Raw Sienna

RAW SIENNA

The blindfold was not a theatrical gimmick; it was a boundary.

Alexander worked only after midnight, sitting on the cold hardwood in the center of his living room, a strip of heavy black silk knotted tight across his eyes. He relied entirely on the rustle of bristled brushes, the wet, iron stench of oil paint, and the erratic, twitching impulse in his wrist. He didn't guide his hand. He let his hand drag him across the canvas.

When he untied the silk at dawn, the results were always the same.

Dozens of canvases, stacked against the baseboards, propped against the unlit radiator, lining the perimeter of his open-concept apartment, stared back at him. They were executed strictly in thick, violent gouges of crimson and bone-black. Every single frame bore the likeness of the same young woman. Her collarbones were sharp as paring knives, her mouth held in a perpetually stifled gasp of raw terror.

But her eyes were never finished. Where her gaze should have been, Alexander’s blind hand had dragged a heavy, smudged streak of black glaze, obliterating the sockets into hollow, bruised voids.

He had been producing her for three months, ever since he returned from a month-long retreat in the mountains. He had no memory of her face prior to those blind sessions. She was simply a recurring, obsessive phantom, born out of the dark behind his eyelids.

At 4:00 PM on a muted Tuesday, the heavy iron elevator at the end of the hall groaned to a halt. Alexander peeled back his window blind just enough to see a moving crew hauling a solitary, threadbare sofa into Apartment 4B, the unit directly across from his own.

Driven by an awkward urge to establish normalcy, Alexander retrieved a small wooden tray from his pantry. He arranged a couple of scented pillar candles and a box of bakery sweets, wiped his paint-stained knuckles on his jeans, and stepped into the dim hallway.

He knocked twice.

The heavy oak door swung open instantly, without the sound of approaching footsteps.

"Oh! Hi, hello," Alexander stammered, stepping back instinctively.

The girl standing in the doorframe was slight, wearing a washed-out linen dress that hung loosely off her shoulders. Her dark hair was pinned up haphazardly, exposing a pale, slender neck.

Alexander’s tongue felt suddenly like lead. His knees went hollow.

It was her.

The jawline, the delicate structure of the nose, the specific, fragile slope of the collarbones, it was the girl from the red-and-black canvases. The only difference was her expression: where the painted girls screamed in silence, this girl stood entirely rigid, her mouth curled into a wide, impossibly static smile that didn't reach her pale, glossy eyes.

"I, I live in 4A," Alexander forced out, his palm sweating against the wooden tray. A cold bead of perspiration rolled down the back of his neck. "Just... wanted to say welcome. I brought sweets. And some candles. In case... you know, the building's wiring is old."

The girl didn't reach for the tray. She didn't blink. Her smile remained locked, stretching her cheeks so tight the skin around her jaw looked translucent.

"Candles," she said. Her voice was flat, devoid of cadence, like an audio recording played slightly below speed. "How thoughtful."

"Yeah. Sure," Alexander gasped, his heart hammering against his ribs. The sheer wrongness of her demeanor made his skin prickle, but panic overrode his caution. If she ever steps into my apartment, he thought frantically, if she sees forty portraits of her face covered in red paint, she’ll call the police. She’ll think I’m a stalker.

"I should... I should explain something," he blurted out, the words tumbling over each other in a desperate, jittery rush. "I'm an artist. A painter! I work in the dark mostly, from my head, purely abstract imagination, really! And, well, it’s the strangest thing, but I’ve been working on a series lately... a woman's portrait. And you, it's a complete coincidence, I swear on my life, you look almost exactly like the figure in my sketches! Isn't that wild? A total statistical anomaly! I just didn't want you to think I was... I mean, if you ever see my studio space through the crack of the door, I'm not a creep, it's just..."

He trailed off, panting softly. He was over-explaining, digging himself deeper into a hole of frantic paranoia.

The girl slowly tilted her head to the left, a jerky, unnatural movement, like a bird adjusting its sightline. Her smile did not slip by a fraction of a millimeter.

"A coincidence," she repeated softly.

"Right! Exactly. A coincidence," Alexander laughed, a dry, cracking sound. "Anyway! Welcome to the floor, Arawell."

The name slipped out before he could catch himself. He froze. Why did I say Arawell? Who told me that name?

The girl’s eyes widened slightly, the dark pupils glistening under the harsh corridor fluorescent light. She didn't confirm or deny the name. She simply reached out with long, icy fingers, took the wooden tray from his hands, and slowly backed into her apartment.

The door clicked shut, leaving him alone in the drafty hall.

That night, Alexander could not paint.

He sat on his bed, the black silk blindfold lying discarded on his rug like a dead snake. The air in his apartment felt heavy, suffocatingly dense, smelling faintly of wet river mud and turpentine.

He managed to fall into a fitful slumber around 1:00 AM, tossing beneath thin sheets.

At 3:00 AM sharp, Alexander bolted upright.

A cold sweat soaked his shirt. His chest heaved as if he had just resurfaced from deep water. The room was bathed in the sickly grey glow of the city lights filtering through the blinds.

Someone is standing over me.

The thought was absolute, violent, and undeniable.

Alexander spun his legs out of bed, scanning the dark room. Nothing. The dozens of canvases lined along the perimeter were all still shrouded under their protective white canvas drop-cloths, pale, angular ghosts resting against the walls.

His throat was parched, burning with dryness. He reached for the glass of water on his nightstand, but his fingers brushed against dry glass. It was empty.

Swallowing hard, he stood up and walked toward the open kitchen alcove. His apartment was an open floor plan; his bed sat directly in the center of the living room, facing the wall of covered paintings, while the kitchen sat behind it.

He poured a glass of tap water, his hand shaking so violently the glass clinked rhythmically against the pitcher. He leaned back against the kitchen counter, turned around, and took a long sip.

The glass slipped from his fingers. It shattered on the linoleum, splashing cold water across his bare feet.

The white drop-cloths were gone.

All forty canvases sat fully exposed in the moonlight. And they were no longer smudged.

Where the black, ruined glazes had once hidden the eyes of the painted girls, pair after pair of wet, milky-white eyes now peered out from the canvas. Every single painting was looking directly at him. As he shifted his weight, the painted pupils tracked his movement, swiveling in unison within their acrylic sockets.

"No, no, no," Alexander whimpered, pressing his spine hard against the kitchen cabinets. He rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands until he saw red sparks, pressing until it hurt. "It's a dream. Wake up. Wake up, Alexander, wake up."

He dropped his hands.

The paintings were no longer static.

The red paint on the nearest canvas was bubbling, liquefying, running down the cloth in thick, dark ribbons. The figure in the central canvas began to lean forward, the dried paint stretched and groaned like tearing leather as a three-dimensional head began pushing its way out of the flat surface, stretching the canvas material like wet skin.

Suddenly, with a wet, sickening SNAP, the painted faces deformed.

A jagged, diagonal tear opened across the girl's face, from her left forehead down through the bridge of her nose to her right ear. Her jaw unhinged with a wet crunch, tearing her mouth into a gaping, bloody void. Her neck burst open along the jugular, crimson paint spraying silently across the floorboards.

The entity stepped out of the frame, its feet hitting the hardwood with a hollow thud.

Alexander let out a strangled, blood-curdling shriek. He scrambled backward, his heel catching the lower edge of the kitchen cabinet. His head cracked violently against the edge of the granite countertop, and the world dissolved into blackness.

Alexander awoke with a gasp, sunlight burning his retinas.

He pulled himself up from the kitchen floor, groaning as a dull, throbbing pain radiated from the back of his skull. He looked at the clock on the microwave: 2:14 PM.

Panicked, he rounded the corner into the living room.

The canvases were neatly aligned against the walls, every single one covered beneath its clean, white drop-cloth.

With trembling hands, Alexander rushed forward and yanked the sheets off the three closest frames. The paint was dry. The eyes were smudged over in thick, messy black glaze, exactly as he had left them days ago. No tears, no blood, no grotesque wounds.

He collapsed against the wall, clutching his chest, his breathing ragged.

"A nightmare," he whispered to the empty room, letting out a breathless, half-hysterical laugh. "Just a fever dream. A stress hallucination."

He stumbled to the bathroom, splashed freezing water over his face, wiped his eyes, and decided he needed to see a human face, someone real, grounded, and alive. He needed to apologize to the new girl for his bizarre behavior yesterday.

Alexander unbolted his front door and stepped into the hallway. He walked across to 4B and knocked.

Silence. He waited a minute, knocked again, harder this time, but heard no movement inside. Assuming she was out doing errands, he turned to head back to his unit.

The heavy fire-exit door at the end of the hall swung open, and an elderly man carrying a bag of groceries stepped into the corridor. It was Mr. Willington, the retired librarian from 4F.

"Alexander?" the old man asked, squinting through thick bifocals. "You look like you've seen a ghost, son. You're pale as salt."

"Mr. Willington," Alexander said, forcing a faint, polite smile as he stepped toward him. "No, I'm... I'm okay. Just had a rough night’s sleep. Hey, have you seen the new neighbor today? The girl who moved into 4B?"

Mr. Willington stopped dead in his tracks. The grocery bag in his arms crinkled loudly as his grip tightened. He looked at Alexander, then slowly shifted his gaze to the pristine door of 4B, then back to Alexander.

"What did you just say?" Mr. Willington's voice lost its usual warm tone.

"The girl in 4B," Alexander said, a faint knot of dread forming in his stomach. "She moved in yesterday. I brought her some sweets. I was just seeing if she was home."

"Alexander... nobody lives in 4B," Mr. Willington said quietly, his brow furrowed in deep concern. "That apartment has been sealed by the city manager for three months."

The hallway seemed to tilt. The ambient noise of the building, the hum of the refrigerator, the distant city traffic, vanished into a high-pitched ringing.

"What do you mean?" Alexander breathed. "No, I talked to her! She took the tray! She was right there..."

"Three months ago," Mr. Willington interrupted sternly, his tone laced with a mixture of pity and discomfort, "a young woman named Arawell was murdered in that apartment. It was horrific. Her boyfriend, some unstable painter, mutilated her. Slit her face forehead-to-ear, ripped her jaw. The police said he killed her because she 'wasn't a good enough muse' for his work. It was all over the news. Where were you?"

Alexander’s blood ran ice-cold.

Three months ago. He had been away on his retreat. He hadn't watched the news. He hadn't checked the local papers. He had just come back and started painting in the dark.

"I..." Alexander’s jaw worked, but no sound came out. "I didn't... I was away..."

"Are you taking your meds, son?" Mr. Willington asked cautiously, taking a subtle step backward toward his own door. "You're talking nonsense. You look sick."

"I... excuse me," Alexander croaked.

He didn't walk back to his apartment; he backed away, staring at Mr. Willington with wide, unblinking eyes. He reached his front door, fumbled blindly with the handle, burst inside, and slammed it shut, throwing all three deadbolts into place.

He stood in his entryway, his heart hammering a frantic, erratic rhythm against his ribs.

Slowly, against his own will, Alexander turned his head toward the living room.

The drop-cloths had fallen from the canvases.

All forty paintings were bare. The girl in every single frame was no longer smudged. She was looking at him with wet, milky-white eyes. And as Alexander watched, paralyzed by absolute, suffocating terror, the painted lips of the girl in the central canvas slowly stretched upward.

Her mouth curved into a wide, impossibly wide, familiar smile.

A wet, jagged CLICK sounded from behind him.

Alexander shrieked, spinning around. The deadbolts on his front door were sliding back on their own, one by one. Unlatch. Unlatch. Unlatch.

The heavy oak front door swung wide open into the dim hallway.

Standing in the corridor was not the empty hall, but a swirling, pitch-black void that smelled of rotten canvas, fresh iron, and wet paint. An invisible, crushing weight slammed into Alexander's chest, grasping his throat and pulling him forward off his feet.

He clawed frantically at the doorframe, his fingernails snapping, leaving bloody streaks against the wood as he screamed. But the force was absolute. He was dragged backward out of his apartment, across the threshold, and straight into the dark doorway of Apartment 4B.

The heavy door slammed shut behind him with a deafening boom.

Then, silence settled over the fourth floor.

Four days later, two precinct detectives stood in the center of Apartment 4A.

"Neighbors reported he vanished without a word," the younger detective said, snapping a latex glove onto his wrist as he looked around the bright, sunlit room. "Left his phone, his wallet, his keys. Door was left wide open."

The senior detective walked the perimeter of the room, his heavy boots echoing on the hardwood.

The apartment was completely devoid of furniture. There were no chairs, no bed, no drop-cloths, and no trash.

Leaning against the baseboards, lining the entire circumference of the living room, were dozens upon dozens of stretched canvases.

Every single canvas was stark, brilliant, and completely blank.

By:- Muskan Nim