The world split open like a canvas cut by a trembling hand.
At first, it was only color—deep reds, bruised violets, streaks of amber and silver. It was like falling through oil paint. Eric couldn't tell if his body still existed or if he was only a thought, an echo.
When the falling stopped, he found himself standing in the center of a ballroom.
The ceiling arched so high it disappeared into smoke. Crystal chandeliers hung like frozen thunder, casting warm golden light onto the polished marble floor.
Music played strings and piano, delicate, longing. A waltz for ghosts.
Couples danced.
They spun, glided, dipped in perfect synchronization. Their gowns shimmered. Their suits tailored from light. No masks. No blurs. Each face was clear.
He knew them all.
Every partner was a woman he had once loved. Lia, her soft lips parted in mid-laugh. Sila, with her restless eyes. Diana. Chipo. Ruth. All of them. Every last one. Their eyes touched his as they turned in the dance. Smiling. Calm.
They did not speak, but he heard their laughter in the strings of the song. It made his spine itch.
Eric stumbled backward. The chandeliers flickered. The music hit a high note—held it—suspended, unbearable—
And stopped.
The dancers froze.
No movement. No breath. Stillness.
Then, one by one, they turned their heads to face him.
Not smoothly. Not humanly.
Their necks cracked as they twisted. Eyes dead. Limbs rigid.
And then—they were mannequins.
Plastic skin. Painted mouths. Hollow eyes.
The silence broke.
From the mannequins, voices spilled—his own past thrown at him like stones as the mannequins walked and surrounded him:
"You romanticized my sadness and ignored my pain."
"I was a person, not a character in your art."
"I was only a metaphor in your eyes."
"You made me feel seen... until I realized you only looked when you needed a muse."
Lia stepped forward.
"You miss me when you're lonely," she whispered, tracing his face. "Not when you're ready to love."
Eric covered his ears. He screamed—but the sound didn't come out.
Then, with explosive force, they shattered.
And from the shards came hands. Flesh-colored, sharp-fingered, twitching.
They reached for him.
Eric turned to run but the floor melted beneath his feet. He sank, struggling as dozens of pale hands rose and grabbed him. Some soft, others cold and firm, all familiar in how they touched. They didn't pull him down.
They pulled him apart.
A burst of pain. One hand dug into his side, another pulled at his shoulder, his thigh, his face.
He felt his skin tear, felt the hot rush of air enter him where no air should. He saw his own blood like ink, thick and surreal, blooming across the white arms tearing him limb by limb.
All around him: the sound of moaning, ecstasy and agony merged into one cruel chorus. The sound built, crescendoed into screaming—his own—until—
snap—
Eric blinked.
The bedroom is dim and small, the kind of small that holds warmth but also keeps you trapped.
Familiar.
Eric stood barefoot on the old blue carpet patterned with suns and stars, the air thick with the scent of dust, graphite, and something more, the past.
There he was.
Twelve.
Sitting cross-legged, hunched over a wide notebook, brow furrowed, not with frustration, but focus. The boy muttered to himself in character voices. High-pitched mimics, sound effects "Kamehameha!" "Tyranno Zord, power up!" — each line charged with unfiltered joy. His pencil raced like a brush fire across the page.
Around him were explosions of paper: books filled with jagged sketches of Goku and Red Rangers, half-colored heroes, tape-stuck cutouts. A chaotic nest of imagination.
And the boy… was happy.
Pure.
The door creaked as the boy leapt up, drawing in hand. He sprinted out of the room, eager and breathless.
Eric followed.
The house warped subtly as they moved, the colors dulled, the walls bending in just a little too close. In the living room, two figures glowed from the television's bluish hue. The boy stood before them, chest heaving, holding up his drawing.
"Look! I made this!"
His mother glanced down briefly, smiled, but her eyes barely left the TV.
"That's nice, my boy. Very colorful."
Then his father, heavy-voiced, seated like a judge turned his eyes down from the news report on inflation rates and layoffs.
"You need to stop wasting time with this nonsense."
Eric's heart sank with the boy's.
"You think the world will reward you for drawing cartoons? Even the best artists suffer. Some die broke. You think you'll be better than them?"
The boy looked down at the paper. The bird he drew with so much love now looked cartoonish. Small.
"We don't have the money for your dreams, boy. Focus on school. Get a real job."
Eric watched the boy's face shatter from inside. No tears. Just silence. His hand crumpled the paper as he turned away and walked back toward the room.
The room twisted inward. Furniture bent like softened wax. The walls drew closer. The floorboards pulsed.
The boy was drawing again. Frantically.
No longer mimicking cartoons, now inventing. Faces and shapes not meant for children. Shadows made of teeth. Moons that bled.
His fingers moved faster than what was human. Too fast.
His wrist jerked. His skin glistened with sweat. He coughed and kept drawing. His face contorted into something between determination and desperation.
Lines became claws. Colors became wounds. Blood began to drip from his fingertips onto the paper.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Then, The floor turned to water.
The old sketchbook floated away. The rug melted into a current.
Eric stumbled backward as the River Gold came to life, the golden-bronze flow he'd painted just months before began pouring from the frame on the wall. It crawled across the floor and swelled like a tide rising fast. It was beautiful.
But it was wrong.
To his right, a portrait.
Unfinished.
A man and woman, faces familiar yet twisted. What was once a tender depiction now looked like demons caught in the act of pretending to love. Their eyes were alive, their mouths pulled open in a half-made scream.
They spoke.
"Why did you make us?"
"We didn't ask to exist."
"All we know is pain."
The man's mouth stretched, opened wider and wider until it cracked the canvas.
And then, it screamed.
A screech, raw and jagged like steel tearing through flesh. It never stopped. It shook the apartment.
More paintings came to life. Each one, from the abstract self-portrait to the sculpture of the crying child moved.
Some groaned. Others fought. One painted hand from a surrealist canvas reached out and ripped the eye from another piece. The joy and agony of creation boiled over into war. They fought each other with the rage of being born in pain.
The water rose higher. Eric tried to move, but the current grabbed his knees. His bookshelf crashed down in slow motion, its contents spilling into the water.
His arms flailed. He gasped for breath as he was pulled under.
The River Gold became black and thick. His body was weightless, but his lungs screamed.
He clawed for air, but there was none.
His mouth opened. Water surged in.
It burned.
His throat convulsed. His chest tightened until it broke. He thrashed. His eyes rolled. His hands went still.
And just before darkness—
Light.
Blank.
A room, white as forgetting.
No corners. No shadows. No time.
Just Eric, adrift in a sea of nothing.
The blank expanse offered no perspective, no up or down. It hummed quietly with a kind of absence. He floated in it. Or stood. Or maybe simply existed.
Until something appeared.
A shape, a frame hovering in the nothingness. Slowly turning to face him.
He stepped toward it instinctively, though no floor carried his steps.
It was her.
The Laughing Woman.
The painting he had obsessed over. The piece he believed was his current magnum opus. He'd stared at her face for weeks as he layered and shaped and textured. Her eyes were wide with ecstasy, her mouth a stretched crescent of joy, caught mid-laughter. Every detail carved in sensual golds and reds. Every stroke, a declaration of divine pleasure.
But here...
Her laughter echoed. Repeated. Distorted.
Not music.
A rasp. A wheeze. A mockery of joy.
Her laugh looped over and over echoing against the nothing. Then, she moved.
The portrait rippled.
She stepped out.
Long legs touched down on nothingness with the grace of a dancer, her dress fluttering despite the absence of air. Her eyes, painted once by Eric's trembling hand, now moved on their own. And they looked at him.
Her lips curled into a slow, crooked smile. But her laugh still echoing, no longer came from her mouth.
"Why did you make me laugh?"
Eric's mouth twitched.
"I—" he swallowed. "You were meant to be... the essence of joy. Overwhelming pleasure. You were meant to represent—"
"What you wanted," she interrupted, voice sharp but soft, like silk stretched across glass.
"But not what I was."
Eric hesitated. "You're… not real. You're just a part of me. A piece. An idea."
"And yet I scream."
"Every stroke you gave me, every color, every smile, I wore it like a noose."
"You forced happiness on me."
Her smile faded.
Eric took a shaky step back. "It was art. You were art."
"I was a prison you painted."
Her voice deepened. Not in pitch but in weight.
"You never asked what I felt. You wanted me beautiful. Laughing. Divine."
"But you gave me pain. And you called it passion."
"You gave me hollow joy and called it meaning."
Eric clenched his fists.
"No—no, that's not true," he stammered. "You were a reflection of—of something greater. Of humanity. Of the ecstasy—of—"
"Stop lying!."
She was closer now. Though she hadn't taken a step.
Her eyes turned darker, impossibly so. Pools without bottoms.
"You didn't make me out of love. You made me because you were afraid of emptiness. And you used me to hide it."
Eric's lips parted, but no words came.
"Say it," her voice now splintering like glass being cracked.
"Say you needed me. Say you forced me to smile so you wouldn't feel like a failure."
He shook his head, tears slipping out.
"I—" he whimpered. "I didn't mean to—"
"But you did."
And then—
She lunged.
Not like a person, but like an image snapping in a frame. She was on him, hands clawing into his chest, her fingers not nails but bristles, brush bristles soaked in blood and oil.
She tore through his ribs like she was unpainting him.
Eric screamed.
Each rip through his chest echoed like wet paper being shredded. Colors burst from his wounds, not blood but pigment. Reds. Blues. Blacks. Greens. Paint spilled from him in streams as she tore into him.
"You made me."
"You gave me life just to suffer for your name."
"Now I'll take it back."
She leaned close.
And then—
Darkness.
Color drained from everything. His body, the space, even the woman.
He faded like a half-erased sketch.
And in the blankness left behind, silence once again reigned.