Crimson

A New Discovery

Marcus frantically knocked on the door to Lupe's large, classic Californian bungalow. Blinds covered the old window taking up a third of the front door's real estate. The door shook hard due to its age.
"Lupe! Lupe!"
He jiggled the door handle and pushed against the door. It didn't budge. He grew frustrated and walked away. He looked out into the street to make sure no one was looking.
He walked back up to the door and took off his sweater, wrapping it around his hand. He cocked his arm back and smashed it through the window of the door, unlocking it from the outside and putting his sweater back on.
Entering the house, he was hit with a wall of stench and sound. The stench, of something rotted, and the sound of flies and various bugs. A small cloud of flies congregated around the couch of the main room in the house. He held a rag over his mouth and walked into the living room.
On the living room couch, sat the slightly bloated, naked frame of Lupe's body. Cuts and folded over bits of flesh hung all over her body. Her face looked up to the ceiling, her lips curled into a dirty, secretive smile. He looked at her with a frown. He picked a brush up off the ground and tossed it at her body. He huffed and walk around the table, and sat next to her body. He brought his eyes up to the canvas and stared into it. He leaned forward and gazed at the colors, red in various shades. The canvas was sticky and was meticulously textured. He looked back at the corpse of the woman next to him and then back at the canvas.
And smiled.

When the police arrived at the scene, the painting was removed and placed in evidence lockup, away from prying eyes. Marcus had taken plenty of photos before he left, as proof of Lupe's death and most importantly, as proof of the "masterpiece" painted amidst its creators suicide. When developing the photos, the young man noticed something odd. The painting in the prints did not resemble the horrible thing sitting in front of the woman's corpse that fateful morning. Marcus commissioned an artist to recreate the painting in the photograph, and attempted to sell it, but it was deemed too gruesome for the fine art world and too well-produced for the shock art world. The painter, one Lowery Horton, later walked in front of a bus on Adobe Court in Lower East Cove and was killed instantly. Marcus eventually gave away his copy of the painting, and sat down on his couch with the barrel of a hunting shotgun in his teeth. He had also accrued some debt with his enigmatic employer and decided to take the easy way out. The paintings and their attempted reproductions have been lost to time, finding their way into the homes and businesses of the citizens of East Cove and bringing death and destruction with them.