The Spirit

The painter never drank before he started working with blood. he never considered it, not seriously. It was ones breath when he whispered things he didn't mean. It was something that happened to people who lost themselves. But the canvas demanded it.

At first, it was just whiskey, a neat pour beside the easel, the amber liquid catching the studio's dim light. he convinced himself it was for the process, for the ritual, the way old alchemists used mercury to transmute lead into gold. Except his gold wasn't gold at all. It was crimson, thick and wet, stolen from his own veins. when the bottles emptied the brush begged for something more. he found that alcohol softened the lines, blurred the edges of things that should have remained sharp. The more he drank, the more the canvas bled, the figures shifting and writhing under the brush as if they were alive, suffering, asking for something he couldn't name.

The whiskey burned like an incantation, an ancient alchemical trick whispered between the teeth of the damned. And then one night, the painting spoke. Not in words, not in any way that anyone could explain without being locked away. But the face in the portrait the one that started as a stranger, took the shape of a woman he once loved, becoming something far older smiled at him. “More," it seemed to say. His hands shook as he reached for the blade, as he pressed it to his skin, letting him own color mixed with the bourbon stained bristles. A sacrifice. An offering. When the final stroke was made, when the last drop had dried, he stepped back and saw what he had done. The woman in the painting was no longer a ghost of memory but something real, something watching. His lips were wet, fresh, waiting.

The whiskey bottle was empty. So was he.

"More," she whispered.

He didn't have to be told twice.