Free Sunruined: Horror Stories by Andersen Prunty Page A

didn’t seem to encompass everything .
    Maybe, Samuel thought, the shading needs altered. He covered other miscellaneous canvases with various shades of gray. He mixed every degree of black and white, trying to achieve the perfect value and failing each time.
    Samuel fell to merely sitting in front of the window and staring at the damned thing. What the hell was it!? What could he not reach out and grasp with his mind? What, dear fucking Watson, was missing ? What detail? What one little thing? No, it wasn’t any single aspect, it was an aura . Not a single facet, it couldn’t be given a term, it was simply something all-encompassing that would make the entire thing work. Yes, but what was that aura, that feel, that mood?
    Finally, it hit Samuel. The inside . He’d never seen the inside of any factory or mill. Maybe the interior was the final veil of sadness. Maybe it was the clarity of a tear, cutting through the years of dust. Even though he wasn’t painting the inside, he felt as though that would be the key. Samuel was certain, certain that all the answers to his consternation lie inside the sadness beast, the breeder of pain and death.
    Maybe the workers, the people who ran the dead blemish were the Devil and they had been cast out.
    Quickly, Samuel Bean formed a mental game plan. Tonight, he would rest. Tomorrow morning he would wake up and go to the mill to snoop around and get inside if he possibly could.
    Samuel slept. The first night he had even resigned himself to a full night of sleep and he was plagued with a single dream—
    He’s almost done but he can’t get off the floor. Why won’t his body move? Deep blazing fire climbing the walls throwing violent light on the circle of easels shifting into hooded Druidic specters moving closer and closer to him horrible chants exiting their bodies through the dim openings in their cloaks like a bunch of dead air a song of dead air a symphony of morose sepulchral breath moving closer and closer so slow but never ceasing no hope of ceasing and the fire not spreading but becoming more alive and violent eating walls eating souls making those insane visionary easel monks more acute more pronounced as they advance and slowly pulling back their cloaks revealing what is inside so ambiguous so bright like the sun at noon on the summer solstice not even seeing everything in front of him and not even seeing What? he screams What is it? What!
    And then the sound of being sucked through a void and thrust into that comfortably dark room.
    Samuel spent the rest of the night in a very welcome, very deep, undisturbed sleep.
     
    The next morning Samuel went into the bathroom to shave and take a shower. It felt like a great cleansing to remove his black beard, wash the grease and dust from his long dark hair, and peel back the second skin of grime that had formed over him. Pulling his hair back into a ponytail and donning some clean clothes, he went downstairs feeling fresh and new.
    The morning was bright and crisp. Gina greeted him with a fresh pot of coffee and a hot breakfast of sausage and gravy and eggs in the sunwashed kitchen. The first cigarette of the day was strong.
    “Good morning,” Gina said, eagerly setting the table in one of Samuel’s flannel button-down shirts and her simple white underwear.
    “Good morning, honey. Breakfast smells great.”
    “Are you finished with the painting?” she asked.
    “Almost, Gina baby. Almost.”
    He went on to explain his plans about going into the mill.
    “When can I see it?”
    “Soon. I promise. Soon. I don’t know how long it’ll take me to put the finishing touches on it but I know, I know it’s almost there.”
    Gina noticed the fire dancing in his eyes. It was a fire she had not seen in a very long time. As the water and razor had cleansed his outside, she knew the fire was doing the same to his insides.
    Samuel devoured the breakfast. It filled him up fast. He ate it all, regardless. After slurping down some milk to