The Ulter Hell

The artist named Sandor ruined my life. Every day since he left has been a slope to hell. I no longer took interest in anything, save for plotting my twisted revenge. I remember the first day I ever met him - I was a meek paparazzi girl with no real name to my tag, flashing pictures like the rest of them. Sandor walked a golden path, his beautiful eyes obscured by sunglasses. The enigmatic persona chilled me. I knew then and there that I wanted to see those eyes, to know their color. Coincidental confrontations allowed me to worm my way into his life. But Sandor turned out to be like every other millionaire. He was keeping concubines, a status which I was reduced to. Many of the other women were fine with their status, but I was certainly not. My jealousy destroyed the specious relationship, though I never lost sight of Sandor. In truth, I never came to know the eyes beneath the sunglasses. Sandor haunted me, marauding my dreams with possibilities of what could have been. A life in an ivory mansion, sulking in a lavender bedspread. My obsession never revealed itself until we split off, and I plotted a twisted revenge. How badly I wanted to reduce him to rubble, to put him lower than the pit in which he discarded his women. I was already dreaming of slanderous news articles, tarnishing Sandor’s reputation. But in the depths of my hateful mind, I came to realize that he could never experience my pain. Sandor was not your typical actor. He was not just a painter or a writer - he was a jack-of-all-trades when it came to the arts. He called his works ‘aesthetispheres’ - a conglomerate of paintings, writings, and plays that explored a theme far greater than a single work could contain. He composed the music, wrote the scripts, and derived everything from his own mind. Sandor cared little for fame and money. It was his pursuit of passion that motivated him. His career could be destroyed, and his reputation thrown in the trash, but he would never lose enjoyment in that passion. My revenge had to dig far deeper, to hit Sandor at his molten core. I wanted to destroy him from the inside out - I wanted to destroy that passion. I devised plans to burn his works, though I knew he kept backups of everything. I thought of poisoning part of his brain, so that he writhed in a vegetative state. I dreamed of tying him down and cutting off each limb, so that he may never paint, write, or walk ever again. Of course, each of these options would land me in prison for life. And I wasn’t willing to sacrifice my life for Sandor, not after so many women had. There had to be a perfect solution - and it presented itself when Sandor fired his agent, Charlie. Charlie felt similar resentment towards Sandor. He had been his agent for most of Sandor’s career, and was released because Sandor thought he ‘didn’t fit the aesthetic’ of his upcoming work. Deposed and forgotten, Charlie was bent on revenge. Just not in the insane way I was. I used my connections to arrange a secret meeting with him, where we would devise Sandor’s doom. He recognized me from first sight, and knew perfectly well what I sought to discuss. At first I feared that Charlie would only be after Sandor’s money - but he felt more betrayed than I had imagined. “Sandor’s lost his mind.” Charlie started. “He’s no longer cool and collected. He’s become withdrawn, a loner - ever since he started talking about his greatest aesthetisphere yet.” “Hasn’t he always been broody?” I reminded Charlie. But the look on his face told me that Sandor’s depression was of a different nature. Sandor tended to obsess over his work, and his newest piece was of a dark complexity. Sandor was known for his sullen, yet vibrant work, like a painting of a girl being absorbed by the galaxy. “Sandor’s lost interest in the more… congenial aspects of life.” Charlie muttered, with sleep deprivation in his eyes. “He’s become obsessed with horror, absorbing art and literature from the most nihilistic minds of our time. Whatever he’s working on is going to explore this to a far deeper extent than me and you can imagine. I mean, in truth, I just don’t think the man has it in him.” “These things always made him truly sad… something’s changed in him.” I said condescendingly. “Yea, but listen!” Charlie held revelation on the tip of his tongue. “He’s fully committed to this. It’s like he’s throwing out his entire life to begin this new piece. When he fired me, he looked like he hadn’t slept in days. The luxurious villa, the one you used to stay at with him, he donated it! That entire beautiful estate… and he didn’t even keep a penny from it. Now, he’s taken up residence in some massive château. The old, abandoned mansion that used to belong to one of those nihilistic artists I mentioned…” Charlie swallowed. He exhaled hurt, and betrayal. “You seem worried for him.” I confessed. “You’re aware that we’re here to discuss his downfall, yes?” “Yes, of course.” Charlie wiped sweat from his head. “It’s just, I think the man’s creating his own demise. He was always such a sensitive soul, now he’s living in some dark, dank mansion in the middle of the woods! I mean, how’s he gonna sleep at night? He’s afraid of ghosts!” Ghosts, dark mansion - a perfect idea formed in my head. “Charlie, how big is this mansion? How dark are we talking?” “Oh, it’s the worst! Big as the president’s place - it was actually a preserved historical site, but Sandor used his influence to take it for himself. And it’s completely isolated. There’s not a single street that leads to the mansion. You have to walk a backwoods trail for twenty minutes just to get a glimpse of it.” Charlie showed me a picture of the mansion on his phone. The home was lined with dark, rotting wood, beset by a shadowed pine forest. And he had not been lying - it was the biggest house I had ever seen. Smiling slowly, I licked my lips with sadism. Sandor had always been afraid of ghosts, demons, and the undead. Not to mention his fear of true, lightless dark. I remember how he shivered under the blankets, worrying that some apparition was watching him from the closet. The plan was perfect in my head now - and Charlie had already served his part. I stood up abruptly, and stuck out my hand. “Oh, are we done?” Charlie asked with surprise. “Yea, thanks for the information. I’ll let you know if I think of something…” But indeed, the idea had already culminated. Once, I had interviewed a famous makeup artist, particularly known for her macabre imagination. She had transfigured many of the villains in Sandor’s films, able to make a kind old gentleman look like a fetid zombie. She was renowned across the world, and I still had her contact information. I arranged an appointment, providing her with as little information as possible. Upon meeting, I gave her vague instructions: “I need to look dead, drowned, utterly phantasmic. I’ll let you take full creative control, as you do it better than anyone, but know this - when you are done, you should truly ask yourself whether the woman before you is a blighted ghoul, or a drowned victim of the underworld.” The makeup artist set out to work. After hours, she turned me around to face a mirror. My once red hair was now jet black. My luscious curls had become ragged wisps, flinging in each direction. The best effect was my darkened eyes, sunken and malevolent. She applied contact lenses turning the pupils dull and grey, like a muddy lake. Wrinkles beset my cheeks and lips, turning my face gaunt. She did her best to make me look emaciated. The result was truly perfect - I looked like a malicious poltergeist, a banshee. All that was left was to find the location of the mansion. Charlie’s hint that this place was a preserved site had made it all too easy. The mansion was called ‘The Ulter Hell.’. Once owned by the famous writer Garrett Cull, the mansion had been abandoned for over fifty years. The address was still posted plainly online. I noticed that there had been no news in regards to Sandor’s relocation. The move had been kept secret. Apparently, the Ulter Hell had been popular among paranormal hunters and delinquents alike. Surely, Sandor would have some security measures in place to prevent trespassing. Then again, perhaps he would consider unwelcome guests part of the authentic experience. Soon enough, he would have one more guest - one who sought to drive him mad. My bag was packed lightly, containing only the bare hygiene essentials. I had no clue how long I would end up squatting in the Ulter Hell, but I knew food would not be an issue. When Sandor didn’t occupy the kitchen, I would pilfer his supply. If he noticed that some steak had gone missing, that would just contribute to the haunting scenario. The Ulter Hell was large enough for ten families to live within, and never see each other. If I desired, I could stalk Sandor from within his own walls for the rest of my life. The taxi drove me to a desolate road. “Ma’am, are you certain this is where you want me to drop you? There’s nothing here.” The driver looked back at me dubiously, as we parked along the side of the wilderness. “And why are you dressed up like that? Halloween was last month.” Grabbing the driver’s hand, I slipped two hundred dollars into his palm, closing his fingers around it. “Yes, this is exactly where I want to be dropped off. And yes, I’m aware that Halloween was last month. Now you take that gift there, and be sure you never tell anyone that you saw me.” I stepped out of the car - as soon as my two feet hit the grass, the cab screeched outward, disappearing into the mist with frantic speed. The path to The Ulter Hell was overgrown. Upon discovering a shrouded dirt trail, I embarked with a grin. Dark clouds blanketed the sky overhead, leaving the woods rather dark for noon. Among the choir of crows, a singular owl echoed a harrowing screech. The pine forest was scenic. Each tree was evergreen; dark yet beautiful. In my recent years of depression, I had come to appreciate such scenery. Apparently, Sandor had as well. After walking for thirty minutes, the mansion appeared in the distance. It sat amid a large clearing, a circle all too perfect for those malefic woods. I crouched behind a tree, scanning the area for signs of security, and Sandor himself. But the Ulter Hell looked as abandoned as it had in Charlie’s pictures. There were no cameras, and no vehicles to indicate that a human inhabited the château. Some of the windows had been smashed. Graffiti tattooed portions of the rotting wood. I wondered if Charlie had deceived me, setting me on a wild goose chase. Nobody could be believed to live in that haunt - not a single light shone from within. Still, I thought of Sandor, and the kind of man he was. This was reason enough to believe the contrary - to inhabit this death-trap for the sake of art, was not out of bounds for Sandor. Quite the contrary. A window on the ground floor lay shattered, granting me my portal. After sprinting through muddy grass, I lifted myself through the window semi-silently. The goal was to remain quiet, but loud enough to arouse Sandor’s anxiety. I landed atop a dusty piano in a den. Papers were flung in every direction, scattered across the floor and the red velvet couch. The room smelled like noxious must and decay. Crouching behind the couch, I listened for any sign of Sandor. The Ulter Hell hummed with white noise. Not the soothing ambience that people sleep to, but an unsettling, ambiguous whine. As if the mansion was saying hello, acknowledging a new presence. Depositing my bag and sneakers behind the couch, I wandered to the nearest room - a foyer. My tattered banshee robes fluttered atop a draft as I admired the spaciousness. Staircases lined the left and right sides, with paintings above the handrails. These paintings were strange - each one depicted an aristocrat from an old, colonial era. But there was something uncanny about the expressions on their faces. Each person was grimacing, wincing as if my intrusion disgusted them. Shrugging off the oddities, I realized that this foyer was one of many. The Ulter Hell was a maze in itself - I wished for a map of the labyrinth. Walking heel to toe, I wandered through the halls of the second floor. I affected my gait to resemble a lost girl. Like a lobotomy patient wandering lost through the insane asylum. If Sandor were to come across me, there would be no mistake - I was a visage from his past, returning to haunt him. As day passed into night, my search became frustrating. Finding this quiet artist was like looking for a corpse in a dump. As I entered one side of the mansion, Sandor could be transferring to the other end. How hilarious it would have been, if I had never seen him once during my stay. But as I came across a study, I found my first real evidence that a brooding intellectual was inhabiting those walls. The study was lined with bookshelves, with an uncomfortably low ceiling. Like a firefly in a bottle, the fireplace was still smoldering. How incautious Sandor was, not caring if the mansion burned to the ground. Just how low in his esteem had the artist become? Lying open on the desk, was a handwritten journal by Garrett Cull, titled ‘The End of This Eternal Midnight’ . The yellowed pages were freshly annotated, likely by Sandor himself. ‘Cull detailing the mystery of his own disappearance?’ Sandor wrote next to a passage detailing Cull’s isolation and disgust for humanity. Peering between the lines, I sat in the cushioned chair and flipped through the immediate pages. The journal was a confession from Cull, stating that he had been dead in the eyes of the public. His body was never found. Myths entailed that Cull had died in his own mansion. His home swallowed his corpse, as if it were a living beast. Cull had clearly intended for someone to find and read the journal, long after his disappearance. The floor creaked softly nearby. My body shivered with anticipation, and an insidious fear. The approaching foot falls could have been Sandor, Cull, or something infernal. As my mind ran sprints, I closed the book. Sandor would notice that it was not opened to the same page. I hesitated to open it back up, realizing that this would instill paranormal unease. If it were indeed Sandor who approached, I wanted to toy with him before revealing myself. So I crouched underneath the desk, hiding from whatever presence entered the study. A presence entered the room. With light feet, it walked to the desk before pausing. Silence ensued for minutes, until I finally heard that sweet voice. “Batsheva?” It was his voice, Sandor’s voice. Or, it was something impersonating him. The call was soft and compassionate - but Batsheva was not my name. Likely, it was the name of some other woman he had discarded. This enraged me, and I wanted to leap from my hiding spot and strangle him. Skin brushed against the leather cover of Cull’s journal. Sandor moaned with ghastly undulance; an intimate moan. I shivered upon hearing such a noise. Then, as quietly as he had come, Sandor walked from the room. I had no intention of losing his trail. To my advantage, the hallway was pitch dark. From a distance, I followed that man. It was still too dark to tell, but I swore it was Sandor. The shape of his body was there, but everything else was not, as if he had been possessed. At every moment, I prepared for him to turn around and see me. I would stand still, not moving a muscle, letting him know that someone was here. That someone was watching him. And he would come to know it was not this ‘Batsheva’. I stepped harder, causing the floor to creak. Sandor stopped, without turning his head. As if he knew he was being followed, but was too afraid to confirm it. He emitted a familiar moan. “Batsheva?” He whispered. Again, I trembled with rage, as Sandor stood needlessly quiet for minutes. Then, like a machine jolting back to life, he continued his stride. Sandor flicked on the light of a massive dining room. I peered at him from the dark hall, watching every move. Finally, I could see him. It was actually him, the artist Sandor. How long it had been since I saw those eyes. How much I had not realized I needed that man. But his appearance was disheveled. Once upon a time, there had been an artist clad in jewelry and fine clothing. This misanthrope wearing a tattered night gown was not that man. His hair was as frizzy as my banshee hair, hanging down to his shoulders. A thick beard covered his neck, and he was awfully pale. Upon seeing him for the first time in years, I felt sympathy for his troubles. Instinctively I wanted to drop everything - run to his arms, apologize for my insolence, and beg him to take me back. But I bit my tongue and held firm. These were weak, irrational thoughts. They were exactly what Sandor would want me to think. Pensively, Sandor walked to the stove and poured cold tea into a dirty glass. He took a small sip before placing the glass down, and walking to the dining table. Before him was an open journal, beset by a quill and inkpot. Sandor sat before this journal without writing in it or even looking at it. He just stared forwards, unblinking. This ensued for at least five minutes, before with sudden rigor, he obtained the quill and dropped his face to the journal. With speed and adrenaline, Sandor wrote furiously in the journal. I could see the veins in his hand pulse as he gripped the quill. He moaned and groaned as he wrote, panting and whimpering, becoming louder and louder as his nose nearly touched the pages. The whimpers became querulous, bordering screams of shrill anxiety. I stepped backwards, once again causing the floor to creak. Sandor jerked his head upward, dropping the quill. “Batsheva?!” he yelled with a nervous voice. I stood as still as ice, barely glimpsing half of Sandor’s face. He jerked upward from his seat. His knee banged against the dining table, knocking the inkpot over and blotting his own work. Like lightning, Sandor darted from the dining room down a dark hallway opposite me. “Damn!” I said to myself, not wanting to lose sight of him. Still, I did not want to run. My plans required pernicious patience to erode his mind. If I had to lose sight of him a few times, so be it. I would search the ends of the earth for him, just to make him feel as I once had. The open journal left me curious, and I could not resist a peek. Much of the current page had been covered by ink, and it had seeped through a portion of the journal. Obtaining the first page, I read Sandor’s current work, his first contribution to the aesthetisphere. Skimming through the first chapter, I read a detailed backstory of a young woman named Batsheva. She was a demure romantic, always seeking love at every corner of her life. I stuck my tongue out at the pages, unwilling to read more of this woman’s tragic origin. I flipped to the most recent chapter, much of which had been lost to the ink. What I was able to read was grotesque in detail. The chapter entailed Batsheva’s death and torture at the hands of a deranged captor. The characteristics of this captor were redolent of Sandor himself. It was his most profane writing yet. He wrote of dismembering her body, performing experiments on her bowels, and unspeakable acts committed on her remains. The journal trembled in my hand as I realized what Sandor had become. I closed the journal, standing up and entering the hallway Sandor had disappeared into. The hall was long and dark, diverging into many other paths and rooms. I began to fear I would never find the man; until I literally almost ran into him. He stood like a statue, staring into a lightless room. My body was close to his now, and he must have detected my physical presence. Sandor was in a trance however, staring ahead of him, glimpsing the void. Absently, he wandered into this room, flicking the light switch. As soon as luminance gave way, Sandor moaned and whimpered, verging on panic. Soon, I would come to know what had instilled such agony in the man. As he whispered to himself, Sandor walked out of the room. He repeated incantations, such as “There, I did it…” and “They aren’t here, they aren’t there…”, before he merged back into the shadows of the hallway. Unable to resist, I peered into the room. The light had been left on, making it the only real room atop a realm of pure shadow. As I walked in, I glimpsed canvases scattered throughout the room. There must have been about twenty. Some of them were on easels, some were on the wall, and some lay scattered on the floor. Each contained a brutal painting of a human under extreme torture. They all covered a different topic of subjectivity, but no stone was left unturned. The colors of each painting were old and dull, with one exception - the reds were far too bright, almost crimson. As if fresh blood had been used to create the images. The paintings induced nausea from their graphic detail. It was too much, even for my dark mind. Covering my mouth, I retreated from the room, kneeling outside the door. I wanted to forget that I had ever seen those things, to forget that room existed. But they lay right behind me, staring at the back of my head. At this point, I no longer knew if my ordeal was worth it. I thought of calling off the operation, retrieving my belongings, and retreating from The Ulter Hell. The whole experience would be chalked up as one crazy night. A distant scream ruptured my train of thought. Sandor wailed with pain and regret down the hall. With shaky knees, I stood up and walked towards the source. I felt that my actions were no longer my own, that I had committed to a course of events that was irreversible. Thunder boomed throughout the mansion. The sound was internal, suppressed, as if one of the dark rooms contained a storm. Flashes of lightning briefly illuminated the dark hall for split seconds at a time - but there were no windows. During each flash, my mind hallucinated, showing me more deranged paintings of bloodied victims. An angry man with an axe in his skull glowered at me from a canvas. Blood dripped down his scarlet beard. There was a statue which looked too real, a human impaled by a pike. I began to run, ignoring the visions of pig heads and floating brains. I ended up in a larger foyer, beset by massive double doors. From behind the doors came whispers, like a chorus of spirits in congregation. Peering through the doors, I observed a bedroom, dimly phosphorescent from forces unknown. The bedroom was massive and opulent. At the center was a canopy covering the bed, far wider than anyone would ever need. I thought that Sandor would lay in the bed, chatting to himself, convulsing over his own depraved thoughts. But from the corner of the bedroom, I saw him crouched into a ball. He rocked back and forth, muttering incessantly, and clutching his head. It was not hard to pity the man. How far he had fallen from the confident persona he once displayed. What I came to do had perhaps taken place already. Sandor had already gone insane. He did not enjoy creating the aesthetisphere; he was a victim of it. What the remainder of his work entailed, I did not care to know. The reasonable thing to do would have been to leave at that moment. I had gotten what I came for: a glimpse of Sandor suffering from his own delusions. That alone should have satisfied me - had my perverse nature not usurped my will. Sandor had abandoned me. He had left me alone. How badly I sought to kick him while he was down. Just once, I would reveal myself to him. I would show myself to be a haunter from his past, and truly push him over the edge. “Sssssandor….” I whispered in a low, hissing tone. “Ssssandooooor….” He stopped shaking and rocking. Releasing his head from his own clutches, he grew unnaturally still. Then, the longest moan of all came forth, slow and painful. “Ooooooooooohaaeeeeeeeeeehhhhhh….” I winced at the guttural exhalation - the cries of a dying man. “Sandor…” I continued uncomfortably. “Do you remember me?” Like a possessed puppet, Sandor turned his head to face me. His eyes were wide, and his lips were curved downward. “I have come back Sandoooor…. I’ve come back to haunt you….” “Eheh,” Sandor giggled nervously. His expression contorted, and his body quaked with each laugh. My brow furled in exasperation. He had no right to laugh - he was supposed to be vulnerable and worthless. Approaching Sandor, I knelt down before him, ensuring he could see my pale face and malicious eyes. “You remember me, don’t you?” I asked, almost desperate. “Go on Sandor… say my name…” Sandor uttered a mix of nervous laughter and whimpers. “So… so then it’s you… it’s real…” “Yes, say my name…” I demanded bitterly. “It’s you… Batsheva…” “No!” I yelled. I dug my fingernails into his knee, baring my fangs at him. “Look at me, say my name! Tell me you remember me, after all you had done to me! Say it!” But instead, Sandor began to rock again. He ignored the spikes penetrating his knee, as if he felt no pain at all. “It’s true… it’s real… it happened…” Sandor repeated similar phrases over and over. He had forgotten me. With my face this close to his, he should have recognized me, even through the makeup. All the years we spent together, and he had forgotten my face. I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to kill him. My premature satisfaction was not nearly enough anymore. Sandor gripped my hand. His skin was cold, and clammy with sweat. His lips dropped into a stuporous gape as he rose to his feet. Like a mummy, he wandered off aimlessly again. Through my agony, I knew that Sandor was not in that skull. For my sake, he must not have been. This was a brainless cadaver, lost in eternal limbo. “Yes, yes, it’s real…” Sandor mumbled, staggering like a drunkard. I stood up and followed him, digging into my palms with my own fingernails. I felt just as shattered as Sandor. My emotions vied for dominance in a hurricane of instability. My heart could not settle on complacency, nor hatred, nor sorrow. I could only follow along, while I debated internally on abandonment or murder. But a deeper desire clawed to the surface; The Ulter Hell was a dungeon containing malicious secrets. I needed to know what had tainted the artist’s soul. Sandor’s silhouette was swallowed by the hallway. I followed the only sound I could: his wicked laughter. Thunder continued to boom through the mansion. In the brief flashes of lightning, I no longer witnessed the same halls. The wooden floors had become red and wet, as if it was made of human flesh. A waking nightmare flooded my mind, as I crossed an unknown threshold of shadow. It was like being swallowed by a black hole, and suddenly I knew I was not in the same mansion anymore. I would like to think that I descended into a basement, or climbed into an attic - but I felt that I was still walking on level ground. A walkway made of obsidian and flesh. Along the hall, I heard more moans and whimpers. Not of Sandor, but of many suffering souls. Sandor’s laughter morphed into mixed wails of amusement and agony. I ran my trembling hand across the closest wall, feeling bumps and bars. Metal bars, like prison cells lined the walls. A finger reached out to touch mine. I could feel the corrugated flesh pressed against my palm. Jerking my hand back, my heart palpitated in my chest. This was a place of perfect darkness, where vision was impossible. I had provided myself with no means of lighting the way. I no longer knew which way was forward, backward, left or right. Sandor’s voice emerged from every direction at once. The halls were closing in on me, growing tighter, trapping me like vermin. Some of the prisoner’s cries resembled humans, and some resembled animalistic hybrids. A flash of lightning showed me sharp fangs behind rusted metal masks. The flesh had been torn from their cheeks and foreheads. The eyes had been replaced by barbed wire and metal straps. I wanted to scream, but I felt like someone was breathing down my neck, waiting for me to make a sudden movement. Behind me, I pictured Sandor, with artistic lust burning in his eyes. A spotlight illuminated a stage before me. As my eyes averted themselves from the flesh caged humans, I noticed that I was no longer closed between prison cells. Unsettlingly, I could not see any walls whatsoever. I was floating in a sphere of oblivion, with no floor, and no roof. There was only the wooden stage before me, hovering without regard for physics. On the stage were the exoskeletons of humans. Their eyes were intact, containing vibrant blues, greens, and browns - real, human eyes. They squirmed, writhing in agony, attempting to extricate themselves from barbed wire constrictions. Each one looked at me, bare of skin. Those watery eyes were the last remnant of their individuality. The Ulter Hell provided me with no escape, for I could not discern where reality began, where it ended, and whether I stood upon physical ground. Walking away from the stage, I felt I may fall off a ledge, sinking endlessly as the stage shrunk before me. Sandor’s laughter had disappeared, leaving only inane mumbles to serve as ambience. Each whisper ruptured my eardrums, like a gunshot in a submarine. I surmised that I may die within the Ulter Hell, seeing no way that a sane human could withstand these horrors. One image drove my consciousness - Sandor himself. He was the only idea conceivable, the only waypoint on a paperless map. Walking endlessly into the void, I began to weep. Part of me had felt that I deserved this fate. Sandor had killed me from the day he used me like a piece of silverware, and threw me in the trash after he was done eating. I had spent my life in rumination since then, plotting a revenge which would serve me no salvation. I only wished that I could have lived a life apart from Sandor, a life where I created my own art. My own purpose. Gaseous miasma swirled around me, like a vortex of storm clouds. I held my head down, my neck craning like a hag, as my skin decayed with the whole of reality. Thump. My forehead banged into a hard wooden door. I felt the door knob, and the bars covering a small opening at the top of the door. It was a medieval furnishing, one that led to forgotten pits and executioner’s chambers. Behind those bars was a faint red glow, flickering and flaming. I turned the rusted knob slowly, pulling the heavy door open with a slow, agonizing creak. Before me was a hallway lined with stone and torches. The flames were unnaturally red, stolen from the very depths of hell. Bubbles popped loudly as I traversed the path, and the heat grew unbearable. Smears of blood ran across the stone, and piano music chimed softly from a chamber ahead. The melody was unspeakably sad, with soft notes that chimed at disparate intervals. Sandor sat at his piano on a stone bridge amid the chamber. Alongside the bridge was a moat of bubbling lava, crimson in hue. I was drawn to the piano like a bird to the flock, the melody luring my steps. It occurred to me that Sandor’s fate was out of my hands. The environment dictated death - once again Sandor would have his way with me, even if it were no longer his soul that composed the chorus. Sandor leaned backwards, his neck and back arching over his seat, while his fingers continued to press the piano keys. “You lied…” He quivered. “You are not my Batsheva…” His hair was ragged, his scalp rife with bald patches. His bed robe was tattered now, exposing the ribs beneath. Fascinated, I viewed the painting in front of the piano. Words could not describe the portrait, for language would defeat its purpose. With bright reds and opal black, the painted woman floated between heaven and hell. I had read the story of Batsheva, and I knew that this painting was her. I moaned before the ornate frame, floating in the air. It was large enough to cage a monster - the greatest achievement of mankind, as well as its apocalypse. “Sandor…” I muttered. “Why? Why would you create something like this?” Batsheva glowered at me from the portrait. The painting was an entire world, like looking through an interdimensional portal. “Why would you paint something like this? Why would you do this to the world, to the human mind?” Sandor played the piano faster, controlling the pace of time. “You don’t know what it was like to be me. You don’t know what I have done to myself. My art has destroyed me. I have explored every corner of life and meaning through literature, music, and pastel. I’ve seen the highest elevations of heaven, but not the lowest depths of hell. The true artist must explore the universe from each perspective - he is not limited to his planet and its worldly meanings.” Behind me, a man wrapped his arms under my shoulders, constraining me. My struggle was futile, as he possessed the strength of the undead. When I turned my head, I breathed in his rotting odor. He was ancient, as old as a vampire, with grey hair and skin that contoured perfectly to the shape of bone. As Sandor looked at this man, they nodded at each other. An agreement between old friends. Lifting himself from the piano bench, Sandor produced a knife from his waist. He approached me viciously, clutching the handle, fondling the blade. Pressing my body against the man behind me, I squirmed. “No…” I begged. “No!” Sandor dug the blade into my stomach, quickly drawing it from my body. It entered with the anger of a depressed man seeking meaning. It exited with the pain of one who realized the world was null. The sharp blade ruptured my organs, driving a shot of adrenaline into my skull. As my eyes turned downward, and my knees grew weak, Sandor walked towards the painting of Batsheva. My head grew dizzy, and the world spun on a swivel. Sandor delicately obtained a paint brush, and dabbed it on the blade of the knife. Using a ladder, he rose up to Batsheva’s eyes, which were hollow. But with the scarlet pigment of my blood, Sandor brought life to those sockets. He gifted Batsheva with menacing pupils, flaming red, and filled with contempt for humanity. My bodily functions ceased as I took in the completed masterpiece. What I saw next was a vision granted by the thin line of death. The center of the painting protruded outward. Something lay beneath the surface of the canvas, rising up at its center, seeking to break free from its prison. Sandor stepped down from his ladder, looking wildly between me and the painting. For the last time, he uttered that horrible moan. It was filled with the fears of a man who was about to witness the destruction of many lives. Sandor hung in a void between satisfaction and regret. Before him stood a miracle carrying irreversible consequences. In my grips of death, I almost understood Sandor’s dreams. His depravity. As the ego perished, I could finally see the world as Sandor did. The painting of Batsheva was truly a masterpiece, but it was not meant for the minds of warm humans. To truly comprehend it, one would have to have a fatal wound. One would have to taste their own blood. The piano music spiraled out of control, despite no active orchestration of the instrument. The bump from Batsheva’s stomach grew larger, until a clawed hand burst through the painting. The gargoyle hand was followed by a long, grey arm, giving way to that face - the malicious face of Batsheva. My captor dropped me in my own pool of blood. Even though my body died, my brain could still witness the apocalypse before me. The massive form of Batsheva stretched its way into our world, extricating herself from the painting. Sandor, and the mysterious man held their arms outward. Embracing her, their moans rose to a crescendo as the rest of her nude body exited the portal, followed by gangly legs, and feet with jagged claws.