He painted a lot these days.
He supposed his neighbors preferred that over the time he tried his hand at wood sculptures.
He also supposed he enjoyed the painting more than the wood sculpture though just with the wood sculptures he had the feeling he wasn't particularly good at it.
He tried painting the angels first and he thought that he could maybe give it Old Woman Josie or something but when the picture had been finished he turned it around and never looked at it again.
He wasn't sure why. He just know that he did not want to see what he had painted. Never again. Every time he tried to imagine the picture he had created, of the angel carrying Old Woman Josie's groceries he came up with a blank. The only thing he know was that he had used a lot of yellow and violet for it. Too much yellow and violet really.
He told himself to stop being paranoid -paranoid people ended up in a conversation with the Sheriff's Secret Police having to explain with great details the things they were paranoid about- and just continued painting.
He painted Desert Bluff then. He didn't know why. He was mostly indifferent to their neighbor city though he did boo them out like everyone else when Night Vale played against them. But he painted it and he painted it for two days straight with no pause in between. When he was finished he took the picture and and turned it around. Then he went and bought more red paint.
At this point he supposed that there might be something wrong with him. He wasn't sure what exactly it could be. He had gotten all the necessary vaccines against demonic possessions and he had always made sure to wash his hands after using a bloodstone. He called the public health office and asked about cases of demonic possessions forcing people to draw pictures they couldn't look at afterward but the only possessions that happened at the moment made people float two feet in the air and sing David Hasselhoff songs backwards.
He supposed he should go and see to a doctor but possessions weren't covered under his insurance plan so he just did the same thing his grandmother used to do and buried a headless chicken under a cactus while reciting sixteen prime number that ended with a seven.
That night he painted the vast and endless ice desert of the Antarctica with nothing but black. He put it away just like the two pictures before and then he shrugged. It wasn't that bad he supposed. The cost of buying paint wouldn't ruin him and even though he couldn't see the pictures he had drawn he supposed he might even could be a good artist. The idea of showing his pictures to somebody else occurred to him. When he regained consciousness he stood in his completely destroyed living room the words NO NO NO NO painted in every single one of his colors on the wall. It took him almost the rest of the day to clean it up and he was slightly angry since that really was a bit of an overreaction. he grumbled as he cleaned his walls.
He didn't paint for three days after that. When he started painting again he painted Night Vale. He was absolutely sure that it was Night Vale. But when he was finished and turned it around he caught one brief look at the picture and what he saw was water. Just water. Nothing but water.
He blinked once and then he throw away all his painting utensils. He didn't paint for two weeks after that. Then he opened his eyes one morning and the first thing he saw were the garish pink letters above him spellin T. He had no idea who had written it on the ceiling and had managed to write it exactly at the point he first saw when he would open his eyes in the morning.
He went and bought new painting utensils the moment the shop had opened, ignoring the way Fred the shopkeeper tried to tease him about it. Back home he painted. And painted. And painted. The blank white back of the pictures he had drawn before and could for some reason neither look at nor throw away seemed to silently watch at him as he continued painting.
When he had finished painting he could not see his skin under the thick layers of paint on paint.
Silently he took every single one of the pictures and propped them up backwards against the walls of his living room. When he ran out of place he continued in his bedroom, then in his kitchen and when finally there were pictures leaning even against the walls of his bathroom, showing nothing but white to the inquiring eye he took the last picture in his hand and looked at it.
He saw himself. But not the way he looked.
His hair were gray, his eyes dull and his cheeks hollow. He looked more like a skeleton with a full beard than a human being.
And when he looked at his finger, stiffly holding the pictures he realized how thin they were. How little skin there seemed to be left under the thick layers of color.
Only bones it seemed. Bones painted with red and white and blue and black and pink and when he stumbled to the bathroom mirror a skeleton with a full beard grinned back him.
They found a house full of blank canvas with nothing on them but the wor written on it.
The public health office issued a reminder that the only thing that helped against demonic possessions were a good doctor and the crushed bones of small critters.