Part 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/s/kC0QDt5Vj1
As the thing dripping with paint stares at me, he convulses, the snow around him turning into a collage of light blues, neon greens, reds, and oranges that slowly mix into an ugly brown. Its blank eyes look everywhere, and nowhere and straight into my apartment window, and as they lock with mine, he smiles.
His plump, purple-yellow gums are filled with the most brilliant white teeth I’ve ever seen. He moves his arms up and down, kicking his feet to the left and right while that smile spreads across his face. Then he proudly rolls forward and off the mound to display his work to me. In the place where he laid sits the colorful impression of a snow angel; underneath it, the snow is pitch black.
I am not dreaming anymore.
In the last week, I’ve accumulated two hundred and seven missed messages. I know most of them are from Christine because I keep seeing her photo as the phone lights up, but I can’t answer. She can live with one missed dinner date, and there is no use in answering her anyway. I cannot sleep. I refuse to. But I don’t have enough energy to stay vigilant, and I don’t have the strength to make another dazed trip into the kitchen for granola bars and water. I haven’t slept even one minute since I saw that thing. I will not see it again.
I am so very tired, and my eyes are so very heavy. Closing them for just a moment will be ok.
Blank eyes meet mine as I awake from a peaceful, dreamless sleep. The thing is standing in front of me, paint still dripping from his mouth where his colorful spew has yet to dry. Minutes pass, and we just stare at each other. He smiles, gurgles, and a bubble of puke pops out of his mouth and sprays my face with yellow and red dots.
My stomach grumbles, and my eyelids grow heavy again. The colorful monstrosity lurches forward to pick up a jar of my bright orange paint. He dips his fingers into the still, thick fluid and pulls them out the blazing color of fire. Hands strong as iron grab my face, and nails that are cracked and blistered with blues and reds dig into my cheeks as he spreads my lips apart. I fight to keep them closed, I try to scratch his face and pull away, but he feels nothing. My nails can’t pierce his dry, scaly skin, and I can’t break from his grip.
He pushes his fingers deep into my mouth and fans them out until my tongue is coated with a layer of orange scum. As he pulls his hand out of my mouth, he dips it again into a mason jar of purple and pulls out a handful of syrupy paint. He forces his coated hand deep into the back of my throat and opens his palm. I feel the ropey, thick paint slide down and into my body as it cools my throat and floats to my stomach.
A fat burp crawls from my lips as the paint is swallowed, and my stomach screams in delight.
For a second, I’m not so hungry anymore.
Then he pulls my head back and reaches for the largest jar, a stocky container of the brightest red money can buy. I can do nothing but close my eyes and wait. The cold, wet paint splashes onto my open lips and spills out onto my chin and up my nose. It flows in rushing torrents down my throat, spills onto my pants, and mixes through my hair. It fills my stomach and I can feel as it covers my intestines in a fresh coat of ruby. He smashes a jar against the wall, and shards of glass embed themselves into his hands, dripping dark red blood onto the rug that is already splattered with so many colors.
He drips his thin wet fluids into my mouth, and they cascade down into my gut, mixing with the paint that is beginning to turn and revolt. As he pours another jar of sweet sickly green into my mouth, the previous two jars’ contents explode back to the surface in a fountain of sickly browned colors.
The thing ignores this and still forces my head back as I gasp, jerk, choke, and erupt with the mixture he has poured into me, a mixture that lands right back on top of me in chunky, sticky globs of colorful vomit, and finds its way right back down to my stomach as he pours another jar in. I try to breathe, sucking at the air and gagging as the paint spills out of my full mouth, onto my chest, between my fingers, and under my clothes. I gulp it down as more is piled, dripped, and forced into my mouth.
My eyes are so heavy, and I am so tired, but I am not hungry anymore. Not at all. As the clotted, dripping paint covers my face and mixes into my eyes, I see that in front of me, the mess of color and puke has not reached my canvas mere feet away from me. It is still empty and white. A dry, heaving chuckle bubbles past the paint and out of my throat, and I fall asleep laughing.
I don’t remember much of what happened the days after they found me. A neighbor had grown concerned at the heavy pile of mail collecting on my welcome mat, and called for a welfare check. When I didn’t answer, and my door was found to be unlocked, the police sent to conduct it walked in and found me unconscious in my studio, covered in a layer of paint an inch thick. I tried to explain but it was no use. I looked insane. I felt insane. So they sent me here.
Christine comes in to check on me, as she has begun to do quite frequently. I remember seeing her while I was recovering, how the harsh fluorescent lighting that would make anyone else look washed out and wretched combed around her fiery golden hair as if it was a halo. She still supports my painting even after all that’s happened, and just the other day brought me new supplies and an old canvas. She says that the doctors and her think this could be a healthy outlet for me, the same way they thought these diary entries could be.
It’s because of her that I sit here, staring at my almost finished painting, thinking it still needs something. A fantastic mess of color stares back at me, red zigzags colliding with blue dots and orange stripes that stitch together greens and browns, blacks and violets, any and all colors I could make. It’s beautiful, and yet I’m sure I’m missing something.
A nurse comes in and tells me the lights are out in fifteen minutes and to start cleaning up. I ask her what she thinks, and she grunts, gives it a glance and claims that it’s just perfect the way it is. She tells me to put my supplies away and walks out of my new studio, locking the heavy iron door behind her. She glances at my jars as she leaves to see if there’s more paint gone than there should be.
When I no longer hear her footsteps, I pick up the brush. There is a fat bulb of pink sliding off its edge, and I swiftly lick it off. I move it back and forth in my mouth, until I can feel it coat my teeth and gums, and I swallow the rest. I study my work again, and dab the clean brush in a jar of bright yellow. I add a dash right in the middle, covering up an almost unnoticeable hint of white, and step back to examine my painting.
That’s just what it needed.