For so many times since that unforgettable night, I hadn't an easy sleep.
Every time I lay myself on bed or anywhere to rest, my mind begins to wonder of commonly unimaginable things.
It is true that the world we live in and the lone universe it belonged harbor too many secrets--too many that the smallest or the smallest of the smallest mystery could drive a healthy man insane or to his own demise.
If one may ask me if I believe that the Almighty was the one behind all of this cosmic disarray, if this is just part of His perfect, clean-slate creation, I couldn't tell; in fact, I wondered if He is merely one of those myriads of mysteries swirling endlessly in the chasms of a vast, infinite void.
The night that I most feared of, fell on the thirteenth of August 1970; a day of tumult, uncertainty and grave hours that made me disparage myself.
Evening fell on the grand art gallery of Bismarck in which I used to work as an assistant curator; and it was the night after a whole day of preparation for the following day's art exhibit.
That said night, I couldn't believe that I fell asleep in the middle of the preparation, inside the gallery's utility room.
I awoke and it was already dark and not a man to be seen; and it struck me odd when I thought that the staff did not notice my absence.
Leaving the gallery itself firstly needs to cross the exhibit hall where all of the paintings of various antediluvian artists, most notably, the works of a man called Maxwell Schuster are on display, each under the glow of a small overhead lamp.
I traversed the long grand hall where Schuster's works; portraits of random men and women; the lonely fisherman, sitting by a river; the mother and child by a dark bedroom; the graceful lady, and a self portrait of the artist shaking hands with an indescribable fellow with a reddish complexion.
They were all had been painted realistically in medium canvas and had already been set on the walls for tomorrow's display.
That night, though the hall was windowless, was dismal and cold and that the hall was filled with faint hubbubs of unseen speakers.
I walked continuously and carefully, daring not to look at the face of the people in the paintings as if they all were looking towards me with following glaring eyes.
I closed my eyes as I walked and it felt that I am no longer in an empty hall; but in an open hall with many people scouring, prancing and murmuring about.
As I reached the end of that hall, reaching for its doors, the hall began to turn quiet and all was dark.
The door that leads outside would not budge even with a forced jerk; and in that chilling moment I stood still on my ground, trapped within the hall of foreboding darkness.

In my peripheral stood somewhat a lone door or what it seemed to be door on the polished wooden wall lined along with the other paintings; and I dared not to open it, for still I am sane to notice that even in its realistic or pseudo realistic form, that the door is not a door---it was a painting; a tromp l'oeil, with a canvas that reached from ceiling to the floor.

The fact that I did not make a move to interact with the door is not that it was just a painting; but it just somehow suddenly opened by itself.
Without any options left in my gradually bemused mind; and as if my feet were dragged with an unseen force, I went through that door and found myself in a candelabra lit Victorian antechamber with another door which I suppose leads to another room, waits on the opposite end.

I lingered no more in that room, and so I passed through the opposite oakwood door and alas! I am in an open area, a clearing to be exact; and the sun, high up in the sky, shone over me with a brightness of summer.

There were trees all around me, spurting leaves after a lax from the past winter. A few distant in front me, beyond the tall reeds, where the sound of the running river echoes in the midday, was an old man sitting by the bank, slumping on a nearby tree, a fish net on hand with a grave look in his somber face.

As I carefully and cautiously walked near him to tell where I am, his stark eyes pierced through me with a vengeful glare; and behind him, in the waters, suddenly emerged a floating figure---a woman; pale and lifeless with a terrible mark on her twisted neck, dragged by the river current.

As I saw that chilling sight, the man stood from where he was, flailing his wet, bruised scrawny arms and charged at me with a churning shriek, eyes wide open and teeth chattering with extreme anger.

I was startled by the man's action that I ran and went back to the door; but there's no sign of it anymore.
The murderous fisherman caught me and strangled me from behind with a great brute force, and as I choked and we fell on the grass, his arm broke with a painful snap and I took the chance to get away from him but I could find no door.

I swam past the river towards the opposite bank and still behind me, the old man followed with a much greater murderous intent.
A door was in front of me as I emerged from the waters; but this door is a door alone---no walls, just a door standing in the middle of the ground; I was as if opted as I rushed through it and as I went through the mysterious door, blocked it with my shoulders and latched all of the locks while on the other side, the mad fisherman banged and kicked as if to tear it down.

All turned calm after a few moments; and as I pulled myself together and turned around, I found myself in a dim bedroom lit only by a pair of flickering candlelight.
On the bed, away from the reach of the light source was a figure of a lady sitting on the soft mattress and cradling something that seemed to be a child.
She was singing a gentle lullaby but her words were inaudible as if she was uttering the words between lapses of open and closed mouth and clenching teeth.
I tried my best to get past them as I saw the door behind the bed and took careful sidesteps to reach it. But as I took my third step, my foot landed on some kind of slippery object on the floor. I took the candle on the wall and saw that the floor was covered with a dark odorous fluid that came from the bed---it was blood.

As I raised the candle, the lullaby stopped and the woman was already on her feet and I saw in her face that her mouth was oozing with blood between her clenched teeth; but the thing that sent me running away for my very life was the fact that the woman was in the middle of the act of anthropophagy as I saw that the child she held has been long dead and has been clearly eaten out by its mother or what she seems to be.
The door won't budge as I forced it until I realized it was locked. With great speed, the woman lunged and jumped on my back, sinking her teeth on my shoulder, taking out a bit of my own flesh.
I let out a terrible painful cry out of the horror that transpires at that moment and fell on the bed with the woman on top of me, chewing the flesh in her hungry mouth.
With the glimmer of the candlelight, an object shone from the woman's neck and I quickly swooped my arm to grab it as I realized that it was a key. I grabbed a nearby elephant statuette from the end table and knocked the monstrous lady, unlocked the door and gasped as I got out from that accursed room.

The pain lingered on my shoulder; sore and bleeding even against the piece of clothing that I covered over it---and it was hellish; stinging and throbbing.

What had I got myself into after I left the woman's room was a dilapidated Shakespearean theater; dark, dusty and crumbling.
I stood on the topmost set of a wide stairway, covered with a dusty and blackened carpet, between the rows of decrepit seats all pointed towards an old, once grandiose stage.
The whole theater hall was dark except for the stage that was lit by a spear of light on which the dust dances to and fro, emerging and fading from its bright white ray.
On the stage was a lone performer; a ballerina to be exact.
She was fair and white, radiant against the light, face was blooming with beauty and elegance; swaying, prancing and leaping gracefully with the wind.
It was as if I was bewitched by her graceful motion that flows gently like water and her hazel brown eyes enticed me as she met mine.
That moment I felt that my whole body twitched involuntarily and my feet somehow walked on its own towards the alluring woman----I was indeed bewitched.
My mind struggled to get back control of myself but the way that I was held, it was some kind of strange or some kind of black and ancient magic.
As I struggled, it was like a nightmare where you want to run away but you can't, for you hadn't complete control of your own body.
I managed to twitch my fingers on my own volition, though slowly like trudging against the current of a raging river; and as if with a heavy weight, I dragged my left hand inside my waist pocket for my pen.

As I grew much closer, the woman slowly sheds her color, fading into gray and gradually showing her true form which is horrendous and beyond recognition!
Her angelic face turned hideous; her over stretched mouth grew teeth as long as concrete nails and her arms also stretched beyond normal measure sprouting out long jagged claws.

She gathered together all of the claws on her right stretched arm, forming a hideous spike that pointed on my chest.
My death drew near at that time if it wasn't for my pen that pricked my thumb which brought all my senses back to my own control.
I spared no split second to leap off from the stage and dashed like Jesse Owens to the end of the opposite hall towards the door with the monstrous woman chasing after me like a giant deformed spider, crawling on its limbs.
I swiftly opened the door, slamming its opposite side to the wall and shut it with a loud bang as I went in.
The monstrous woman tried to break in, reaching out her long claws.
I gathered all of my wavering strength to completely close the damn door that turned out successfully, cutting off the claws that twitched like fish on the ground.

I expected that the room that I went in would be where I came from before all of these, but it turned out that it was another room where I haven't been before.
It seemed like an artist's studio of some sort; canvases scattered on the floor, paint cans everywhere together with easels and brushes and other tools of art.
But in the middle of the room were four painting tripods with canvases fixed on each one. Three of the canvases had already been painted upon which I could recognize as 'The Lonely Fisherman', 'The Mother and Child", and "The Graceful Lady", except for one---the portrait of Schuster himself which hadn't been finished yet. .
As I examined the artworks, footfalls echoed nearby, heading towards the room I am in.
I quickly hid, cramming myself in the shadows of a cabinet on the corner of the room just as about the man came in. At first glance, as I peaked slowly from the cabinet's concealment, I quickly recognized who the middle aged man with a balding silver hair was---I couldn't be wrong, for the man was indeed Maxwell Schuster himself, a brilliant not so well known painter from the age of Renaissance.

I watched everything as Schuster cut his arm and poured his blood in a silver chalice and pronounced words I can't imagine nor understand.
As he uttered the words, a sudden chill filled the room followed by a blinding light.
As I opened my eyes, a tall man with a red skin appeared in front of the painter who was kneeling on the ground as if a gesture of submission,

"Great one!" Schuster said, "Have mercy upon this poor man bowing before you! Give me the gift of the arts! Make me a god of the mediums and paraphernalia of the visual---I offer you my blood and my soul to make me manipulate the colors between reality and the voids of the unreal!"

The red-skinned man, magnificent in stature, stood stiffly and majestically in front of the prostrated painter and spoke with a deep, commanding voice,
" I heed your pleas very well and I accept your humiliation towards me.
I accept your offering to grant your wishes; but I'm afraid that that is not enough."

"Then tell me!" Schuster replied with a faltering voice, "What is it that I must do to suffice what you require?"

That moment almost shattered me to pieces----or I think it already did.
The red man turned his eyes towards the shadows that concealed me by the cabinet and as he waved his arm with surprisingly bony hands and long black nailed pointed fingers, the cabinet was shoved away with an unseen wind or force or something that revealed me barely without nowhere to run or hide,

"I want you to take that man!" The red man exclaimed with a thunderous voice that echoed through the room.
I began my desperate escape as Schuster pursuits me like a lunatic, clutching a chisel by his shivering hand.
I turned my head around as I made my almost hopeless escape to find a door or somewhere else to leave; but I could not find anything.
The last thing that I remembered was the sudden shocking strike of something metallic that pierced my back, taking off all my senses as I stumbled on the floor, my vision blurry and my head was somehow groggy; and standing on top of me, was the lunatic painter with a blood stained chisel grasped by his trembling hand that was now covered in blood---my blood I supposed.

Fortunately, as I regained all of my senses, I realized that everything is a terrible nightmare.
I was still in the utility room; slept on top of folded curtains and prop fabrics.
It was already morning; though I couldn't tell how much time passed since I slept; if it had just been for an hour or two, or maybe I've just slept all night long until sunrise.

But surprisingly, as I made it to the hall, Schuster's paintings were no longer there anymore, and standing by the opposite doorway is the gallery's manager with a disgruntled look on his face,

"Where have you been, Max? We're all looking for you this whole time!"
He said, but-----but wait!

"Say again?"

"Max, are you alright?" He asked me,
"The paintings, have you brought your paintings?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Max, we have thirty minutes left to display those paintings of yours! Are you really alright? You look... Tired."

"My name is not Max..."

"What? Have you been taking drugs lately?"

"My name is not... Max!"

"Hey, Mr. Schuster... Let go of my hand... M-mr. Schuster..."

"I'm not Max!

" M-Maxwell, you're hurting me..."

"I'm not Maxwell Schuster!!!"

"Stop strangling me... Please... I-I can't breathe!"

"Do you know who I am!? I AM NOT MAXWELL SCHUSTER!!! "

"Guards! G-guards!!! Mr. Schuster---I--I can't breathe!!!"
*******
"Maxwell Schuster, let go of him and put your hands up, now!"

"Mr. Schuster, please comply or we'll shoot. Put him down, now!"

"I~AM~NOT~MAXWELL ~FUCKING~SCHUSTER!!!!"
*******
"Shit, he snapped the manager's neck, Shoot him,"

"Sir, it's..."

"Shoot him, fucking shoot that lunatic!"

And with those words I lay still with my mind out of my head. I felt the bullets sizzled through my shoulder and chest until I came back to my senses. But the nightmare did not end up that day. Since then I was forced to believe that I am what they used to know me---the great Maxwell Schuster, a painter. And a lunatic.

End.