His words still hung in the air, heavy and suffocating, coating the back of my throat like the scent of turpentine and stale linseed oil that permeated his studio.
He had just confessed everything, his obsession, his madness and the way he had been trying to capture my soul in his studio for months.
I should have been terrified. I should have run but as I looked at him, really looked at him, I didn't see a monster.
I saw a man unraveling, his dark eyes wide and unblinking, pupils blown so wide they swallowed the iris.
He looked wild, like a creature backed into a corner, and the raw intensity of it sparked a fire in my gut that burned away all reason.
We were standing in the narrow, cluttered alcove behind a massive stack of stretched canvases.
It was a hidden, forgotten corner of th
