Art Is Life (standard:horror, 1354 words)
Author: Alexander C. Quinn	Added: May 21 2002	Views/Reads: 3943/2343	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Phil recieves a large inheritance, but gets more than he bargained for.

Art Is Life by Alexander C. Quinn 

Phil was tired when he received the call. He had a long day at work and
all he wanted to do was to enjoy the simple pleasure of watching 
television. All day the warm, comfortable embrace of his soft leather 
recliner chair had been beckoning him. 

The call was from a lawyer on behalf of his father. John Bisset died
Friday night of a self inflicted gunshot wound to the head. This was a 
great shock to Phil, since he hadn't heard anything of his father since 
shortly after he was born. 

Phil was raised by his over protective, over bearing mother. He was an
only child except for his twin brother who died only a few hours after 
they were born. Both children were born six weeks premature at a mere 
three pounds each. They were immediately put into incubators with 
oxygen tubes pumping life into their tiny, weak lungs. Phil survived 
while his brother died with the collapse of his lungs.  Phil, of 
course, doesn't remember any of this, but his mother told him the story 
repeatedly in her "you should be grateful to be alive" speech. 

On the phone the lawyer told Phil that his father had left him
everything he owned in his will including twenty thousand dollars and a 
house in Nashville, Tennessee. This was a great opportunity for Phil to 
change his life and get out of his usual grind of stocking car parts in 
a warehouse. 

On Sunday morning Phil left Ohio to head down south and start his new
life. He would be back to get his belongings after he meets the lawyer 
and settles into his new house. This made up for the pain of not having 
a father and now the fatherless childhood he suffered for twenty-six 
years seemed like a worthy sacrifice. 

He met the lawyer at the house, signed the papers, and relaxed on his
new living room couch. The house was a big three bedroom, two story 
home built in the nineteen twenties. It was furnished nicely and the 
basement had just been renovated. The basement was empty with a fresh 
cement floor. It looked clean and new except for a bubbled up part of 
cement in the middle of the floor. Phil didn't spend much time looking 
around down there because the lawyer informed him that is where his 
father killed himself. 

The worst thing about the house was the lack of water pressure, but that
was no big deal, Phil would just have to take longer showers. He would 
eventually have to use some of the inheritance money to fix the 
plumbing. During his first night he heard loud rumbling sounds coming 
from the basement. The only conclusion Phil could think of was that the 
old pipes were making the sounds and eventually would break. 

That first night at the new place Phil couldn't sleep at all, he would
just lay on his father's bed staring at the giant painting hanging on 
the bedroom wall. It was a spiralling black hole with red, blue, and 
grey all melting into black. If Phil stared at the picture for few 
minutes he could swear that he was falling into the hole. 

The picture made Phil extremely uncomfortable and when he finally fell
asleep he had a nightmare of falling down into a black hole. The 
painting disturbed Phil so much that he woke up at five o'clock in the 
morning covered in cold sweat, took the picture off the wall and put it 
down in the basement where he wouldn't have to see it. 

Unable to sleep for the rest of the morning, he was extremely tired on
Monday. He spent the entire next day on his fathers couch watching his 
fathers t.v. Around two o'clock he ordered a pizza and after eating 
about half he finally fell asleep on the couch. As soon as his eyes 
shut he started falling into the black hole again. Spinning as he is 
falling, it doesn't seem to stop and there doesn't seem to be any 
bottom. This time, however, he goes further down with his flesh burning 
off his bones and blood draining out of his eyes. This nightmare was so 
real that he woke up screaming. 

Somehow that picture got into his head so much that it was haunting him,
driving him crazy. He needed to get it out of the house. Phil went 
downstairs to the basement where the pipes were rumbling and banging 
louder than before. He grabbed the painting and brought it outside. It 


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