[CW11] The Red Paintress

Preface

Content warning for violence, mild descriptions of gore and blood.

The Red Paintress

It is said that, in these streets devoid of law or god, one should never get out at night, should never wander alone. It is said that whoever wanders out alone at night is at risk.

At risk of becoming part of one of her paintings.

The walls in the streets are covered in dirt and graffiti, it is like an infestation. When the streets become devoid of order it creeps in, the paint lurks from wall to wall. It moves in the darkness of the night, spreads from building to building covering each and all of them. When the light recedes the darkness and rot creeps in. For the longest time for the people in the street this was the worst of it. Thieves roaming the streets, gangs establishing their own orders, the walls covered in the signs of criminals and desperate people crying out into the void.

That was, until one crimson morning.

When the sun rose over the waking street, it for the first time bathed one of her paintings in a shimmering glow. It was like nothing that had ever been painted there before. It was like all of the other paintings receded, made space for it, were repelled by it or scared by it. A large white circle on the building so immaculate it was like the building was never sprayed on before in the first place. On it were only two colors dancing on the canvas.
A charcoal black for outlines and for shadows, and for highlights a haunting hue of red. A warm and thick shade that unlike the black was not neatly staying in lines. Wherever it stained the pristine white wall it would slowly drip and ooze down.
It was a white circle, a canvas on the wall so bright and white like the wall wasn’t made of stone or brick, of concrete or wood, but of fabric so perfect it would invite any artist to fill it. A feat on its own. But on top of it was a majestic horse, in the deepest black a painter could find. It was on its back hooves and its proud head raised high into the sky. It cast a shadow onto the wall behind it and its expression was that of fury. It’s hooves that were raised into the air were drenched in this deep red that was flowing down the wall and dripping onto the street. More of it was oozing from the mouth of the horse and from its eyes. Because it dripped from the eyes it looked like it was crying, but it wasn’t sad — it was furious with anger.
Just at the base of the buildings wall was the source of the red “paint”. Two corpses of locally known thieves cut up, with their guts hanging out and their throats slit. Next to them three buckets full of their blood. Their skin was slit and their bodies must have hung above the buckets for a while to collect as much of their blood as possible. Once the first wind of the morning went through the street the stench of death was carried through it and awoke the homeless and the early commuters to the scene.
Authorities were called, but there was no authority left in the street. Gangs — colleagues and rivals — showed up to hunt for clues and remove the corpses, but there was nothing for them to find.

This was the first, of many paintings.

Today it is said that at night a woman roams the street. She is of little statue but that is a farce. The devil hiding in small shoes so it can ambush the bold. At first many thought she was a force for good, a self righteous liberator that would take out the trash. However that sentiment quickly turned when paintings showed up without thieves or scum to their base, but random passerby.
It is said that if she would see you committing an atrocity, if she catches you lying or stealing or breaking property you were sure to become her subject of the night. But the paintress needs to paint; she paints almost every night. In the absence of a justified target she will take whoever she can find. So at night nobody in their right mind would leave their house now.
There have been people that tried to stop her, gangs that wanted to protect their territory, friends and family of subjects of her paintings. None of them ever got their hands on her. The few that were unlucky to get their wish granted and crossed her path ended up becoming yet more paintings. Some tried to find out where she would get her white and black paint, it must have been of high quality. But her supplier was never found.
She wanders the street at night like a ghost, nobody knows where she comes from or where she goes or what she wants. Nobody sees her paint and survive. Only a few ever saw her fight someone in the street to extract new supplies from them, few saw her walking away from her paints. Nobody ever saw her face, she is always dressed in black with mask covering her face. The only thing that can alert you to her presence at night could be her clothes — if she already had gotten her hands on paint and had stained them in the deep red she so adores. But most of the time, she was as elusive as the shadows, you would not have seen or heard her approach — until it was too late.

Over time, the street ran out of people brave enough to face her.

The other paintings receded more and more. where previously light was their enemy and dark the time for them to spread — now nothing was safe. At day prying eyes would keep the murals from moving, and at night nobody dare move in the shadows for as the shadow might swallow them. So the street, house after house, became covered in a sick white full of various black and red paintings.
Gang symbols, warnings, expressions, squiggles, names — all made space for the white void that rampaged through the street. Wall after wall became purged and marked. Every morning the street would reek of fresh death on top of the old that would rise from the paintings. Nobody ever musters the strength anymore to even clean the blood of the wall. Few have done it in the past and they would quickly disappear. Unlike the usual, they would not become material for new paintings… they were just gone. Nobody ever found even a single one of them.
So with time the entire street would become covered in these paintings. Horses, soldiers, children with balloons, trees, spears — there was no reason to what came next and what appeared next to each other. Some think it is just a sick woman living out her madness, that these were all just the things she liked to paint that day. Others tried to decipher a sort of meaning, became mad with finding a message between the lines of charcoal and blood. Yet more just despaired.
Previously people already wanted to leave, with crime rampant and law absent. But now… now people flee irregardless of means. House after house gets abandoned and the street is loosing all its life. Previously it was sick, people were scared and the walls were covered in colors hiding the brick underneath.
Now the houses are empty, the walls are white and covered in coal and blood. If the street was sick before, now it is dying. It is being killed.

Every other night a few people die and a new painting manifests.

Day after day people either leave or become painting supplies. The wind hurling leaves through the street and the stench of death is slowing down, thieves start to starve and crime stops paying. House after house turns pale and when even the criminals don’t dare step a foot on the street at night, who should even be willing to step on it in the day?
Night after night corpses pile up and slowly the anxiety grows: what happens when the street runs out of bodies? Out of walls to paint?
So the rumors of the red paintress have spread far and wide through the city — everyone fears where she will go when the street is empty and the walls are all painted.

[CW11] The Red Paintress