The Yellow Coronation

II.

The insomnia returned in full force that night. After three days without any opium I was deep into the haze of withdrawal. I did not sleep a wink, just paced around my darkened hovel sweating and unable to get the wretched thoughts out of my pounding head. At the witching hour there came a knocking at the splintered door that led to the hallway. I recoiled in fear when I heard it. I had heard no telltale approaching footfalls on the plank floors of the building nor did I hear any retreat away. I waited with bated breath for another sound but all was silent. I had begun to think it a figment of my deluded mind, another symptom of withdrawal, and I opened the door an hour later to find no one. Leaning against the corridor wall was a large blank canvass along with a palette of beautiful acrylics and brushes to paint with. Upon seeing them I knew she had been here. I didn't hesitate to rush down and throw the materials in the dumpster on the side of the building, but the next day they came back. I burned the canvass this time, touching a corner to the flame from my candle and throwing it out the window into the dingy alley below, but the next night there came the same knocking and the same canvass leaned against the hallway wall. I took them inside but resolved not to use them. She would not win.

My sleep grew more and more strange and disturbing. As soon as my eyes were closed vivid terrors would invade my mind. I dreamt of Hastur and Carcosa, my thoughts stretched before me like shadows and tethered me to that strange place. I started to suspect I was sleepwalking. Upon awakening I would find the meager furniture of the hovel shifted or gone. Even more disturbing, I found that I had begun to paint in my somnambulist state. Every night an elaborate painting took shape across that blank canvass. I never remembered adding to it, but it was undoubtedly done in my style and hand. I began to fear what it was I was creating and tried to expunge it, but no matter what I did with the unfinished piece it always returned to me in the same state I had taken it. It didn't matter if I burned it or threw it into the bay, it always returned to that hallway wall intact and incomplete. I began to fear sleep and try to stay awake, to no avail. Where as before sleep constantly eluded me, it now seemed to stole upon me and capture me unawares. I thought of killing myself, but something unknown always forbade me. In a strange way I knew even if I could end my life I would not be allowed to end this painting, not until it was finished. I was a slave to the whims of the King, and by his decree this work would be finished. There was nothing I could do to stop it.

It took a little over a month to complete, and when it was finished I had to admit it was the most beautiful thing I had ever wrought. The acrylic depicted an elaborate masque taking place in a soaring atrium. The walls were hung with luscious tapestries and the attendants were clad in beautiful garments and strange black masks. Towering above the partygoers, in the center of the piece, a tall gaunt figure paced. It stood head-and-shoulders above the rest of the crowd and was clad in a tattered yellow mantel. A hideous pallid mask obscured its features. The partygoers nearest to the figure were all painted in frozen reaction to its domineering presence. Most bowed and extended their hands in awe and deference to the powerful figure, but one figure close to center backed away, he wore no mask and his face was contorted in an expression of fear and disgust. I, just like the terrified maskless man, knew exactly what hid under the folds of those billowing yellow vestments, something tells me you who reads this knows it too.

During that month of painting, Georgie's body had continued to lay in the adjacent room and rot. To be honest, I had completely forgotten he rested in there while I toiled under the weight of completing that work. Fortunately the cold of winter kept the smell under control to a degree, but the day after I was finished I realized how the entire building held a putrid miasma of death and decay.

I went across the hallway to the room in which I had left the body and found the moth-eaten blanket swarmed with devouring rats. The stench in the room was overpowering. I gagged. I tried to kick away the rats as I approached but they nipped at my feet with their sharp little teeth. I left and returned with a broomstick and swatted my way through the tempest of vermin to yank the blanket off the remains of my companion. What I saw will haunt me the remainder of my days.