called ‘Respite’. I knew I had to have it the moment I saw it. The look of peace on the man’s face as the shadows converge on him, he’s sinking into the lake, but he doesn’t even care, he just wants a moment of peace and this is the only way he can get it, sitting on the edge of death.”

“Who’s the artist?” I ask.

“Aleksander Kuldvee,” Kellerstern says. “World War I veteran turned painter. A fascinating man, he was commonly seen talking to himself or ‘people who weren’t really there’, extremely paranoid—he even got into a fight once at an art gallery and sent a man to a hospital, can you imagine?”

“Interesting,” I say, more out of obligation than interest.

“Reports have it that he disappeared shortly after the release of this painting and never appeared in public again,” there was excitement in Kellerstern’s voice as he recounted the facts. “Years later, on a summer night in 1937, the house he was living in burned down mysteriously and his body was never found.”

“Suicide?”

“That’s what everyone thinks,” Kellerstern nods, “tortured artist and all that.”

The pain is spiking hard as I ride the elevator down to the lobby. I fall into my car seat, scramble to fish the clear, orange pill bottle out of my glove compartment, and crush two painkillers between my teeth while taking deep breaths. I drop the manilla folder onto the passenger seat and the picture of the painting spills out. I stare at it and time seems to stop. A hope that died long ago resurfaces as I wonder if this painting could lead me to an explanation behind the shadows that follow me around. I had looked up hauntings, shadows, and people with holes for faces online when it all started eleven years ago. The concept of a shadow person or figure was surprisingly common and had a long history in religion and folklore. But none of the accounts online ever described the holes where their faces should be, or the fact that they could create illusions. After a few attempts at an exorcism, I gave up. Even though some of them wanted to kill me, none of them seemed able to affect the physical world, so I eventually just got used to their presence—not much else I could think to do.

I notice the stout man with a hole where his face should be, sitting in the backseat of my Chevelle, is also staring at the painting—his hole-face inching closer and closer to it. I quickly slip the painting back into the manilla folder and start the car. The stout man snorts indignantly, sits back, and returns to quietly cursing at me underneath his breath.

In the middle of the night, the pain in my back is what shocks me out of my stupor. I find myself staring at the photo of the painting as my back begins to convulse and tense, struggling to find comfort. The gaunt man with a hole where his face should be is staring at the photo with me, eerily silent. I wonder if finding the painting will give me some clue as to how to exorcise these shadows, or if this painting is just a sign that there is no respite from them besides drowning in a river. The dull pain crawling up my body forces me to stand and I think about drawing a bath. My mind turns to the painting and I swallow some painkillers and go to bed instead.

The next day I check around with some pawnshop owners I know to see if anyone had come through with the painting, but no one has seen it. The pain today spikes erratically once every hour or so and, combined with the lack of leads, my optimism quickly vanishes. I take a lunch break and, while scarfing down a burger and fries in my car, I search online for any talk of the painting. Unfortunately, it’s been “missing” for so long that everyone’s given up. However, I noticed that the Estonian government still had a standing reward for its safe return, fourteen million euro—a motive if I’d ever seen one. With that kind of reward, it doesn’t seem likely that the thief would just try to pawn it off at a shop or gallery in the area.

The online discussions quickly turn from the painting’s meaning (ideas ranging from the burdens of society to the trauma of war) to theories about where it could be now (an undiscovered Nazi bunker somewhere in eastern Europe) to rumors about the artist’s mysterious final years.

In interviews, he would consistently mention being haunted by the ghosts of people he’d killed in World War I which led most to believe he had PTSD and committed suicide by burning his own house down. However, many close to him refuted the claim saying he didn’t have suicidal tendencies. One comment stuck out to me, spoken by a family member during a documentary retrospective on his life and legacy: “If there really were ghosts haunting my uncle, he wasn’t afraid of them. He treated them like a burden he deserved. He never even tried to get rid of them, an exorcism, a baptism, or anything. That’s why so much of the family didn’t believe him.”

A burden he deserved. I remember thinking the same thing many time before, but if I could get rid of them, I definitely would.

Suddenly, I felt cold, skeletal fingers wrap around my neck—the long phalanges digging into my skin, clamping my windpipe shut. I heard something in my throat screech as I struggled to draw breath. The grip growing stronger and stronger until suddenly—just when I was about to pass out—they were gone. I gulped down breaths of air, as much as I could, and stared up at my rearview mirror, at the gaunt man with a hole where his face should be.

My back begins to spasm, shooting nails up my spine. With no leads to follow, I decide to head back to my apartment. The pain beings to crescendo when I notice—while stopped at an intersection—the tall woman with a hole where her face should be walking into a building. I’d never seen one of them do something like this, they’re usually just standing in a corner of the room or following close behind me, so I decide to investigate.

The interior of the building is all white walls and semi-reflective grey flooring. There are several large skylights in the high ceilings surrounded by recessed lighting. On the walls are paintings of all shapes and sizes, in the center of each large room is a sculpture. It looks like a gallery, but the sign says, “Art History Museum”. They’re having an exhibit on eastern European art this week.

I ask for a manager at the front desk and—fifteen minutes later—a bespectacled man, roughly in his late twenties, wearing a slim-fit button-up, tie, and slacks with slicked back brown hair approaches me. He gives me his names and introduces himself as the exhibition manager. “How can I help you?”

“My name is Lukas Lim,” was it mere coincidence that I saw a shadow walk into this art gallery? “I’m a private detective and…was wondering if you could tell me about this painting.” I hand him the photo.

The glasses-wearing man examines the photo and looks confused. “Respite, a painting of a man drowning in a lake while souls of the dead converge on his body—” he runs through all the information I’d already found on the internet and I think this stop is a bust when he scratches his head and says: “I don’t know if this is coincidence, but there was a man here a couple days ago asking about the same piece.”

My ears perk up. “Did he leave a name? Can you describe him?”

“No name, but he was older, maybe forties? Short brown hair—like a military cut—tanned skin. He was five-foot-something, definitely not six, he wore a suit—looked like a businessman or a stockbroker or something—with a gold chain around his neck. He was scared, jumpy, kinda looking around a bunch, staring at the air. I thought he was high actually.”

“What did he ask you about?”

“He wanted to know the history of the painting at first but didn’t really seem all that interested. Eventually, he asked me if the painting was haunted,” the man says this with a chuckle. “I told him there wasn’t any account of a haunting, but the history behind the artist and the content of the painting itself are quite eerie. After that I think he saw something that scared him, cause he backed away kinda cautiously and then ran out of the museum.”

I thank the man for his time and then leave the museum. My mind is running through the description—it seemed familiar, but I couldn’t quite remember why. If this was the thief then why leave a trail like this? Unless he actually saw something and the jumpy paranoia described wasn’t just because he’d stolen from one of the richest men in the city. Could the painting actually be haunted? I feel hope rise up inside my chest when the upbeat jingle of an ice cream truck pierces the air, rousing me from my thoughts. I see the large metal cube—painted white and covered with pictures of their menu—parked on the opposite side of the street. Something from my childhood jumps out at me, a lightning cherry push-up ice cream pop, and I get in line.

The ice cream is surprisingly tart, but the artificial red cherry flavor sends me back to simpler days. I notice a boy with a hole where his face should be standing at the other end of a concrete pathway in between two buildings. He’s staring up at something, but I can’t see it from where I’m standing. I walk over to him and find a single bat hanging from a pipe, eating something round and dark red—I think it’s a plum. The boy with a hole where his face should be turns to me and a different bat, one that was larger with a strange fleshy leaf on its nose climbs out of the hole and screeches angrily. With incredible speed, it flies up to the fruit-eating bat, catches it before it can escape—seizing it with a single claw—rips it’s head off, and begins eating the bloody pieces.

I hope it is one of my illusions and that, a few moments later, the scene would disappear but it never does. When the larger bat finishes the carcass, it drops the remains on the ground in front of me and flies off into the darkening sky. 

I wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. The scene of the bat eating another bat replayed in my dreams. I look around and see the silhouette of the long-haired woman with a hole where her face should be standing in the far corner of the room. She is silent but staring at me.

I get up and the bones in my back snap painfully into place. I try to do more research on the painting while taking a bath, but there isn’t much else to learn and I end up just staring at photos of the painting. I noticed a bat sitting amongst the trees in a tangle of branches in the top right of the picture, such a small inclusion that one might never see it if they weren’t looking. There was also a deer, a stag, mixed into the forest—at first, I thought it was just another hole-faced shadow, but the shape felt different and I noticed the horns.

I look up the Kellerstern family and scroll through article after article ranging from interviews about their family’s success to their Met Gala fashion choices to his wife—Valeria Kellerstern—setting up sports programs in underprivileged communities. One of the articles documented a fundraiser where she’d set up a game of football between her own family and her husband’s. That’s where I see it. Her brother, Luis, stood next to her, in his early forties, five-foot eight inches, brown hair in a high and tight cut, with a gold chain around his neck.

A few hours later the sun is rising and I drop by Jolene’s place before I’m supposed to interview Kellerstern’s staff—something I now know is worthless but could possibly give me a chance to talk to Valeria about her brother. I try to make sure I get there before Annie wakes up, but she greets me at the door while Jolene is cooking breakfast. Kids have so much energy. She wants a hug and then shows me a drawing she did for art class. She’s riding a tyrannosaurus rex through a forest—pretty cool—and I catch myself smiling. Jolene finishes up in the kitchen and Annie eats while we talk.

“How are you doing?” Jolene asks. I can see the concern on her face even though she’s trying to hide it.

“I’m good,” I nod. My eyes can’t meet hers. “I was just in the area, so I decided to stop by.” I feel my heart beating loudly under her gaze. “I started working more, John gives me a job whenever he can, but I’ve had a few cases over the last few months. I guess that cheating scandal last year really boosted my resume amongst the rich people in town.” I scratch the side of my head—something I do when I’m feeling awkward. I know she isn’t interested in my jobs, but it’s all I can think to talk about. “How…how is she these days?”

“She’s good, happy,” Jolene says with a soft smile. “One of the kids asked her about the scar recently and she doesn’t remember where it came from so, they all decided it was a cool birthmark—something a hero might have, they said. Kids…”

“I…” I don’t have words. Memories of that night flood my mind and it feels like gravity getting stronger, threatening to crush me against the ground. 

“How’s your pain?” Jolene asks. “Have the doctor’s figured out what’s causing it?”

“It’s manageable,” I lie. “I’ve been taking more baths and doing more yoga, trying to eat healthier.” Jolene’s look of concern doesn’t change.

“Maybe Doctor Beth was right and the pain is psychological, maybe even the shadows too. If you want to, maybe—"

“I’m sorry Jo,” I can’t look at her. Jolene thinks the pain started after Annie’s scar, but the reality is that it only got worse after what happened. I was going to a shrink eleven years ago right after my second tour. That’s when the shadows started appearing—when the pain started. She told me it was probably self-induced, psychological—I knew it before she even said, but it’s one thing to know what the problem is, and another to fix it. “I…There…” I try to speak, but nothing seems right, nothing I think to say sounds real. I shake my head I pull an envelope from my jacket pocket and place it on the kitchen counter—all the money Kellerstern paid me and some money from my recent construction jobs. “This is for you guys. For whatever you and Annie need.”

Jolene looks down at the off-white tile floor. “She misses you, you know? She asks about you all the time, wants to know when you’ll come back…we both do.”

“I…we just can’t risk it.”

“Do you still see them? The…shadows…?”

I don’t really want to answer, but I don’t want to lie. “Yeah.”

“Everyday?”

I nod.

“Dad!” Annie stomps into the kitchen with a bright smile on her face. “Take me to school!”

I smile and raise her into my arms. “Honey, I have…well, I can come with you guys in the car…maybe?” I look over at Jolene.

“Yes, of course honey,” Jolene smiles.

“Yay! Family time!” Annie shouts.

We take Jolene’s CR-V two miles over to the elementary school and I sit in the back with Annie in the middle seat next to the girl with a hole where her face should be. Annie notices the tense look on my face and takes my hand in hers. “Don’t worry Dad,” she smiles bright as the sun. “It’s just school, Mrs. Wilson is really nice and I have a bunch of friends there!”

The driveway up to the Kellerstern’s house is long and adorned on both sides with beautifully manicured greenery. As I get closer to the house, large topiaries in the shape of animals stand to welcome me. The paved brick leads to a circular parking area right in front of the house with the largest topiary—a stag with horns made from naturally-molded branches—standing in the center. 

“Welcome,” one of the staff greets me at the door. “I’ve set up a schedule for you to meet all of the house staff. We’ll start with the gardeners because they are the earliest to leave.”

“Thank you,” I say. “Are Mr. and Mrs. Kellerstern here today?” 

“Oh no,” the woman said. “Mister is off on a business trip in the valley for three nights. Missus is at golf with a friend, but she will be back in the evening for dinner.”

I nod in acknowledgement and suddenly notice the slender woman with a hole where her face should be is standing in front of a closed door between the kitchen and the living room, twisting the doorknob slowly—trying to open it.

After five hours of sitting in a garage and questioning innocent staff, my back is killing me. All I’ve done in that time was confirm that Luis had been friends with Valeria’s bodyguard—someone with access to their home security system—since high school and that they play on the same recreational football team. I take a break around three and do some stretches that only serve to force a loud crunching sound out of my spine and drop me to the ground.

I scramble into the nearest bathroom while breathing in hyperventilated spikes doing anything I can to drop the pain back to its usual low-frequency moan. Before I know it, I’m sitting in the bathtub with the shower raining boiling water onto my clothes—the heat from the shower dulling the pain, if only slightly. I get up and dry myself as best as I can when I hear the front door clamp shut and the house manager’s voice—the woman who greeted me at the door—echoes through the house, mixed with another’s. I take a while longer in the bathroom, drying my clothes with a hairdryer, before opening the door to Valeria Kellerstern waiting for me just outside.

“Um…oh, having trouble there?” she asked. Her face was a mixture of confusion and discomfort.

“The…um…sink pressure was a bit stronger…than I expected,” I said.

“Oh…” she didn’t believe me. “Well, is there anything else you need from us? No offense, but I’d rather be done with that terrible painting as soon as possible.”

Suddenly, the slender woman with a hole where her face should be starts banging her head against the closed door. The sound makes me jump a bit and Valeria notices.

“Can I ask? What’s through that door?” I’m partly trying to cover for myself, partly curious.

“It leads to the basement floor,” Valeria says, “a few empty rooms, the panic room, the garage, as well as a door to the backyard…is something bothering you?”

The slender woman is hitting the door harder now, leaving bloody splatter marks each time her head connects with the steel.

“Is there anything else down there?” I ask.

She notices my eyes darting from her to the slender woman. “Anything else…? Not really. Are you alright?”

“…Yeah…” I turn to her. “Yes, it seems like no one on your staff saw what happened that night, so no leads there.”

“Well, then if you don’t have anything left to—"

“Actually, I had some questions for you, Mrs. Kellerstern,” I say with a reassuring smile.

“Well, I was on vacation with my husband at the time, I don’t know what—"

“Have you talked to your brother recently? Luis.”

There’s a startled look on her face when she hears her brother’s name. “I…I don’t know what my brother has to do with any of this.”

“I called his office yesterday and it seems like no one’s heard from him in about three days, I was wondering if you two had talked.”

“What…what does this have to do with the painting?”

“Are you sure you don’t already know?” I ask. For Luis to even get into the house without triggering the security, then wipe the cameras on his way out, he’d need more knowledge of the house than he probably would have had. From my interview with the head of security, I got the feeling he seemed pretty satisfied with his cushy low-risk job and—more importantly—seemed far more concerned with Valeria than Luis, so there was only one other obvious choice in accomplice. “From what I understand Luis was swimming in gambling debts and needed money fast. Your husband refused to help him, so—”

“Are you implying that Luis stole the painting?”

“I just want to see it—" I say. “I’m not here to get Luis in trouble or—”

There’s long lines of red dripping down the basement door now and the slender woman begins to draw with her own blood, chuckling as she does so.

“I think you should leave,” Valeria says.

“That painting, I think it—”

“Mr. Lim,” Valeria cuts me off. “My brother is a warm, charitable man and you’ve accused him of stealing from my husband, I want you to leave.”

I sigh. “From what I understand, Luis is missing. If you need the help of a private detective to find him, you know my number.”

Just outside the walls of Kellerstern’s gated community, I pull over to take a smoke break. I stand at the bottom of a hill and stare up at the expensive mansions expertly laid out along the curves of the mountain. Pain thrums with each pull, but I’m tired of following it’s orders and finish the cigarette greedily. When I’m done, I drop back into the driver’s seat and let my body adjust before starting the car. There’s movement next to me. A bat sits on my passenger seat. It makes an angry screech before attacking my face and flying out the open window. I touch the blood leaking out of my face and check the vanity mirror to inspect the slash that runs across the bridge of my nose all the way under my left eye. The blood flows generously and I need to grab a stack of stolen Chipotle napkins out of my glove compartment to stop the river of red.

The girl with a hole where her face should be sits in the back, completely silent.

My phone goes off around sunrise while I’m sitting in the bathtub, trying to stew my pain into submission. It’s Valeria Kellerstern texting me a string of urgent messages. She admits to helping her brother steal the painting in order to pay back his gambling debt after Thomas refused to help him. The head of their security had assisted Luis under direct orders from Valeria to make sure that neither their home security system nor the security employed by their community caught him. He was supposed to contact Valeria after he’d gotten the fourteen-million-euro reward, but after talking to me, she decided to call him—he didn’t answer. She tried to visit his house and no one was there and his work confirmed that he’d been missing for days. She sends me all the information she can think of and her final text says: “Please find my brother.”

It takes a nice bribe to a contact I have in the police force and half a day for me to find out that Luis has a storage unit registered under his mother’s name. I flash a fake badge to get into the storage facility and Luis’s unit is already unlocked when I get there.

The painting is there, hanging in the dark, covering the entire back wall of the storage unit amongst old couches and chairs, numerous metal filing cabinets, an assortment of plastic containers, a dusty workstation, and an empty bookshelf. I click on a flashlight and shine it across the face of the painting. It’s the first time in my life when I believe the photos don’t do the real thing justice. I unconsciously raise a hand to touch it, but before I can, I notice them. They’re all here. The tall man, the slender woman, the gaunt man, the tall woman, the stout man, the long-haired woman, the boy, the girl. The tall man is the first to reach out, rip a piece off of the painting, and stuff it into the hole where his face should be. The others follow suit, one-by-one ripping uneven fragments of canvas from the painting and devouring it hungrily until the entire painting is gone.

There’s a moment of stillness before the tall man begins to shake violently. He cries out in pain—a disturbed, spectral wail—as he begins to thrash about, slamming against the furniture. The others begin to shriek the same unsettling noise as they destroy the objects in the storage unit. I avoid their flailing limbs—making unnatural jagged movements—and make it outside just as they all drop to the ground and go completely still.

The tall man is the first to stand. The hole where his face should be is now covered by a rough, uneven mask that looks like it’s made out of the canvas he just ingested. Drawn on the mask is a smiling face, similar to ones you’ve seen associated with the theater. The slender woman stands next, she’s wearing a crying face. The boy is wearing an angry face. I’m frozen in awe and fear as they each get up and disappear into the shadows. Eventually, only the tall man remains. He walks up to me and I see the knife in his hand. I back away, but he’s too fast—driving the knife into my abdomen. I feel the cold metal split open my flesh as he leads the blade across my stomach. My intestines spill out along with a deluge of blood onto the concrete floor. My vision flashes out of focus and I lose balance, falling backwards until a hand catches me. I look up to see the smiling face of the tall man as he cradles me close and pulls the blade upwards, carving open my chest.

The tall man is silent, but he stares down at me through that jagged canvas mask, smiling the entire time. My vision blurs and everything goes dark.