PUNISHMENT VI


    EDEN RUIN


    “You’ve been to that place, haven’t you?”


    Shadows danced across the surreal paintings and sculptures of the gallery as the words slithered through the dim lighting, only to coil around Miles Seagrave’s spine. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, breath catching in his throat as an unfamiliar tone seeped a chill into his very marrow.


    “Where? Was it in dreams? Or perhaps in the void reflections hidden within mirrors, once all lights fade to black.”


    To recoil was the first thing his instincts screamed for. To seek refuge into remote corners of the sanctuary he had meticulously crafted —any place far away from this stranger. Miles’ feet, however, remained rooted as if the words had sewn him to the spot. The voice, almost friendly yet disjointed at its core, simply carried on with an unsettling undercurrent of delirium.


    “You’re just like me. I’ve seen it too.”


    Turning in a daze, the artist found himself face-to-face with a paradoxical man, his figure partly obscured by the sickly illumination surrounding them… And a far more menacing presence that flickered by the edges of Miles’ perception.


    His weathered face, all sharp angles and deep furrows —perhaps by undernourishment or insomnia; peered at him from behind impenetrable black glasses. Slicked-back hair curled around his upper neck to frame a stern yet empty expression, erratically broken by twitches and spasms in an unnerving dance between control and compulsion.


    “There’s no reason to hide it, I can tell.” The stranger continued, his raspy and deep voice tinged with an eerie wistfulness as he stepped away to survey the art exhibits around them. “These pictures… These sculptures…”


    >> “… How deep have you gone, one wonders.”


    Miles’ ailing heart felt a surge of concern as his gaze was drawn to the man’s battered fingers. They gripped a small chisel firmly, its edge now whispering against the surface of a nearby sculpture. The artist tried to voice his fright, a scream building under quivering lips yet refusing to come out.


    “It’s beautiful.” The man in glasses murmured, his mouth curling into a faint, ghoulish smile. His gaze swept across the gallery, drinking in the nightmarish forms that Miles had painstakingly brought to life. “Such masterful work.”


    His praise, rather than soothing, sent tremors of dread coursing through Miles'' veins. For in that voice the artist heard an echo of something ancient and terrible —a recognition to make his stomach turn.


    The gallery itself was an expansive cathedral standing as monument to decayed and necrotic flesh. Walls blended seamlessly into the exhibition, boundaries between architecture and art dissolving like tissue under gastric acid. Concealed speakers pulsed with a rhythmic dripping, creating an auditory backdrop of quiet malevolence that lured closer those who glanced in.


    Encircling his paintings, odes to strange worlds and alien creatures, were elongated structures that defied easy categorization. Some were covered in bristles, others smooth and swollen, resembling microscopic growths of fauna magnified to monstrous proportions. Impasto layers of oil to delicate airbrushes and luminescent pigments —the texture of ethereal turned organic was like an all-devouring maw.


    To move through the exhibition was realizing that in such a place the boundaries of art merged with those of nature. Cilia and flagella, once invisible to the naked eye, were now inverted into the realm of the visible. In such abhorrent inversion, sheer beauty grew darker, both fascinating and repulsive in equal measure.


    Nothing conveyed such complexity better than the centerpiece sculpture dominating the space —a towering structure akin to a morbid neuron. Its thick trunk glistened as though covered in a thin sheen of sweat, branches splaying out in all directions, delicate yet precise like the dendrites of a nightmarish deceased brain.


    Tendrils extended outward, fanning into the ceiling and well beyond in an illusion of cellular structure. Lights held within almost charged the darkened air around their domain, as if the very exhibit could spark to life at any given moment.


    “How can I not be nostalgic…”


    >> “When it feels so close to home.”


    Miles felt a shiver of dread run down his spine, the weight of the stranger''s gaze bearing down on him once again. There was something eerily familiar about the man''s words, as if he understood the tormented recesses of his psyche —the nightmares and visions that had become his driving obsession for years, the very fuel and foundations of his artistic career.


    He was terrified of this intruder, of the implications of his presence… Yet a traitorous part of his heart couldn’t help but flutter at this seemingly knowing appraisal. So many hours, days, weeks and months morphing nightmares into canvas and sculpture… And here was a nether dweller validating his efforts.


    One could say that the notion of an artist being approached by an admirer during an exhibition wasn’t exactly a ground-breaking event. The issue, of course, was that this display was yet to be open to the public.


    “L… Listen. You shouldn’t be here.” Despite holding the higher ground of authority, Miles’ voice came out as a pitiful whimper. Conversations with strangers had always been difficult for him —let alone confrontations. The fact that this intruder was very openly armed only amplified his anxiety. “If you could please leave, before there’s any trouble…”


    “There are no means for escaping her.” The stranger ignored his plea, growing increasingly deranged with every word. “Her world seeps into your very being. Infiltrates your dreams. Traps you in her labyrinth.”


    >> “An existence where time and space are crippled, where eternity stretches before you and mortal barriers are eclipsed by her garden divine.”


    This here was a lunatic. There wasn’t any other definition to describe him with. Calling security should’ve been Miles’ first and foremost response… But even at that point, his voice and feet refused to obey him.


    Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    “Surely you must understand, since we’re kindred spirits.” The intruder’s cadence was erratic, speeding and slowing, rising and falling with unpredictable intensity. “Your lifework should be more than just art.”


    >> “It’s a beacon, a call for something greater.” And yet, moments of elusive lucidity pierced through his ramblings, blurring the line between conspiratorial whispers and sheer madness. “I keep trying to weaken the veil, but there’s still so much to be done…”


    >> “So help me. Let’s bring Utopia to this decadent reality.”


    “Stop!” Miles suddenly shouted, his voice echoing through the cavernous halls. The outburst surprised even himself, born from a desperate need to halt the intruder’s incessant, nonsensical rambling. “I don’t know what you’re talking about or how you got in here, but I’ve had enough!” His hands clenched into fists at his sides, a tide of protective anger overriding his natural meekness. “Get out now!”


    >> “Or I swear I’ll have you beaten and thrown to the streets!” His voice cracked as he added.


    The stranger’s lips snapped shut, his monologue abruptly halted. A soft click of disappointment escaped him, followed by a heavy silence that stretched tensely under his dwindling enthusiasm.


    “Oh. So… You haven’t…” He finally began to murmur, brow furrowed in confusion beneath his dark sunglasses. “But then, all of this… What does it…”


    His voice trailed off, the gears in his mind visibly turning as he struggled to reconcile Miles’ art with his apparent ignorance —at least until realization dawned once more in his face, twisting it in delight.


    “You don’t know it yourself, do you…” A slow, insidious smile spread across his features, revealing darkened yellow teeth. “Well, no matter.”


    >> “It at least must mean that you’re attuned to the abyss.”


    Seemingly unperturbed by Miles’ earlier outcry, the man simply sighed, calm beyond belief against his threat that now rang hollow.


    “W… Why aren’t you leaving…” The artist stammered, his bravado evaporating as rapidly as it had erupted.


    “Perhaps all that you need is one small, final push.” The intruder resumed, his presence growing more oppressive and malignant even as he remained motionless. Miles felt his throat constrict, unable to articulate any further sentence as an unseen force breathed down his neck. It was a sensation he was familiar with during his hallucinations, but never to such a terrifying degree in the waking world. “That’s okay, Seagrave…”


    >> “I can do that for you.” The whispers dropped to a guttural whisper, coated with dark promise.


    “A… Are you deaf? Stupid?” Miles sputtered, pushing himself to shout yet failing, words stumbling out more as a result of raw panic than any genuine courage. “I’m not afraid of you. Don’t you dare think I—”


    Interrupting his lackluster diatribe, the stranger slowly raised his sunglasses, allowing their gazes to meet directly for the first time. Miles found himself unable to look away from his eyes, two windows into a pitch-black emptiness, devoid of any life or warmth.


    Yet deep within those dark pupils, a subtle, unavoidable madness swirled —a spiraling mass of both turbulence and tranquility that ensnared the artist despite his terror.


    The man’s lips kept their motions as their lines of sight intertwined, but at some point or another his words bypassed Miles’ ears to stream directly into his mind like a virulent toxin. It was no mere omen, no simple warning. It was a proclamation of impending demise, both for him and everything he could ever hold dear.


    Bending to some unseen force, the world around Miles began to shift and warp. The gallery itself seemed to throb sickeningly, pulsing in harmony with the thundering of his own heartbeat. Or was it only his head that was pounding?


    His vision blurred and distorted, reality’s edges melting like wax under an open fire. The floor beneath his feet lost all solidity, alternating between sinking into the unseen and floating weightlessly into the void. Any semblance of equilibrium was shattered, leaving Miles adrift in a sea of unfolding divinity.


    Through the haze of his fraying senses, the painter could still make out the figure of the stranger, standing like a calm eye in the center of a storm of chaos. The once-static sculptures around them writhed and undulated, originally lifeless flagella now pulsing with unrivaled vitality. And despite it all the intruder remained unchanged —as if this hellscape were as natural to him as breathing.


    Miles still didn’t know this man’s identity, yet it felt irrelevant. This was a being who needed no name, simply stepping out of the canvas of his subconscious to assault him directly. Creator and creation, tormentor and guide. An embodiment of terrors, the essence of delusions given flesh.


    Now presenting himself to sink Miles into a realm of insanity from which there was no return.


    “Miles! For God’s sake, answer me!”


    The stridency of Shelley’s voice abruptly snapped his world back into focus, anchored by the hand grasping his shoulder, shaking him firmly. The twisted visions that had consumed his mind mere seconds ago receded like a tide as the gallery stabilized, leaving him disoriented and shaken.


    “What happened to you?” His wife’s expression furrowed with concern as she searched his face, taking in his pale complexion and his narrow, trembling eyes. “Opening hour will be any minute from now…”


    >> “If you need—”


    Seeking any trace of the intruder, Miles’ gaze frantically darted around the rooms. Yet the gallery stood silent, no traces of his existence to ever be found, sculptures motionless sentinels to his private horror. The cold sweat clinging to his skin prickled beneath his clothes, a clammy reminder of the terror that had felt so viscerally real.


    Nausea crashed over him like waves against a storm-battered shore, his stomach roiling in protest as the full impact of the experience hit him. He had to clamp a hand over his mouth just to desperately fight back the urge to vomit right then and there.


    Without a word, he tore himself from Shelley and fled, nerves screaming to build some distance between himself and any lingering echo of that encounter —the where didn’t matter, as long as it was away from the art gallery.


    But that wouldn''t be enough to calm his fears. Not this time.


    Sanity corroded by paranoia or not, Miles refused to become an easy target for the man in glasses'' prophecies or threats. Even if he considered himself a subpar husband and a failure of a father, he still had the safety of his family to look after —a boy only four years old.


    If he had to run and hide, then so be it. Anything to eradicate the possibility of ever encountering the intruder again. He allowed other people to handle any scheduled exhibitions left, abandoned their home for a shelter of his own design, far away from the city.


    Every window of his new villa was to be reinforced, every door a barrier. Security systems hummed with constant vigilance under his underground safety room —every measurable available to him that didn’t involve the hiring of personnel, unable to trust anyone but himself for such a task.


    In the end, it was all useless.


    There was no way to fortify against the invasion that had already begun inside his own flesh, from which there was no hope for escape. No… Perhaps that monster had always been there, just biding its time to feed on his desperation.


    Yes, this was the point at which his decline began.


    After all, what good was a painter that could no longer paint?