The Unfinished Stroke

In the heart of the old city, nestled between cobblestone streets and the scent of rain-soaked stone, stood a tiny art shop named Echoes & Ink. Few people noticed it, though it had been there for as long as anyone could remember. The artist who owned it, Roger Sullivan, was a recluse — his wiry frame often seen bent over canvases, his hands perpetually stained with paint. But those who ventured inside spoke in hushed tones of something peculiar about his art.

They said the paintings whispered.

Not in words, not in anything a sane man could decipher, but in feelings — memories that weren’t theirs, emotions that had no source. A painting of a violinist might fill a viewer with a deep sorrow they’d never known. A stormy sea could make a landlocked traveler taste salt on their lips. Some swore Roger's paintings breathed, their colors shifting ever so slightly when no one was looking.

And yet, few bought his work. It wasn’t that his art lacked beauty. Quite the opposite — it was too real, too powerful. People left Echoes & Ink shaken, staring at their hands as if they'd held something not meant for this world.

Roger knew why.

His paintings weren’t just paintings. They were memories — stolen from the unseen spaces between time and dream.

The Gift and the Curse

Roger had discovered his ability as a boy. He was seven when he first painted a dying sparrow he found beneath his mother’s rose bushes. He hadn't meant to capture more than its shape, but when his brush left the canvas, the bird let out a final, ghostly chirp. His mother had thrown the painting into the fireplace, murmuring prayers.

He learned, over time, that whatever he painted with true intent — true focus — held a fragment of something real. The laughter of a child. The lingering grief of a widow. The longing of a man who never returned home.

But there was a price.

For every piece of life he captured, a part of himself faded. His hair silvered early. His skin, once warm, grew pale and cool. And worst of all, the paintings whispered to him too — sometimes calling him by name, other times begging him to finish stories he could not remember starting.

He tried to ignore them. Until the woman arrived.

The Stranger and the Unfinished Canvas

She stepped into the shop just before closing, her presence unsettlingly quiet. She was neither young nor old, her face oddly familiar, yet Roger was certain they had never met. Her dress was a deep shade of wine, her dark hair tucked beneath a wide-brimmed hat.

“I need you to paint something for me,” she said, her voice smooth as river stones.

Roger hesitated. He rarely took commissions anymore.

“I don’t do portraits.”

The woman smiled. “I don’t want a portrait.”

She reached into her coat and withdrew a small, folded note. She placed it on the counter and slid it toward him with two fingers.

Roger unfolded the paper.

It was blank.

He frowned. “Is this a joke?”

The woman’s eyes gleamed. “You’ve painted stolen moments, echoes of the past. I want you to paint a memory that does not yet exist.”

Roger felt something shift in the air, an unseen weight pressing against his ribs. “I can’t paint the future.”

“Not the future,” the woman corrected. “A possibility. A moment waiting to be chosen.”

Roger hesitated. He had never tried. He wasn’t even sure how. The past, after all, left traces — remnants that could be gathered, molded. But a future unformed? How did one steal from what did not yet breathe?

But something in her voice pulled at him. A curiosity. A knowing.

“Why me?” he asked.

The woman’s lips curled into something like a smile. “Because you already have.”

She pointed.

Roger turned.

His breath caught in his throat.

At the far end of the shop, in the dimmest corner where unfinished works gathered dust, stood a canvas he did not remember painting. The image was faint, as if still forming — brushstrokes uncertain, colors wavering.

And in its half-made haze, Roger saw a woman.

This woman.

The Painting That Watched

Roger's pulse pounded. He approached the canvas slowly, his fingers itching with the same need that overtook him when a piece begged to be finished. But this one… this one was different.

The woman in the painting was reaching for something. Her hand, still a smear of unshaped paint, extended toward the edges of the canvas — toward something just beyond sight.

“I didn’t paint this,” Roger murmured.

“And yet, here it is,” the woman said.

Roger turned to face her, but she was no longer near the counter. She stood just behind him now, gazing at the painting with an unreadable expression.

“You must finish it,” she whispered.

Roger swallowed. He wanted to refuse. Every instinct screamed at him to burn the canvas, to erase it before it unraveled something he was not meant to see.

But his hands were already reaching for his brush.

The moment the bristles touched the canvas, something shifted. The world around him softened, blurred, as if he were falling into the painting itself.

The woman’s form became clearer, her fingers outstretched toward the void. And suddenly, he knew — he was not painting a possibility.

He was painting a choice.

His own.

The longer he painted, the colder he felt. His breath came shallow, his vision tinged at the edges with shadows. He was pouring himself into the canvas, more than ever before.

And then—

The woman in the painting moved.

Her fingers curled around something unseen.

Roger gasped as the brush fell from his numb fingers. The painting trembled — colors twisting, bleeding, solidifying — until the woman’s face turned fully toward him.

She was smiling.

Not at him.

At something just behind him.

The Echo’s End

A breath whispered at his ear.

Not the woman’s.

Something else.

Roger turned, but the shop was empty. The woman in the wine-colored dress was gone.

He looked back at the painting. The image was finished now, vivid and unchanging. The woman stood at the threshold of something vast — a doorway painted in hues of midnight and ember, her fingers curled around its edge. And beyond that doorway, a world Roger did not recognize.

A world that should not exist.

His heart pounded. He took a step back.

And then, he saw it.

In the reflection of the glass frame, standing just behind him—

A hand.

Not his own.

The shop went dark.

=======

Echoes & Ink closed its doors the next morning.

The locals whispered of strange noises in the night, of the flickering candlelight that had been seen through the windows long after the shop should have been empty. But when the landlord finally entered, the shop was dust-covered and abandoned, as if untouched for years.

Only one thing remained.

A single painting, resting on the counter.

It depicted a man, mid-stroke, painting something unseen. His eyes were wide, his lips slightly parted, as if he had just realized he was not alone.

No one knew what became of Roger Sullivan.

But those who looked too long at the painting swore they could hear, faintly beneath the layers of paint—

A whisper.

Calling a name that no one remembered.