Mandy stopped dead in her tracks, her long brown hair wavering behind her small shoulders. Glaring at the oddly shaped stain on the sidewalk she thought how it resembled dried blood, but only vaguely. The center of it was reddish in color, gradually sliding into deep purplish amber, and ringed in a bizarre green- blue mixture unlike anything she had ever seen. Each color was separate, but strangely combined into a type of swirling mess that was undoubtedly whole. In all of her 18 years she’d never seen anything remotely like it. She was captivated by it, but also frightened, and found herself instinctively backing away.

A part of her wanted to investigate the stain, to explore the origins of the colors, to uncover what could create such an unusual display. Studying graphic art design in college naturally instilled an appreciation for all things imaginative and colorful in her, and since her greatest ambition in life was to be an artist, she felt obligated to study the anomaly further. But she also heard an inner voice warning her to steer clear of the spot. The shades were very odd indeed, and despite their attraction they still radiated an unhealthy and unnatural aura which reeked of potential danger.

She turned and walked away.

That night while Mandy was relaxing at home her thoughts began to drift towards the stain she had come across earlier that day. The strange mixture of green and mauve, tinged with sickly yellow, the odd contours of the spot, the almost hypnotic effect it had on her. She hated to admit it but felt compelled to return to the area where she’d seen the stain, if for no other reason than to verify to herself that it was still there and did not have control over her.

The following day Mandy revisited the sidewalk where the stain had been, feeling foolish, even childish for doing so. She was hoping that someone would have cleaned it up by then, or perhaps that it had diminished somewhat from foot traffic, but it was still there, as pronounced as the day before. Glancing around to make sure nobody was watching, she walked up to it.

It looked even more disgusting up close, and emitted an aroma that reminded her of rotten meat. “What are you?” she blurted out before she could help herself. “Where did you come from?”

A few people looked over in her direction, and feeling foolish, she pretended to fumble in her purse for something. She noticed the stain had appeared slightly larger than it had the day before. Pulling a nail file and a plastic baggie from her handbag, and stooping over the spot, she proceeded to scrape up a small amount of the substance.

The man was too preoccupied with his cell phone to notice the young girl squatting down in the middle of the sidewalk. In an instant, he bumped right into her, sending her pitching forward onto her hands, her left landing squarely in the center of the stain.

“Oh, I’m sorry miss,” the man apologized. “I didn’t see you there, honest. Are you all right?” He folded up his phone and bent over to help Mandy up.

Mandy immediately pulled her hand off the stain, cradling it to her chest, and cringing in disgust at the cold, pliable texture of it. It felt like decomposed fish.

“I…I’m fine thank you,” she mumbled, thoroughly embarrassed. “I just need to get going.”

The man, puzzled at her response added, “If you say so miss. Are you sure you’re okay though?”

Mandy ignored him, and quickly scooping up her belongings, hurried away. She didn’t look back once.

At home, in the sanctuary of her bedroom, Mandy carefully removed the plastic baggie from her purse. It felt heavier than she had expected, too heavy for such a small amount of shavings. She set it down on her desk and stared at it closely. It still swirled with strange colors, but in a, for lack of a better word, more organic way, almost as if it were alive, or struggling to become so. Feeling repulsed Mandy backed away from it; she fell into her bed, unsure what to do next.

Should she take the baggie to the police? Or maybe show it to her Biology teacher at school? Or perhaps she should just throw it away and get on with her life. Her homework was starting to pile up and she hadn’t talked to her friends in quite a while. And as these options danced around in her head an uneasy sleep eventually overtook her.

* * * *

The colors coated everything in the room, from the walls and ceiling right down to the bed sheets and pillows. Sickly greens and pallid yellows meshed intermittently with shades without names; some so bizarre and unique they hardly resembled anything on Earth at all.

Mandy bolted upright in bed, and looking around her room, began screaming at the top of her lungs. The very atmosphere in the room hung heavy with corruption, as if the colors themselves were trying to penetrate the air itself.

The hallway seemed longer than normal, surrealistic, distorted, dripping with caustic hues beyond description. Insipid reds and blues slid into deep, burnt oranges and purples, infiltrating corners, edges, nooks and crannies, every possible square inch.

Mandy stood by the door, too afraid to leave her bedroom, but afraid not to as well. Her head swam with the nightmarish display in front of her. She attempted to fasten a logical explanation to it, but couldn’t. Nor could she cope with the horrific enormity of what she was witnessing. It simply was impossible.

And then Mandy felt an entirely new sensation. Her hand, her left hand, felt wet, completely saturated right down to the bone. Although she didn’t want to she looked down at it.

Her hand was dripping with a slick mass of swirling colors.

Feeling the urge to faint rising up Mandy struggled to remain standing. She could feel the colors pulsing within her, filling her very soul with their desires, their thoughts. They were corrupting her flesh, dissolving her blood in a weird feeding ritual of some type.

Mandy wondered if anyone else had noticed the colors. If people, as well as inanimate objects, were susceptible to them. She didn’t know, and frankly, couldn’t care less. All that mattered to her by then was achieving her artistic dreams. She was finally beginning to understand what was happening to her.

She was chosen, and felt fortunate to be so. She would release their colors into the world, bathing it in their special glow. She would be the portal to spread their change. She didn’t know exactly who ‘they’ were, perhaps aliens from another world, or something from Heaven itself, or Hell for that matter, but she did feel lucky to be able to achieve their desires.

Mandy smiled to herself and raised her hand to her face. The irresistible urge to unleash the colors into the world quickly overwhelmed her, and she gave in to it willingly. She raised her hand high above her head and began to swing it around vigorously. Up and down, side to side, back and forth. At last she was a true artist, her hand a paintbrush, the world her canvas. She would paint masterpieces the likes which nobody had ever seen.

Sickly colors rapidly spread in all directions. Mandy ignored the screams coming from her little sister’s bedroom, hearing her begging God above to save her. She watched her older brother collapse out into the hallway from his room, his face frozen in brightly colored terror. And as Mandy strutted down the hallway towards the staircase she swelled with pride. She would show everyone what a real artist
was. Michelangelo, da Vinci, Rembrandt, they were amateurs, mere imitators to true talent such as hers. She had colors on her palette nobody else had, and a paintbrush that never needed cleaning.

And then she fell in a heap, crashing down the stairs and exploding in a grotesque display of alien shades, which spilled out over the room, covering everything in sight, feeding off anything they touched. Her body disintegrated within the seeping mess, adding to the already disgusting mixture.

And her last thought before she became one with the colors was that she had achieved the greatest level any artist could ever reach, for she had died for her art.