text: There once was a sick man, bedridden for life, never to see the great world outside the walls of his room. Even if that was the case, he had found his one talent, he could draw better than anyone else. Considered a great artist, the man took pride in his work, and with reason, as he was really skilled, but he could never draw what he wanted the most, the things that laid outside of his room, so he could only ever make portraits of rich folk and the like. He was used to getting clients each day, many powerful people came to visit just to try and get a chance of having a portrait for themselves. On a fateful day, as he laid on his bed with his eyes closed, the man was visited by a new client, a strange-looking person, the stranger didn't show his face at all, wearing a long coat, white gloves, and brown boots. The weirdest part was that he never spoke a word in the whole painting session, but the only time he did was as he was leaving, and the only words that parted from his mouth were "open your mind so that you may see the truth". Noone understood the man, but after he left, inside of the painting room, the servants found a foto on the ground, it was blank, but just in case they showed it to the master of the home. Not too long had passed since the man had visited, but as the artist laid in his bed, in his mind he found images of the world he had never been able to see before, amazing vistas with great mountains, green plains, dark forests, and many other things. Granted with such opportunity he took his pencil and started to draw these images so that he would never forget them. As the man finished the drawings he realized something, what he was drawing were twisted versions of what he could see in his mind, he tried time and time again to recreate what he saw on his mind to no avail. As he tried to fix the paintings the images started to slip away as if they were returning to where they belonged. And so he was only left with dark and twisted paintings that haunted him every day, he tried to burn them, but instead of turning into ashes, they remained. He sold them, but after one day, not even asking for the money back, they were returned. He could not rid himself of that horrible sight. Each passing day he had to bear the endless torture of having to look at his failures until he snapped, he couldn't stand it. Those horrible failures of his taunted him every day, and so with a pencil, the one he kept on a table beside his bed, he stabbed out his eyes. In pain and agony, the man screamed, his caretakers rushed to his room the moment they heard such horrific screaming. Once they were able to get in they were witness to things only seen in books of horror. An old sickly man, covered in blood with gouged eyes, wailing in his bed; scratching and hitting his head he cried "why won't they disappear?!". Soon after, the artist was dragged out of his room so the people could tend to his injuries, the screams of pain were replaced by deafening laughter. That night the man managed to escape the paintings, but once again the nightmare continued, this time the paintings were in a place he couldn't escape, his mind became the new prison. Not long after the incident, the man now had guards posted in his room, to accompany the man each hour of the day. The people started to become weary and paranoid as he could snap at any moment and harm someone despite being so frail and sick. It took no time for the man to start changing his behavior. His hair turned white, his skin became as pale as the papers he painted, his fingers grew larger and deformed. The weirdest thing was that he started to murmur strange words that no one understood at night. His room used to be well lit with many candles as he needed them to paint, but now that same room is shrouded in darkness. One day the man shut his doors claiming he was going to paint his masterpiece once and for all, he only opened the door to eat whatever his servants brought him. Two months later he was found dead along with every person in his mansion, his body was found beneath a painting, the one he called his "masterpiece". It was a maddening sight, a twisted world where the souls of the damned filled the sky, flesh and bone made the lands and the lakes were made of their blood, in the middle of that chaos you could find him, kneeling before a great figure, big enough to tower the skies. He left a single message behind "Close your eyes and open your mind, let him in so that he can show you the truth of this world and the one beyond, he calls me and I must answer, I finally understood, those paintings weren't a curse, they were a blessing".