"Let me check. Four room two-bathroom. Plenty of space and some original brickwork.", the realtor said, holding an iPad with its screen gleaming beneath a spiderweb of cracks.

Bill ran his hand across the exposed studio brick walls and knocked a foot on the creaking hardwood that made a dense thump. A view out the three big-eyed windows in the living room stared at a congested parking lot of a shopping mall. Behind the mall, straddling the edge of a shopping center was a blank strip of dead and dying shrubbery, a godsend for some dog ready to drop a steaming one. "Is this really the best?" Bill turned around and slanted his brows. He couldn’t help but glance at the woman's stomach, fearing it would go into labor with a single sneeze and out would come a slippery noisy child, its big eyes ready to well up and commence one of mankind's greatest distractions. Bill turned and looked back out the window at the metal machination of suspended railway tracks where he almost knew he'd end up on someday. A nagging voice in his head persisted with the image of cold grey cubicles and a pair of eyes drowned in stock copy paper till they swelled in the socket. "I was looking for something with a view of the city. Or maybe the bay.” The winging voice subsided under the ambiance of someone laying on the horn and another willing to answer with their favorite American finger.

The bloated realtor forced a wince. "I'm sorry. The last one was the best view. But as you saw… Little room for your line of work and budget."

Bill rubbed his scruff. A cold grazed his forearm as he gripped the windowsill. Something felt right, he hardly wanted to admit it, but something about the place seemed familiarly tragic. "How old is the building? Is this an addition?" He was sure of the add-on, his old den of a bedroom growing up had the same breeze that turned the windows into white mirrors of crystallized breath, and that was on a good day.

"Actually, this is one of the oldest buildings on the upper west side of Manhattan. But don’t let that put you off. Due to the historical significance, the city has a requirement for its owner to maintain it at peak standards, or relinquish it to state. There are no additions. All piping, plumbing, and windows were just redone last summer. The only major damage in this area, that has long since been fixed, was a fire back in the seventeen hundreds thereabouts. Might get a slight smell in bad storms, but I doubt it."

"How are the neighbors? I need quiet. I can put up with the subway. No kids."

The woman gave a huge PR smile that made Bill crinkle his nose. "This is an end apartment, so you'd only be dealing with the older woman on the right. I can introduce you two…”

"No. It’s best if we keep to ourselves… I'll take it." Bill reached out to shake her hand when the lanky cold pale fingers curled out from the iPad and gave a limp lifeless squeeze. "One more thing, Miss. What do you know about the previous owners?"

The woman looked down at the shattered screen and flipped through. "Not much of note, they only had it for a week before leaving." She realized the starkness of her response and dropped the smile. 'God, I shouldn’t have told him that.'

"Any reason?"

"All I have here is-" The woman, Lidia, twisted her tongue in her mouth into a straw shape and bit down on it. She stared at the letter addressed to the landlord saying there were stains, worse than that, a smell… As if something was decaying in the walls. Lidia swallowed. "Family emergency. The mother of the husband had gone into a coma. The rest is a bit depressing."

Bill took one last look around, and the voice came back.

"Ol' Billy Boy. You'll be suckin' soggy cigarette butts and gnawing on rats in that there big city. Folk up in them tall cloud top buildings got their thumb on you, ain't no way yer' makin' it. Run home Billy Boy, run on home. They'll eat you alive!"

Bill gritted his teeth. 'I'll show you.'

==========

A couch gave the finishing touch of the night as moonlight and dim city glow cut through the blinds like cheese graters came in full force. There was a tv mounted to the wall on an expensive extending arm to peer at it from any room. Cabinets filled to the brim with snacks, fridge sparce with some canned Budweiser, and those sweet Peanut Butter Tasty Cakes all lined up like soldiers off to war.

Bill could hear a nagging in his head.

 "And soon enough you'll make it a sty! Worthless pig!" They seemed far off and disconnected. "Get a real job!"

Bill smiled. "Yeah… How'd that work out for ya?" As he said it aloud his shoulders pulled tight, and he felt a little stupid. The clinical light of the fridge bore no sympathy for the wide expanse of nothingness it stood guard over. Bill squinted and reached in for the last of his celebratory beer, but couldn’t help staring at how little he had in there. He heard his phone buzz and freed himself from the morning plans consisting of a roll of three twenties and a shopping cart, that’s without the walk in the fall weather, coatless. He grabbed one of them Tasty Cakes and sat down on the couch with his phone in hand.

1001001001-1001 "Hey, it’s your neighbor!" Read a text message.

Bill grumbled to himself and bit into some chocolate. 'What an odd number.' He checked his emails… 'Still nothing, always nothing, but soon… Soon it would all be different. Just a bit of patience.'  Bill watched Jimmy Fallon bloating Hollywood rumors like an actress’s fat fake breasts, and making sure to put himself in the clear of it all as if he was some holier than thou priest before welcoming on an upstart artist. Bill scoffed and leaned back.

"Here's some of the art I did," Jimmy said, showing a stick figure.

"You might just run me out of business." The artist laughed and went on with some drama before having his latest breakout-hit canvas shown to the audience. Just a bunch of colors and incomprehensible late-night cocaine-brain scheme to sell some meaning with it. "When putting this piece together, I really wanted to emphasize the desperation of the human condition. The subtlety of how the machine of the country is eating itself to death."

"You’d think Christ came down and painted it himself.” Bill shut off the tv, and walked to a studio room with an easel and canvas half covered by a sheet. He stared into the grim night haze of his muse. It formulated, the curves, the strokes of color, the intricate- His phone buzzed.

It was 1001001001-1001 he now assigned NEIGHBOR to in his contacts. "I have something for you to paint. Won’t you paint it for me? A beautiful portrait."

Bill awaited a picture of the weirdo's penis or something more grotesque. But it was left with three dots typing away. "Creep. How'd he-" Bill's attention snapped to a hole behind the easel in the brick wall. He went over and rubbed his finger across. "Must'a been some bolt er' something." He'd seen his dad on construction. Momentary fixtures placed so they could maneuver around the structure were normal, but it was never impossible for one to be forgotten, especially in a building as old as this. Bill shook his head and went to bed with his phone on silent.

The hole appeared on the back of the canvas.

=========

Bill woke up early and went to his canvas, he checked the hole in the wall again out of curiosity. It was gone. Bill chuckled, 'Must be losing my mind. There 'aint no hole. There never was. It was one of them specks I got floating around. Ma always said I was sittin' too close to the tv anyway.'  Bill shook his head and pulled off the sheet from his muse.

The once empty canvas had a slight discoloration, a topcoat… A yellowing from age or smoke was the best guess.

"I just bought this." Bill mulled over his lips. He was ready to pin them down with his teeth, but took a breath, calmed, then took a pencil and got to work laying a foundation for his vision. Each curve and etch brought out a skeleton of a wide mountain range with a log house. Bill thought back to his childhood playing in the fields, drinking out of the hose, all stuff sealed in a timeless airless Ziplock bag in his head. In his deepest memories even, the smells lingered still.

The phone buzzed. "It’s getting hot in here, Bill. Will you let me out?"

Bill gritted his teeth and had half of mind to storm over to the old ladies’ apartment and bang on the door. "Don’t contact me again!" He sent back. Bill got up and went for a beer, yet to his soundless dismay, he'd forgotten to go to the corner store.

Something in the canvas, an insignificant little sketch, hid in the high grass with two pinhole eyes watching… Something curious, maybe a mistake, or a smudge of the thumb. Or something…

=========

Bill laid in bed with eyes darting around the room. He got the quiet he wanted, not even the rushing train broke past his solitude. He settled into his sheets, making sure of the time, 1:30am, and put out the light.

The walls of the bedroom were scattered with older works. Canvases never to see the light of day, but still carry a nostalgic gleam in them. Oil, stipple, watercolor. One was of a barn full of grazing Morgan horses. Another, far larger, was his favorite, Cristina's World with the 1940's dressed girl looking toward a house. A final one at the head of the bed was a woman sitting in a chair. Her hair long and lush black and skin pale in contrast.

Bill emptied his lungs in a bellowing sigh that hung in the quiet like a hammer. While he awaited his mind to drown itself in dreams, he thought of what the realtor with the huge stomach had said. "A fire," he mumbled. He imagined lavish ladies in regal attire and the men sporting gross white wigs down their shoulders, probably smelling of sweat and yellowing at the base.

A breath. Or was it? A faint moan of the building, or board unevenly pressed.

Bill opened one eye and looked at the half open door to the kitchen. The crack in the caramel white door was as thin as a thread. Bill couldn’t remember closing it, or opening it. He rolled his lips in murky dehydrated spit and closed his eyes. As a boy, things that went bump in the night were his dog struggling with arthritis going up the steps, and the farmhouse swaying in the wind. 'It's an old building.'

A breath. Closer. Far closer. It was right overhead. It surely was. It had a dry slide. More of a breath in than out, cutting across a sandy tongue. A desperate gasp more like. No, no it was through teeth. Clenched teeth making a wheezing.

Bill's heart drove him up and scanned the room. Nothing. 'Just the train. I bet I left a window open.'  Bill got up and turned on the light. Hazy eyes grasped the clock at around 1:38am. He walked over to the door and peeked out. 'Bill, yer' just gettin' the heebie-jeebies.', he told himself. 'I shouldn’t watch those Twilight Zone reruns before bed. Freaking Talky Tina doll.' Bill rubbed his fa-

The light turned off… The breathing was back and growing closer from the bed. Under? It moved behind.

Bill froze. As the breathing began to float closer he could taste the sweat on his lips. He braced for a long, lanky claw to curl around his shoulder. He could almost see it twitching with excitement to scatter his blood down its white nails. A creature baring needle teeth heaving against its withered body. Bill turned around.

The woman in the painting was facing the wall now. The face remained obscure, but something dripped down her cheek.

Bill checked under the bed, but not even the old white shoeboxes could be seen. He reached up and flicked the light back on.

The underside of the bed twirled with dust particles landing on old clothes and missing socks only on the second day.

Bill stood up. 'Losing it. You’re losing it.'  His eyes met the painting of the horse farm barn and he felt tears well, goosebumps raised his hair in a primal plea.

The horses were dead. A smear, like someone sliding their thumb across wet paint ran through the field. The smear went from the edge of the painting and onto the plain cream walls, then to the Cristina's World frame. The woman was gone. Where she had been was replaced by parted grass patches running to the edge, and then to the painting behind him.

The lady turned away from Bill in a split-second glance.

Bill fell back with his head smacking the wall. "Mom."

The portrait of his mother remained still as when he painted it.

The phone buzzed. "Paint me. Paint the portrait.”

=========

Bill opened his laptop. The horrible night had quickly faded off into obscurity once an email entitled 'ATTENTION MR. DREWS,' came in from his latest submission. His chest rose and his hand shivered to click the mouse to open it.

'Dear Mr. Bill Drews. We interviewed several candidates for The American Art Association, and we’ve decided to move forward with another candidate.

Although your interview demonstrated your credentials and experience well, this kind of art is best suited to small commission business or family. Perhaps in the future when you have improved, we can make another submission, but at this time we ask that you please do not send us any more of your work. Thank you so much for your interest in joining The American Art Association and taking the time to meet our interview team. We wish you the best of luck with your job search. Once again, thank you for your interest in our company.'

The heat on Bill's neck began to cook hotter than a stovetop. His forehead scrunched and eyebrows bent, striking his brain with a headache with the intensity of a railroad pin sliding in his temples. Bill's fingers bloodied as the glass from the screen cracked and his hands folded in the laptop's face till it shut off and busted the battery. Bill felt every pore flood with sweat and throbbing agony.

"You'll never be anything."

Bill stood up and threw his laptop at the portrait of his mother. "Shut up! Shut up!" He tore off his paintings from the walls and crushed them under his feet. The shaking in his legs threw him to the ground. "I could never paint!"

The phone buzzed. "Paint me, Bill."

Bill stood up and walked to his studio room. He picked up his paints and brushes and threw them across the room. "What do you want from me?! Why can't I paint? Leave me alone!" Bill tore off the sheet from his canvas he'd left alone since that day.

A figure stood in the middle, almost halfway to the front of the painting.

Bill ran to the fridge and took out his beer bottles laughing. The lump in his throat grew to the point he could only strain to breathe as he threw the bottles all over the room. "It doesn’t matter! None of it does! Isn’t that, right?" He stumbled into the art room, cutting his knees, not even noticing. He stopped.

'P A I N T ME' was written in red across the top, with the figure taking up the canvas.

The phone buzzed. "I can make you famous. All you have to do… Is let me out. Paint me." The figure, faceless now and waiting on the canvas, brought a warm breeze with it into the room. One that stank of burnt hair and charred flesh. "I am your muse."

=========

"What was your inspiration for this piece?", an interviewer asked, holding out her mic.

Bill smiled. "When I was young, I had been in a bad apartment fire. I survived, but not without scars. The others were worse off. I won’t ruin the meaning of the painting, but fire is a key part in the symbolism."

Others drew their microphones to Bill. "Mr. Drews. With such a sudden and enormous presence in the art community, you had to have a lot of practice. How long did this piece take you?"

Bill laughed and looked into the camera. "Four hundred years in the making. At least it felt like it."

The camera turned to the painting on the Smithsonian wall. It depicted something within a raging stylized fire. A face tormented by burns, its flesh flaking off, a head warped in an inhuman shape.

A woman reached out her handkerchief to Bill. "You’re um…"

Bill shook his head and reached under his eyes. "Will you excuse me." Bill walked to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. The skin around his eyes had sagged and lips dragged with inky black flesh beneath. THE THING took out it’s phone and saw a text from Bill pop up.

"LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT! ITS HOT IN HERE!"

The Thing deleted the contact and melded its face back in shape like clay. "This is what you wanted." The Thing walked out of the bathroom and glanced at the painting surrounded by news crews. "You'll be remembered forever."