Illustration by my friend Enger Pas.

Bend Reality
It's hot and it's dark in the electric train. Lights blink on and off, refusing to form a pattern. All the other seats are empty. For that, I am thankful. Another evening, another ride home. Ideas turn to concepts as my thought pulsates to the rhythm of metal wheels.

Tonight, I will bend reality. I know exactly what my next painting will be.

Art will claw its way to freedom through the tips of my brushes, growing in terrifying glory with every stroke I make.

I will paint a nightmare in watercolors.

#

My studio apartment doesn't look any better than how I left it. Hello laptop, my old friend. It's waiting patiently for me on the floor, surrounded by fastfood bags like an altar of gluttony and sin. But it's not the fastfood that worries me. It's my paintings. My art. Like always, I can feel them watching.

The eyes of the undead that I've painted for dozens of hours to get the colors just right focus on me as I walk around the studio, examining my work. The gargoyles stare at me with their stone eyes; the decapitated heads seem to have my name on their lips; murderous werewolves hold my reflection in bloodshot eyes.

Hello art, my old love.

Somebody sends a mail to my smartphone. It's a video from Delialah, my art agent. A couple of days ago she's made me five thousand dollars on a commission, so we're back on talking terms. I decide to watch the video on my laptop.

Delialah's office fills the screen. I can see my agent, a mobile in her hands as always, and my two clients, a pair in their early thirties, standing in front of a curtain on Delialah's wall.

Well ain't that nice of you, I think. She's decided to film my commission's unveiling. Delialah pulls the string and the curtain opens.

There it is: the Queen of Blades by Yours Truly. I savor their reaction like good burgundy wine. They're awed, impressed, they're speechless. This is one of the best works I've done to date.

Five thousand is a bargain, and they know it.

I look at my labor of passion. Barbed wires curl around the queen's naked body, drawing blood like a sadistic lover. Her breasts, her hips, the smile in her lips all whisper of dark, forbidden things.

She looks at me.

I blink. So does the queen. There is no mistake. She blinks again. Am I going mad? My clients jump back. Only Delialah stays by the painting. Her mobile falls to the floor. She takes a step closer.

A string of barbed wire shoots out from the canvas and bites into her wrists. She screams; the pair panics, everybody starts moving at once, barbed wires fly. I watch in shock. My mouth is open. All three of them are restrained, convulsing in steel bonds, little blades cutting at their skin, bit by bit. Delilah screams the loudest.

I turn the volume down.

Skin is separated from muscle, muscle is torn from bone. Blood splatters across the room, coating my canvas in red. But they are all still alive, very much alive. I feel my paintings watching me as I watch the unspeakable terror. Still alive.

The wires cut their victims open in all the wrong places, pulling out organs one by one through the holes. My body is shaking. Finally, it is over.

All that is left are three hearts atop piles of flesh that used to be the people I know.

The queen had retracted her razors. The painting is still. Delialah's phone blinks lights from the floor.

It wasn't her who sent me the video.

My paintings watch me. My thoughts are gone. Am I going mad? I know the answer to this question. I am sane. Only one thing matters through the shock: my next painting. A nightmare in watercolors.

I am not mad, I think, I am not mad.

I am not mad.

#

Wind breaks against my face, drying my lips to a desert, but I don't mind; the whiskey keeps me going. I adjust my baseball cap and walk on, sane in body and mind. I take a swing from the bottle. The burns on my hands still hurt, but I don't mind them either.

I reach the railroad. The ground is vibrating from the weight of hundreds of tons of steel that are fast on their way. I can hear the train now. I think of my last painting. A nightmare in watercolors. It was the hardest one to burn down.

The ambulance should be on its way. I take another swing of whiskey, get down on my knees, and stretch my arms across the rail.

Eyes closed.

Passion is hard to kill, I think.