The Portrait Gallery of Tomorrow
Episode 3: The Unpainted Eye
Julian fled the attic and rushed back down to the grand salon, slamming the heavy double doors behind him to secure the space. To his utter disbelief, his own reflection stared back at him from the center wall—not from a mirror, but from a brand-new, unvarnished canvas mounted on an empty easel that had not been there that morning. The canvas depicted his own likeness, captured in exhaustive, hyper-realistic detail, right down to the look of sheer terror on his face and the antique pocket watch clutched in his trembling hand. However, the portrait remained entirely unfinished in one crucial area: his right eye was represented merely by a jagged, hollow circle of bare, primed linen. A jar of black oil paint sat on the taboret beside the easel, accompanied by a sable-hair brush resting in a pool of fresh, wet pigment that seemed to pulse with a heartbeat of its own.
Midnight Restorations
Driven by a compulsive, hypnotic urge, Julian approached the easel, his fingers trembling as his hand hovered inches above the sable-hair brush. The voices of the other portraits in the gallery rose to a deafening crescendo, chanting overlapping fragments of his life story, his deepest regrets, and his ultimate fears. He tried to pull away, but his muscles locked in place, governed by an external force that seized control of his motor functions. Seizing the brush, his hand moved with terrifying speed across the canvas, applying bold, sweeping strokes of black pigment to fill in the hollow circle of the unpainted eye. As the final stroke was completed, a sharp, searing pain shot through Julian’s right eye, and his vision on that side went instantly, permanently black.