Chapter 6: A Canvas of Flesh

For a frozen eternity, the two Alexes stood locked in a tableau of impossible horror. One of flesh and blood, clutching a real steel knife; the other of oil and canvas, holding a glistening, painted blade. The only sound was the frantic drumming of Alex’s own heart, the only smell the suffocating, chemical fog of turpentine that rolled off his monstrous twin.

Then the painting moved.

It didn't lunge like a man. There was no shift of weight, no bunching of muscles. It glided forward, a silent, fluid motion that was utterly unnatural, as if a figure were being dragged across a frame. The smirk on its wetly-painted face remained fixed, a permanent expression of chilling confidence.

Alex reacted on pure instinct, a jolt of primal fear overriding the paralysis that had gripped him. He stumbled backward, swinging his chef's knife in a wild, clumsy arc. The doppelgänger was faster. It didn't try to parry; its own painted knife sliced through the air, its movements unnervingly smooth.

The tip of the painted blade grazed his forearm. The sensation was bizarre, a jarring mix of sensations that his brain struggled to process. It was cold and wet, like being slapped with a paint-soaked rag, but simultaneously, a sharp, stinging pain erupted along the point of contact, as if he’d been cut by glass.

He cried out, stumbling back until he hit the wall, his eyes wide with shock and pain. He looked at his arm. A streak of shimmering, silver paint, thick and oily, marred his skin. It looked like a prank, like stage makeup. But the pain screaming up his arm was terrifyingly real. As he watched, horrified, the silver paint began to dry and flake away. And underneath, a thin, perfectly straight line of angry red appeared on his flesh. Blood welled up, tracing the path the painted knife had taken.

The rules of this nightmare became brutally, undeniably clear. The painting could hurt him. Its unreality could manifest as his reality. Its artifice could draw his blood.

The doppelgänger raised its blade again, its two black, glossy eyes fixed on him. There was no anger in them, no passion. Only the cold, detached focus of an artist finishing a piece. And Alex was the final canvas.

A surge of pure, undiluted terror gave him strength. This thing wasn't just going to kill him; it was going to un-paint him from the world. With a desperate roar, he pushed off the wall and charged, abandoning all sense of self-preservation. He swung his knife not with skill, but with the frantic energy of a cornered animal.

His steel knife met the painted one. The sound was not the clean, ringing clang of metal on metal. It was a thick, wet, scraping sound, like a spatula being dragged through a mound of clay. A glob of silver paint flew from the doppelgänger’s blade and splattered against the wall.

The creature was impossibly strong. It pushed him back, its movements fluid and relentless. It didn't breathe, it didn't tire. It was a machine of pigment and malice. They grappled, and Alex’s arm brushed against its hoodie-clad torso. The fabric felt coarse and stiff, like raw canvas, and a smear of damp grey paint came away on his skin. The smell was overpowering, a toxic cloud that made his head spin and his eyes water.

It twisted, and its painted knife swept toward his side. Alex tried to pull away, but he was too slow. The blade sliced into his shoulder. The pain was a blinding, white-hot agony. He screamed, a raw, shredded sound, and fell to one knee. He looked at the new wound. It was deeper this time. A thick smear of black and crimson paint clung to his hoodie, and beneath it, he could feel the warm, sticky flow of his own blood.

Through the haze of pain, he saw the doppelgänger raise its arm for a final, decisive blow, aiming for his throat. The smirk on its face seemed to widen, a grotesque caricature of victory.

That smirk. The same knowing, triumphant smirk that had appeared on the canvas after it had returned from the dumpster. It was the expression of the entity that had tormented him, studied him, and was now about to erase him.

Rage, pure and absolute, erupted through the fear and pain. He would not die for this thing’s art project. He would not be its masterpiece.

With a final, desperate burst of strength, he surged upward from his kneeling position. He didn't aim for the creature's weapon, or its head, or its chest. What was there to hit? There were no organs, no bones. There was only the medium.

He slashed wildly at its torso, at the canvas of its being.

The effect was instantaneous. His knife, which had skidded off the painted surface before, now met a different kind of resistance. It was the taut, yielding tear of thick fabric. A long, vertical gash appeared on the creature's grey hoodie, but no blood welled from it. Instead, the illusion of a solid body began to break down.

Through the tear, Alex saw not flesh, but the raw, unprimed back of a canvas. The thick paint around the wound began to run, the formless colors of the background—the murky grey and bruised purple—bleeding out from within.

The doppelgänger faltered. For the first time, its fluid movements became jerky. It looked down at the gash in its own chest with an expression that might have been surprise, if its features could move.

Alex didn't stop. He screamed and slashed again, and again, a frenzy of destruction. He cut across its face, cleaving the smirk in two. He hacked at its arms, its legs. Each cut produced the same sickening, tearing sound. The humanoid form began to unravel. The head sagged, the features melting into an abstract mess of smeared pigment. An arm fell away, dissolving into a wet sheet of fabric and color before it even hit the floor.

It was no longer a fight. It was the obliteration of a work of art.

The creature collapsed, not like a body, but like a puppet with its strings cut. It fell in on itself, the structure that held its form together utterly destroyed. Alex stood over it, panting, his knife dripping with a mixture of his own blood and multi-colored paint.

On the floor at his feet lay not a corpse, but a ruined, paint-smeared sheet of fabric. It was a mess of torn canvas and thick, viscous gobs of oil paint, the colors bleeding into one another in a chaotic, meaningless swirl. It was the original canvas, now inert, defiled, and finally, truly, empty.

The adrenaline that had fueled him vanished in an instant, and the pain crashed over him in a debilitating wave. His arm, his shoulder—it felt like he was on fire. The room tilted violently. He looked at his hands. One was slick with his own blood, the other smeared with the sticky, oily remains of his enemy.

He took a stumbling step back, his legs turning to rubber. Through the open window, a new sound began to slice through the night air, faint at first, then growing steadily louder. The distant, urgent wail of sirens.

Help was coming. He had called for it, a lifetime ago.

The overwhelming stench of turpentine was the last thing he registered before his vision tunneled to black and he collapsed onto the floor, his own blood pooling on the boards beside the final, ruined brushstrokes of the Unfinished Man.