Gift

It was my birthday. I was never the type to celebrate it - my parents always ridiculed people who do, which is everyone outside our family - but this time it was different. My friend set up a secret party, called me to a restaurant, and surprised me there with gifts and cakes. God knows what reason they did this to me but I didn't complain. I'm not going to reject free stuffs.

Everything was going well and fun, but what surprised me the most was Jack. We were friends since middle school, always together and playing around and stuff. Though since college, we started drifting apart. We still chat and jokes through twitter and other social media but almost never meet in person. Then in January, he disappeared. It first started with my unread message. Then his friends started searching for him all over the area, then his parents, then the police. His name showed up in news as missing person. Seven months later there was still no clue to his whereabouts, until now.

"J-jack?" I asked as I approached him sitting in one remote corner. I'm not sure it was him. Yes the face was his, but his brown hair had turned all white and his trimmed mustache ... he looked like hobo now. And those lifeless eyes of his.

"Hey." Even his voice sounded different. "I have a gift for you." Out of nowhere he pulled a big wrapped box and put it on the table.

"What's this?"

"Just take it, please."

Jake suddenly pushed it onto my chest. I reflexively grabbed it before it fell. "H-hey!" I shouted at Jake, but when I take my eyes off the packaged, Jake had disappeared from the table.

When I asked my other friends about it, they said they saw no one looking like Jack. And they reserved the restaurant so they would know. I would have thought it was just some hallucination or daydream, but the big package was still there in my arms.

I returned home late at night, still confused by my encounter with Jack. With how tired I was, I hit the bunk without even changing my clothes. But tired as I was, i couldn't sleep for whatever reason. Then I noticed, on the drawer beside my bed sat the big package still wrapped with brown paper. I didn't remember bringing it with me, but maybe I did, the party earlier had diffused into hazy cloud in my memory.

With my body refusing to sleep, curiosity took me over. I cut open the transparent plastic and unwrapped the brown paper and voila it was ... a painting.

Well, I didn't expect this. My goddamn pessimistic brain had expected drugs or bombs or something illegal, but it was just painting. Illegal painting? Maybe.

It was a painting of a strange man eating another man, reminding me of Saturn Devouring His Son by Fransisco Goya. The man was staring right at me with bloody eyes and crazed look. I couldn't take my eyes off it. Something, something compelled me to look at it. Minutes passed by and on the edge of my hearing I could hear a soft whisper. I couldn't make sense of it so I got closer to the painting, somehow hoping it would make the whisper louder.

It did.

But still I couldn't make out everything it said, just syllables or cut-off words. Six, car, blood, rust, ground, red. So I got closer and closer, almost touching my nose at the painting. At this distance I could hear another sound, crying and begging. I looked at the other guy, a normal looking person with limbs ripped off by the strange man. I swear I could see him move and shudder and scream for help. But my mind was occupied by something else, by the soft whisper at the back of my mind. By the soft whisper of the strange man with bloody eyes.

Six, car, blood, rust, ground, red, knives, sea, dark, sun. I still couldn't make sense of it, so I got closer and closer and closer and - my phones rang, waking me up from the stupor.

Realizing what happened I jerked my head away from the painting and threw it to the floor. But it still stared at me with those demonic bloody eyes. There were more and more blood in the painting and the other guy was gone, only a scrap of his flesh remained.

With blood running cold and unsteady feet, I jumped to my bed, pulled the sheet over my head, and prayed to gods I never prayed before. Even there I could feel the stare on my back and the whispers on my mind.

Six, car, blood, rust, ground, red, knives, sea, dark, sun, gift.