Speaker 1: It was at a flea market, of all places, the
kind you go to wonder aimlessly, pretending you're looking for
something very specific, knowing that chances are you'll probably leave
with nothing. Rows of mismatched tables stretched over the cracked
pavement under the afternoon sun, piled high with old tools,
scratched up, yellowing furniture, and junk people had dug out
of their garages. The air smeled like kettle corn and
cheap sunscreen, with a faint tang of rust from some
vendor's collection of scrap metal. My apartment was still mostly empty.
I just moved in, and the empty walls and bare
corners were starting to really bother me. I wasn't on
the search for anything specific, just something to make the
place feel less like an abandoned storage unit and more
like a home. A lamp maybe, or an interesting piece
of furniture, cheap, preferably. It didn't take long to find something.
At one of the stalls, tucked behind a pile of
well worn tools and broken frames, I saw a bunch
of mismatched furniture, a side table painted with white with
chipped corners, a small stool, and an old couch that
needed a wash or two. It was a random assortment,
tied together with fraying twine, but it was solid enough
for what I needed. A hundred bucks for the lot,
the vendor said, catching me looking. He was older and
looked like he'd been sitting in a folding chair for
his entire life. Before I got a chance to respond,
he added, take it, and I'm even throw in that
painting over there. I followed his nod and saw it
propped against the back of the chair leg The painting
it was half hidden behind a stack of dens cans.
Its edges were frayed, and its frame was stretched. A
woman stood alone in a vast field of wheat, A
figure poised in a strange way, almost reverent. The wheat
behind us stretched endlessly, But it wasn't as golden and
vibrant as you might expect. It was gray, lifeless, and brittle,
burnt to a crisp. Each stalk bowed under a phantom wind.
The texture of the wheat was so vivid that I
almost felt the dry rust of it brushing against my fingertips.
The sky roiled with movement, as still as it was
a violent storm of colors crashed into each other, waves
of pigment and brushstrokes, deep purples melted into streaks of
orange and crimson, shot through with veins of sickly yellow.
The horizon was blotted with heavy bruise, like clouds threatening
to open and bleed. Yet despite the chaos of it all,
there was a balance to it. Each hue blended seamlessly
into the next, like the canvas had been alive once
and was now frozen mid motion, like pausing a video.
And then there was the woman. Her pale dress rippled faintly,
as though caught in the dying breath of the wind
that had long since left the wheat around her motionless.
The fabric clung to her frame in a way that
should have made her seem fragile, Yet she didn't look it.
She was still a statue carved from soft light. She
stood with her back facing me. Her face was turned
just enough to reveal some of her profile, the curve
of her cheekbone and the point of her chin. But
her eyes held me. It wasn't fearful or defiant. It
wasn't pleading either. Her gaze was resigned, mellow and accepting.
It's part of the bundle. I asked, sure, is the
vendor said, tipping back a can of soda, take it
off for a hundred The painting stayed tied up in
the bundle until I got home. I carried it all
into my living room and untied the twine, letting it
all tumble onto the floor. The painting was the last
thing I pulled free. It was lighter than I expected.
I set it against the wall and stepped back, letting
myself take it in fully. Again, the details came into
sharper focus. I hadn't really wanted the painting to begin with,
so I placed it against the corner of the wall
and left it there. Truth be told, I didn't like
it too much. It was eerie to look at, but
couldn't bring myself to throw art made with such care away.
It wasn't to my taste, but maybe I could find
a home for it, to some one who could appreciate it.
For three days, the painting sat in the corner. I
couldn't bring myself to hang it, but I didn't want
to hide it either. Every time I passed by, I
caught myself glancing at it. Then on the fourth day,
I finally decided to hang it above the couch. The
news came a couple of days later. I was scrolling
through my phone over breakfast my TV, murmuring something in
the background when I saw the headline wild fire ravages
Kansas farmland, one fatality. I tapped the article and the
image of the blaze filled my screen. The fire had
consumed acres upon acres of farmland, leaving nothing but ash
and blackened stalks of wheat in its path. The sky
above was hazy, streaked with deep purples and reds as
smoke billowed and faded, leaving behind traces of yellow. I
stared at the photo. It looked eerily familiar, but it
wasn't exact. There was no woman, no dress, just an
empty field and the fire ravaging it. I shook my
head and put the phone down, and had to be
a coincidence. Fields burned all the time. The painting wasn't unique.
It was probably just an artistic take on a generic disaster.
All the stress that had been building up over my
move and my all new long commute to work was
just making me overthink things and making the painting more
special in my head than it actually was. Still, I
didn't like it. I put the painting back in the corner,
thinking of disposing of it as soon as possible. The
second painting arrived about a week after the wildfire. This
time I didn't find it at a flea market. I
didn't look for it at all. It was delivered straight
to my mailbox. The container a tube was unmarked. There
was no return address, posted, stamp, or anything to suggest
where it had come from. But there it was in
my mailbox, sitting among the pile of junk mail, like
it belonged there. I almost didn't even open it. I
considered throwing it away. I got the first painting by
pure coincidence, but now I was getting it in the mail.
I thought about going back to the vendor I had
initially gotten the first one from, but the flea market
was seasonal, so I had no way to find him
even if I wanted to. So I unrolled it. It
showed a train. The perspective was striking painted from the
inside of some sort of vehicle looking toward a train,
but the location was not discernible, and train tracks were
laid out in the distance where the silhouette of a
train sat derailed, his frame twisted and broken like a
crushed can. Cars careened off the rails, some split, others
piled on top of each other in jagged heaps of metal.
Flames spat from the wreckage, consuming wood and broken glass.
Thick and black smoke curled into the sky, walking out
the pale blue above. Yet the focal point wasn't the wreckage,
but the figures. A woman in a red scarf was
on her knees at the edge of the tracks. She
was close to one of the train cars, her arms
stretched out toward a child dangling from a broken window above.
The child's miniature body teetered on the edge, tiny fingers
reaching desperately towards her, but she was stuck. The fire
illuminated their faces with painful clarity. The woman's face was
painted with desperation, her mouth half open in a cry
I could almost hear if I strained hard enough. Her
scarf fluttered in the heat. The child's expression was frozen
in wide eyed terror. She was so close to the woman,
yet so far, and the scariest of all the train
cars seemed as if it would tip over at any moment.
The details were so vivid and precise that it did
not feel like a painting, but a picture of a moment.
It happened the next day. I was driving home from work,
dragging myself through traffic on a suburban road when I
heard it. At first, it was just a distant sound,
a strange screech that didn't belong in the hum of
rush hour at all. Then it became the screech of
metal against metal, a sound that would make your teeth ache.
The sound was distant still, but it grew louder with
every passing second, raw and visceral, cutting through the air.
The railroad ahead was already crowded with cars, and brake
lights glowed in the evening haze. Beyond the train barrel
toward the intersection. I watched as the train swerved violently,
sparks flying as the wheels left tracks. The first car
tip sideways, dragging the rest of the train with it
in a cascade of catastrophe. I stopped the car, instinctively,
gripping the steering wheel as the chaos unfolded in front
of me. The deralment was horrific. Passenger cars crumpled and
people flew out of the train cars as they collided
with one another. The force of the crash sent debris
flying into the air with a loud bang. The engine
smashed into the support beam near the crossing, igniting an
explosion that lit up the sky with orange and red flames.
It was chaos. And then there they were, the woman
in the red scarf and the child. She was kneeling
by the edge of the wreckage, her arms stretched out
in a feeble attempt to rear the dangling child. It
was exactly what I had seen from the painting. The
firelight danced across their faces, their expressions frozen in the
same raw clarity. I sat frozen in my car, my
hands gripping the steering wheels so tightly I could hear
it groan in protest. I wanted to move, get out
and help somehow, but I couldn't. And then it happened.
The train car, which was balancing on its side, tipped
over in slow motion, and I watched as the child
was eaten up by the flames, and the woman's legs crushed,
now trapped as the fire ate or away. I couldn't
look away. I felt tears running down my cheeks as
I finally regained my senses, the screaming around me breaking
me out of my trance. The painter hadn't just known
this would happen. They'd known where I'd be and what
I'd see. I don't remember driving home. The crash broke
something in me. I couldn't sleep. Every time I closed
my eyes, I saw the woman and the child frozen
in that terrible moment, just as the painting had depicted it.
The fire's light, the scarf, the desperation, and the reaching out.
It was all burned into my mind, replaying over and over,
like a punishment I could do nothing to escape from.
I was in purgatory. I didn't go to work the
next day either or the day after. At first I
called in sick, telling my boss I had the flu,
until I stopped answering my phone all together. I threw
the painting away, but it did little to numb my thoughts.
I let the dishes pile up and clothes scatter across
the floor. Everything in my fridge went bad, and the
stench of rotten food filled the apartment, aiding in my misery.
I didn't care about it. All I could think about
was how, even though I knew I was powerless, I
blamed myself for not at least trying to save them.
But then I realized I owed it to them. At
least I needed answers, and the fog of guilt finally
eased a little. I was consumed by they need to
know why this was happening. I scoured the Internet, searching
for everything and anything that could explain the paintings. I
posted and obscure forums, and searched for artists and local galleries,
but I found not. Even the paintings themselves offered no hints.
I still had the original painting of the field, so
I picked the first one up from the corner and
inspected the entirety of it. I looked for a signature,
a date, or a stamp, but still there was nothing.
The more I searched, the more questions consumed me. I
kept asking myself why I was the one who had
to find these and how they accurately depicted things unseen.
I tried putting a stop to the next painting I
received to no avail when it arrived, a flood swallowing
a small street. I tried memorizing every detail, the crack sidewalk,
the cars in the middle being submerged by muddy water.
A then stop signed in the corner. I sifted through
maps and my memories. Searching for streets that matched the
one in the painting. I spent hours driving around, hoping
to stumble across it, but I never found it. I
hadn't even stopped to consider how I would prevent a
flood of that scale, because if I did, it made
me feel all the more powerless. Days passed, and the
dread gnawed at me, growing heavier with each day that passed.
In wait. When the flood finally happened, it was nowhere
near me. I dreaded the rare times I would receive
a painting, But soon they started appearing everywhere, in my mailbox,
propped against the front door, even in the passenger seat
of my car. They all came without warning. A bridge
collapsing into a river, cables snapping like aged threads as
cars plunged into the waters below, the faces of passengers
visible in their final moments, and a tornado ripping through
a tiny farmhouse, the roof torn away to reveal a
petrified family huddled inside. The aftermath of a sinkhole appearing
below an apartment building. The details were always painfully vivid.
I could almost feel the heat of the fire, smell
the smoke, and hear the screams. Each one stayed in
my mind like a deep scar. I woke up to
find one leaning against the foot of my bed. I
felt the tube before I saw it. As I got
out of bed, my feet brushed against something and tipped
it over. Another painting, except this one was not a disaster.
It showed a small and dilapidated house with a sagging
roof and boarded up windows. The yard was overgrown and
the porch steps were broken. In the ground stood a figure.
The man wore a jacket identical to mine. His hands
were shoved in his pockets, and his posture was stiff.
His face was obscured, but there was no mistaking who
it was meant to be me. In the corner of
the painting was a street sign Ashwood Lane, and in
the bottom right corner, scrawled in the dark paint it
was a signature E V. The signature seemed to be
there purely to mock me, a final taunt from the
person who had been controlling my life without permission. This
wasn't a prediction, It was an invitation or a trap.
I was furious at finding a painting in the sanctity
of my room. The guilt and fear had built up
and exploded into a rage that stripped me of rational thinking.
Ashwood Lane wasn't hard to find. It was on the
outskirts of the city, a forgotten road, choked with weeds
and lined with houses that looked like they'd been used
in the set of a bad zombie movie. Regardless, it
was still on my car's GPS. So I took this
invitation as a challenge, and I wanted this all to end.
The house was exactly as it had been on the canvas.
The roof sagged in the middle and the windows boarded up.
The air was thick with the smell of damp earth
and petroka. I pulled the car to the curb and
stepped out, my legs unsteady beneath me. In my dash
to come here, all the emotions that were running through
me were now fading, replaced with a sense of unease.
I was about to face with whoever had been doing this.
I knocked thrice, and with each knock the door opened wider.
The inside of the house was horrific. The walls were
lined with the canvases, some stacked too deep, some stacks
six deep, Some leaned against the furniture and others piled
on the floor. They were all disasters, hurricanes, earthquakes, and wildfires.
Each was as vivid as the ones I'd seen. The
colors roar, violent, and impossibly sharp. At the center of
the room was a person ev He sat, hunched over
his back to me, a brush moving steadily across the canvas,
who was still taking shape swirls of black and crimson,
dancing in an abstract chaos that it could not decide
nor care to. His frame was thin, almost non existent,
his hair wiry with spots of gray. He didn't turn
when I stepped inside, didn't seem to notice me at all,
or simply didn't care. You found me, he said, without turning.
His voice was dry and ashy. I stepped closer, anger
taking hold of me. You knew I would, of course.
He dipped his brush into a smear of gray, dragging
it across the canvas. Everything follows a pattern. You are
always going to end up here. Why me, I demanded,
my voice starting to crack. Why send the paintings to me?
He finally turned, his dark eyes, locking onto mine. Yet
there was no malice in his gaze, no insanity, just
the cold detached clarity because you were paying attention, he said,
matter of factly, most people don't, you see. They go
through their days blind to the cracks in the world,
ignoring the inevitable until it happens to them. But you
couldn't look away. You saw the patterns, even though you
could not understand them. I refused to flinch. You're saying
all this was inevitable, that nothing I did could have
stopped it. Exactly. He finally set his brush down, folding
his hands in his lap. The world is unraveling, one
piece at a time. I just record it. There's no
magic here, no divine inspiration. You people are just so
stupid that it makes me seem prescient. He continued, record it,
I repeated, my voice starting to rise and my anger building.
You paint people dying, children falling into fires, buildings collapsing,
and families getting whited out. You call that recording. What
would you have me do? His tone remained steady, his
calmness maddening. Stop painting. Would that save anyone? Would it
change something? My work makes it all visible, finds the
beauty in it all. I clenched my fists and fumbled
with a zippo in my pocket. You could warn people
do something, Ivee chuckled softly while shaking his head. Warn
them you can't fix what's broken, and even if you could,
do you think they'd listen. People don't want to see
the end. They'd rather stumble into it blind, believing they
have the control. I thought of the woman and the child,
the fire and the crash. There has to be a
reason for all this. There really isn't. Evie leaned back,
his bony frame, casting long shadows in the dim light.
You want there to be meaning, a purpose behind it all,
because the alternative has too much to bear. But the
truth is simple and you already know it. The room
felt smaller and the air heavier. My gaze flicked to
the paintings surrounding us, each one laced with despair. I
thought back to the things I'd seen again, and my
inability to take action is voice cut through my thoughts.
You just can't accept it. You've spent your life believing
you're in control and that your choices matter, But they don't.
You're just the witness, just like everybody else. You think
you're angry at me, but you're just angry at the truth.
Stop it, I muttered, The only question is how long
you'll keep fighting before you accept it? Stop, I repeated louder.
You think you could change anything, he mused. You're wrong,
I growled. You're just a coward that sits here painting
misery while the world falls apart. Evee smiled faintly, the
corners of his mouth barely twitching. And yet here you are, watching,
just like I knew you would. That was it. My
hand shot into my pocket, pulling out the zippo. My
fingers trembled as adrenaline rushed through me while I thought
about what I was about to do. You think I'll
just let you do this? You think I'll let you
keep making these monuments the suffering. At this point, it
wasn't even looking at me. He turned back to his
work and kept painting. I grabbed the nearest painting off
the wall, a tsunami ravaging homes and families, and held
it over the flame. The canvas caught quickly, The edges
curled as the fire spread, licking at the vivid colors.
The smell of burning paint filled the air around us,
sharp and acred. But I was not going to stop.
I tossed the painting on to the floor. The fire
spread as I tore more canvases from the walls. One
by one, I fed them to the flames, floods, fires,
and earthquakes, all of them consumed as e V kept painting.
You really think the stranger's anything, he asked quietly, his
voice now barely audible over the crackle of the fire.
I don't care, I spat, tearing another painting from the wall.
I'm done watching undone, letting you use me as an audience.
E V tilted his head but still didn't look at me.
You can burn the paintings, but it's all still there.
I ignored him. The heat of the fire scorched my
skin as I grabbed another canvas. It wasn't until I
turned back toward e V that I saw he had
completed it. The painting on the easel he was working
on it showed what I thought, No, what I knew,
was the end of the world. Not a single disaster,
not one moment of tragedy frozen in time, but everything.
The sky was fractured, great jagged tears ripping through the heavens,
the endless skies folding into each other, exposing a blackness
so deep It felt like staring into an open grave.
The earth was in chaos, split into monstrous, gaping chasms
that bled molten fire and bellowed smoke. Entire cities tipped
and crumbled into the abyss, their skeletons of steel and
iron twisting as they fell. The oceans boiled, great clouds
of steam rising into the air as colossal waves slammed
against crumbling coastlines. Ships torn in half were capsized in
their entirety, dotted the horizon like discarded toys. In the foreground,
or was supposed to represent a vast forest was reduced
to an expanse of blackened stumps, each one smoldering between them.
The skeletal remains of animals lay scattered among the wreckage,
pressed against the shattered windows of the crumbling cities, floating
lifelessly in the boiling oceans, with thousands of faces frozen
in terror, their mouths open in silent screams. And in
the center of it the audience was me. I stood
on a jagged outcrop of rock, my silhouette illuminated by
the fiery abyss below. My pasture was slack, and my
hands lay limply at my sides, but it wasn't just me.
Around my feet were smaller figures clutching at my legs.
A child reached upward, had tiny fingers brushing against my hand,
and I knew who that was meant to represent. You
see now, IV, he said, you are the audience. Everyone is.
I turned away from him. The fire was everywhere now,
climbing the walls, defiring everything. The heat was unbearable, despite
how fast the old wood of the house carried the flames.
There was always time to get out. Nothing physically locked
him to his chair, Yet he remained there, carrying on
with his magnum opus without a care. You're still a witness.
You failed, Eve, he said with finality. He was wrong.
As the flames roared, he would fail to predict anything
ever again. So I turned and ran, the heat, chasing
me out of the house into the cool night air.
I didn't look back as the flames consumed the building,
the firelight flickering against the darkened sky. I reached my car,
slumping into the driver's seat and gripping the steering wheel
like it was tethering me to reality. I stared through
the windshield, the house on Ashwood Lane burning behind me.
It didn't feel like a victory. I drove home in silence,
the weight of exhaustion pressing down on me. My apartment
was still how. I left it, empty and silent. I
entered my bedroom and picked up the house painting once more.
I inspected it one last time, the way to my
actions sinking in. But before I had time to think
about anything, When I flipped the painting over, I saw
another one, a silhouette running from a burning house. The
perspective was distant but unmistakable. My figure was small, silhouetted
against the inferno. The flames roared behind me, consuming the
house and everything inside. It was proof that once again
I had failed to change anything. The house was burned
because it was always meant to burn. I ran because
I was always meant to run. Everything played out exactly
how it was suppose the play out, and I was
the witness