Something Sinister

I had been painting for an hour. My hand hurt my eyes were kind of blurry from the sunshine, and I had a bit of pain in my temple from the flowers in the park, but I felt maybe just maybe I was ok. The man hadn't showed up in my painting. I had done a landscape of a fountain, no people just the fountain and it turned out all right despite my eyes stinging and my hip giving me trouble. It was only after I finished the painting that I saw the man, he was just sitting at the fountain. I knew I hadn't painted him, took care not to, and yet there he was, just sitting there staring back at me. I looked up at the fountain and there was no man. I saw a young child walk by, but not a man in a hat in glasses, and yet there was in my painting just silently looking back at me.

I wanted to burn the painting right there, but there was something else, the man was looking at me directly now. In the other times I'd painted him he was always looking away, or looking at someone else or something else. Now he was directly staring back at me, like he'd noticed I was painting him even though as I'd proven to myself I wasn't painting him at all. As if to confirm my suspicion the creature in the painting had clued in I saw it, I swear to all the gods it smiled at me. Like one minute it was a blank expression, and then the next it was a smile. I jumped back as much as my leg allowed, which wasn't much.

I ripped the paper off the canvas and cast it down to burn it, but I was interrupted by the horrifying site underneath the painting. It was the man in the glasses again, his entire face in profile looking at me and pointing. I felt a sense of terror go through me, it wasn't written anywhere, but I just knew he was saying "I see you." I burned both paintings and the easel right there. And left, I was afraid now, whatever that thing was, whatever I was painting was not something I was painting. Something awful was going on and I was in the middle of it, and I had no clue what any of it even meant! Its one thing to be hunted by a person or a creature, its another thing to be hunted by something in a painting, what do you even do that? What does that even mean???

I headed to the library hoping to find out something about this, and also just to get freedom from the creature whatever it was. I could feel its eyes on me even without a painting to cast the glare. It knew me now, and I was under the impression it was going to do something bad to me, and I wasn't entirely wrong. Not entirely. But of course thats the next entry.