Fabulous

Fame was something that many people hoped to achieve, they desired it more than anything else in this world but very few achieved the much coveted fame, the rest just kept wondering how it would be like to relish in fame.

But David was different, he had achieved fame at the young age of twenty eight, his portraits were the talk of the town but his fame brought him no joy, it was the least of his concerns, he was bothered about a much bigger thing.

His work had become monotonous despite other's praising him nonstop, he didn't find anything spectacular about his work, it bored him and no matter how many portraits he painted of celebrities, he found all of them to be the same boring and dull.

He thought maybe the style was the issue, he had gotten bored of the usual style that he used and he should try a different style but despite trying various other styles, nothing seemed to satisfy him.

He wished for his work to become less boring and more exciting and although he didn't hope that his wish would come true, there was no harm in wishing.

To his surprise his wish was answered sooner than he had expected, he painted a portrait of the beautiful actress Claire in her favorite red dress just as she asked but a week later, she came back to him horrified.

Her red dress was covered in blood stains and she couldn't explain it, David was puzzled and as he glanced at the portrait, he noticed the dress in the portrait was covered in blood stains too!

He didn't know what was happening but decided maybe painting over the blood stains would fix it, he quickly got to work but to his horror discovered that no matter how many times he painted over the blood stains, they wouldn't disappear!

He was horrified but a part of him was excited too, his painting was no longer boring and dull, there was an otherworldly beauty to it, that he couldn't quite explain but it thrilled him.

Claire with David's permission decided to post online about the bizarre incident, her post soon blew up all over the internet and David was getting a whole lot of new customers.

He tried to hide his excitement but couldn't control it as he sat down to paint another portrait, he was excited what would happen next, what would turn up in the portrait.

But his excitement died down when nothing happened for a month, it seemed the incident with claire was a one time thing, it was frightening and unusual but maybe it had nothing to do with David's painting skills.

His disappointment led him to quit painting altogether, it came as a shock to many of his fans but he just couldn't find his inspiration and was too tired to continue.

He was thinking of switching to a different career when one of his customers texted him that he had developed purple rashes and his portrait had the same rashes too but the thing that was the strangest of all was that his portrait had developed purple rashes before he got them.

David couldn't believe it and at first he saw it as a prank but as he met the man and saw him covered all over in very painful purple rashes, his mind reeled with shock, bizarre things were happening with his portraits and he didn't know why they were happening!

The man wasn't the last one, weird and horrifying things started happening with a lot of customers, some developed pink patches over their body, others became ghastly pale, while others even reported green dots spreading all over their body.

David was trending in all of the search engines, media swarmed his house, he had become more famous than ever, some people called him the 'demon of portraits', while others sympathized with him.

He didn't know what to make of the situation he found himself in, he was perplexed and lost and although he hated badly to admit it, he was quite scared with himself, he didn't want to hurt anyone and had started feeling his paintings were cursed.

He even went as far as consulting shamans and many occult practitioners but they were of no help, no one could understand nor explain the weird effect of the portraits, some said it was cursed but didn't go further than that.

In his desperation, David found himself nearly scammed by a conartist, he claimed to have the solution to David's problem and David had initially felt relieved, only to get suspicious when the conartist demanded one hundred thousand dollars as advance payment and kept on changing the dates and area where he would conduct the ritual.

As David's fame spread far and wide, he began receiving very different kind of customers, they would send him a photo of the person they wanted him to paint a portrait of and ask him to paint them at the earliest but would give no further details nor would specify any style.

It started with Linda, she approached him through social media and at first David thought she was a genuine customer but as he finished the portrait and delivered it to the specified address, he saw that Linda had deleted her account, it was strange but he dismissed it as a coincidence.

It was only when he read in the news about a girl being covered in black pus filled spots on her body and that her portrait had developed the same and it was painted by him, that he began to connect the dots and realized Linda had asked him to paint a portrait of someone she hated.

Soon such requests would fill his social media and he had a hard time differentiating between genuine customers and those that had malicious reasons, he thought of quitting work altogether but he was put off by the idea, he hoped the issue with his portraits would resolve soon.

As the days went by, more strange customers began approaching him, some had morbid fascination and others wanted him to try painting animal portraits, to see whether the 'curse' worked on them or not.

There were also many influencers, vloggers and documentary producers who were fascinated by his strange portraits and wanted to cover about him in detail. His social media was filled with a new case of someone developing a rash or even more grotesque pus filled spots or something more painful everyday and he couldn't stop feeling guilty.

As he lay on the bed thinking of how he got here, he couldn't help but think that he had brought misery to so many people, he didn't intend to but he had ended up ruining lives and the more he thought, the more he regretted his wish.