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The long narrow street where our young painter lived was lit only by the cast-iron street lamps, the night sky painting black and mauve across the sky with deep thick brush-like strokes. Amoras Hoskins was drifting down the public alley half-dreaming and half-thinking. He thought quite often, over everything, over nothing, over things that were just thought provoking, and then he thought about those until those led to new thoughts, and so on. Pinckney Street was his domain. Amoras had miraculously stumbled across a lavished apartment on this street so close to the ocean once and immediately bought it for a hefty price, but gladly paid it and moved in with his rather vague roommate. It is a small brick apartment with a metal spiral staircase that brought you from the door on ground level up the vertical hallway into the spacious living room that was furnished with one white couch for five, and surrounding it, a museum's worth of aisles and paintings from large to small, broad to narrow, completed to nearly finished to just begun, and some not even started. The living room had two main walls that were parallel to each other: the first was entirely window that had an awe-inspiring view. Beyond the second story window laid a medium sized meadow teaming with lush yellow-green treetops, the leaves scattered enough to be prominent and far enough to show parts of the rich brown tree trunk, deep viridians of the soft, cushion-like grass that carpeted the miniature hilled valley, and the peaceful chartreuse of crystalline water glinting and refracting light over the lime green tiles below its surface. The opposite wall was a rich array of scarlet, crimson, and burgundy bricks that parted for the arched doorway that led to the narrow kitchen of ivory and marble. A small island sat here, topped with a large bowl of a variety of fruits: a large, plump watermelon taking up a large portion of this bowl, a whole pineapple, slices of cantaloupe that lay in a pool of plucked grapes and blueberries that collected at the bottom, freshly picked apples, still crisp. Amoras locked the door and stepped up the staircase before entering his living room. Here he took off his thin black jacket and draped it over the couch, removing his dark combat boots and wandering into the kitchen plucking an apple and a slice of the cantaloupe before opening the refrigerator and staring into its icy depth searching for something t sate his thirst for a long while before closing it, to no avail. Striding back into his living room, he pressed a button on his stereo system that lurked in the corner like a neglected behemoth, and it sung smoothly a Morrissey album into the living atmosphere. Amoras then picked up a brush that was lying on the ground, tipped in yellow-gold paint and began painting his large mural of a golden palace surrounded by a sea of sunlight, the morning sunrise upon its horizon. A few hours had passed by before the clanging sound of keys was heard before the shift and clunk of the lock turning and the familiar footsteps of his roommate came in earshot. "Hey Reign, how was your vacation? And good morning!" was Amoras's sarcastic reply to his roommate's trip to the super-market. Reign worked as a well-known free-lancing artist and could obviously not afford such lengthy breaks from his work, with all the commissions that had accumulated as cause of the business he ran being free-lance. "Ugh. It was long. The ride back was longer than the ride there. You've been keeping the place clean, huh?" he joked about the tubs of paint and broken canvas that had accumulated from Amoras's current obsession and masterpiece before retiring to his room with arms full of bags. Satisfied with his one-in-the-morning impulse, Amoras set down his brush and retired to his room next to Reign's and plopped down on his bed staring out the large square window in his room. This window faced inwards on the complex, an open square of cobblestone lay outside, boxed in by apartment complexes on all sides, but only his had access to this area. Amoras had planted a large vibrant garden there, featuring all white and blue flowers, a miniature sea of ivory and cerulean. Amoras lay in his bed, thinking again, of many things. His thoughts stretched so far beyond his mind it seemed to sap the remaining awareness he had until he was asleep, dreaming of thought-inspiring dreams he will ponder tomorrow morning.

Opened. He awoke with his body flayed open. He did not scream, but he felt the weight of his body pull down on the cold metal spikes pinning him to a wall. Below him was an abyss and he just hung there, his fall uncertain but he knew he was damned. His sternum exposed, he looked down and saw that there was no blood, or even organs. He saw blues and yellows dripping down in a slow thick dribble. His exposed cavity now housed a pile of brushes, empty paint tubes, fragments of broken canvas. Greens, blacks, and vibrant purples were now sliding down his body in place of blood. His eye focused on one bead of paint in particular on the tip of his nose. He watched it tediously build up in mass and something strange occurred as it fell: nothing. The single drop slipped from his nose and sank into the abyss without a single sound.

Amoras burst wide awake then, the nightmare finally fading out of his mind. Clawing at his face to wipe it of moisture and then staring at his hands, he sighed in nauseated relief realizing that it was only sweat. A peaceful green light poured into the room from the large window and he noticed a vague condensation on the glass, beading in different colors on the floor as the light hit each individual drop just right. Had he not just been nearly scared out of his career in a single night's stirring Amoras would have been glowing with inspiration and delight at the scene. But now those little rainbow fragments on his carpet only provoked him to close his dark brown drapes and vanquish the scene in his mind. After showering, Amoras walked into the kitchen plucking another apple from the bowl and checking the refrigerator for something to drink yet again. After scavenging up a decent breakfast, Amoras walked into his living room and faced the painting that he had been working on for two long months. The paint was already dried from last night, and Amoras was totally engulfed by the anonymity of this painting. The inspiration to paint a golden palace with bright yellow and orange sun burned behind it along the horizon in a glorious rebirth of morning. Picking up his favorite brush, he placed the nimble wooden handle in his mouth and bit down with his teeth as he prepared the yellows and oranges whites. Taking the tool from his lips, he dabbed it voraciously in the small pool of gold and began working at his masterpiece. His hands and eyes worked furiously, his eyes spotting where he would be painting next in the corner of his eyes and then focusing intensely upon the single point of where his brush carved color onto canvas, his skill seemingly unmatched by any predecessor of the gods of art. His hands were swift, accurate and precise! Simply watching him paint hours upon hours would not have bored anyone, three of which had already passed before Amoras's hand began to cramp and he once again set his brush down on the stool next to the large canvas. He stepped back to appreciate his work and noticed how flawless it was. His trained painter's eye could not detect even the most subtle error that even masters of the brush are prone to, the small unfixable ones that nobody ever notices, but present nonetheless. "Extraordinary! Simply the most gracious thing I have ever witnessed!" Amoras whispered to himself in a mock-Reign voice. Chuckling he turned away and wandered back down the hallway to find Reign's door closed, signaling he had not heard, and was not awake. Before Amoras turned back around there was a silent numbing sound that echoed throughout his skull. He was frozen stiff, all his actions taking twice as long to execute than before. A silent painful scream was emitting from within his mind, the sound similar to that of a dying child. It ripped and tore at his mind and ears, chilling his bones with icy fear. His head throbbed at the very sound, crippling his thinking beyond comprehension, ceasing any signal his brain sent to his lungs to scream. He was trapped, locked, and pinned once again, to that dark wall with the nothingness rending open the floor beneath him to reveal the hidden void that lurked below. Now he screamed, though the sound only existed in his mind; the living nightmare had erupted from the dreamscape and hunted him in the daylight. Amoras shook, his body racked by this siege of fear upon his mind. Once again, as before, colors drooled down his body, from the spikes embedded in his body, down his wrists, and then that painfully slow and torturous drop at his nose. Amoras begged for it to drop, finally drop! This time the dream was much slower. Every action he took was lengthier than in his dream last night. The colors... were duller. They seemed less vibrant, more forbidding and lifeless. Then it fell into silence. Gasping, his lungs finally taking in air, everything around him was suddenly returned to the hallway, Amoras on his knees clutching his heart and perspiring madly. His hands lifted up to his face and he stared at their glimmering, sweat-stricken, shaking forms. Amoras stood up and wiped them on his pants still staring at the same spot since the daytime horror had relinquished him to reality. All was still in the apartment on Pinckney Street. A dark presence was in his mind and it was slowly tearing him apart. Amoras looked back at the painting in the living room, and what was once the single proudest thing he had ever worked on has now become a scrutinizing taunting image of whatever cursed dream he was reliving. Afraid, he dashed to his room and grabbed his keys from his bedside table, wincing as the reflected colors splattered across his face when he passed the window, and left the apartment, not bothering to lock the door The street seemed just as peaceful as ever, though there was a cawing sound that echoed through one of the trees farther down the street. Amoras took a few steps out into the middle of the road and looked around. He had chosen this dwelling to live in for the inspiration and colors, the very things ripping apart his sanity now. From the middle of the street Amoras looked back into his home and saw the back of the canvas that had the glorious palace and sunrise on its surface. The stiff board leaning at an angle against the aisle it perched on mocked him from above, in all of its unfinished glory, and he let the hatred fester in him for not completing it. How could he, the creator of that most magnificent work, let it go unfinished! It was not right, nor proper, and the dripping, drooling imagery of paint and an empty living carcass stuffed with paintbrushes that flashed through his mind knew this too. Realizing now the source of his dementia he raced back to the house and just as he grabbed his doorknob- The red and blue and green slithered down his face, burning his flesh as it trailed down, now tainted with a heinous dark grey. These were hardly colors at all, just blobs of misery tracing the sensitive parts of his body and shredding his nerves with agony. Amoras' screamed, screamed as a mother would if she were to witness the slaughter of her firstborn. The fear, agonizing and prolonging, stabbed and twisted at his heart. The massive metal spikes of iron and rust that pinned him to this wall started to creak. Then with a shrill defiant cry of metal against metal, followed by the sound of futile resisting bones creaking and then snapping, the metal spikes in his arms and legs began to spin outward, ripping open his femurs, shattering them and distorting his legs beyond recognition until the spikes were finally out and clanged forever downwards into the depths of nothing. Spraying in horrible delight, a twisted demonic rainbow spouted effortlessly from his torn off limbs. Only his torso remained, with arms and an outstretched shrieking head and neck. The metal spikes at his arms obliterated his wrists, severing his hands from his body and relinquishing them into the abyss. Amoras fell, his dismembered hands falling slower than his legless torso did and paint splattering the walls all along his descent. Just before he hit what seemed to be the bottom of this gaping hole of despair, his eyes settled on a faint shimmer just between the two of them. The lovely drop of paint that signaled finality and at long, ever long, last, separated from the tip of his nose and made impact with the bottom of the abyss. Sweating and once again on his knees sweating, Amoras took a few breathes to recover from the new scene added into his nightmare, then stood and steadied his hands to open his door. Amoras spilled into the hallway and clambered upon hands and feet up the spiral staircase and he entered the living room. Amoras's first reaction upon the scene before him was a harsh vomit on the floor from the sudden exposure to that sickly god-like gold on the canvas; his second reaction was a bereft disbelief that Reign was holding the two great halves of the canvas in his hands. The initial shock had aided in pumping his stomach just a moment earlier, but now was sinking in that Reign had just snapped his artwork, the masterpiece, Amoras's key to salvation, in half. The greatest creation of his career shredded in two hope-crumbling pieces. "What have you done?! What?! No! Reign you damn coward, you bastard! What have you done to me?!" Amoras shrieked. "I have parted you from your obsession, you lunatic! I've watched you slave over this garbage month after month! You've not left this house except for food and water. IF that! You'll hate me for th-" and Reign could not finish for Amoras had full-on charged Reign, knocking him onto his back and sliding into the kitchen. "You haven't the slightest clue what Hell you are putting me through!" he screamed a few inches from Reign's face. They struggled on the floor beating each other with fists and feet, pummeling each other with the once precious pieces of canvas until they crumbled into useless fragments. The brawl rolled on through the kitchen where heads and faces were bashed into walls, wrists and arms and ribs broken by the minute until Reign had managed to push Amoras off of him and stand up quickly to grab a long knife from the silver-ware drawer. Amoras scrambled back to his feet and stared down his friend wide-eyed and hostile. He never took a glance at the weapon in Reign's now trembling hands, but acknowledged in his mind that Reign had an advantage. Before he could leap after his roommate again, he felt a warm stream of red slip and slide down from his hairline. The small river was made from tiny beads of red, from his nose, from his head, from his lips. He noticed the single hue of dark blood drooling across his face and a swift overwhelming numbness ringing through his head. With unholy fear encroached in his eyes when they focused on a single droplet of blood centered at the tip of his nose, he saw Reign in the distance, unfocused but moving, charge after him with the knife gripped tightly in both hands. The red droplet fell from his nose and suspended itself in mid-air, slowing down time dramatically, Reign now practically frozen in mid-action. The world around him shifted and stirred once more as he resumed his horrible descent into oblivion. The single droplet once again in position as it was before, and instead of a bottom, the pit was expanded again, as if infinite time and space could exist in this interdimensional plane. The colors were no more, all just a dull, useless black and gray, nothing but gradations of black and white and gray. The single drop fell past him, fell farther and farther down until it was not seen by Amoras, and only an inky black depth existed. Drip. It was a long time, but Amoras heard the sound as clear as a bell, the sound of that one single drop impacting a larger pool. He fell with anticipation as what first appeared to be inky black depths below him, was just an unimaginably vast and deep sea of ink, black shadowy ink. As Amoras's severed torso collided into the cool icy black goo of ink, filling his mouth and eyes with darkness, he blinked and opened his eyes once more to reveal not a sea of ink and paint, but rather a large pool of blood before him; He was laying on the ground now, vision horizontal. Amoras could see the crimsons and scarlet spreading from his stomach to the ground, a cold hard spike jaggedly pointed inward to the wound. His metal spike was back, and it bobbed from the weight of the handle as Amoras made his last gasps for breathe and cut into himself more by doing so. His eyes, vision losing focus, centered themselves once more, whether intentional or not, upon the center tip of his nose where a tiny yellow bead had sat. It only stirred at the harsh jagged gasps that forced themselves in and out of Amoras's lungs, and finally, the tiny insignificant golden bead fell, disastrously fell, and dropped into the large growing crimson pool, lifting Amoras up into his own personal golden palace, where the sun only rose at the horizon of glowing light, and everything was as he painted.

Finite!