He had killed and mamed many, but something strange began to happen. He could feel their pain and suffering within the realms of his own body. So much so, he remained motionless for days and hours on end, the fear of movement causing him to ache under the pressure. Not only did he suffer by day, but psychologically from their afflictions by night. Visions of their frail helpless bodies surrounded him, his whole body vibrating with an audition of screams that left him bleeding from every orifice. He became a different person with every day. Each experience with only one ending, death. A thousand deaths lined his body like, a casket lined with velvet. He would continue to be as immortal as the sun and moon, day and night greeted by their presence.

He had managed to venture out early one evening, just as the sun had begun its decent. He was experiencing the pain of a victims single shot wound to the base of the skull. It had begun to weep a little, but he managed to disguise it by wrapping his woollen scarf around his neck, and pulling up his coat collar.

He had not been able to venture out for days, for he had spent the last three confined to the nightmare of burning flesh, leaving him with the sensation of thirst, weakness and difficulty in breathing. In that time, he had slipped in and out of consciousness, only able to lift his head to drink from a vase of flowers in water. He began to feel that familiar sensation now, as with every step he tried to steady his head in fear of loosing consciousness once again.

He had chosen to walk as far as the Tate Gallery, a place which he frequented often. It offered him solitude and contentment in times when his head had been involved in in-depth conversation with his morality.

He stopped only to observe those paintings that encapsulated his mind of pain. A woman lay stretched out on canvas before him, her naked body in its pale deathly proportions stood out from a lake of the deepest blue, and a sky of the most violent reds. The sky, a myriad of frightening faces observing her frailty. His neck began to ache, and he could feel a dampness around his neck. He touched it to find his scarf and collar saturated with blood. In horror, he ran out of the building, down the street and into his apartment block. Shaking, it took him several attempts to unlock the door. Observing himself in the hallway mirror, he could not see himself, but a man who lay slumped in a dark alley, with a bullet wound to the base of his skull. He turned to look away, his minds eyes bringing him vivid pictures of the events that had sent the victim to their death by his hands. He told himself that he had imagined the victim in the mirror, and sat down with a large brandy. He had lit the fire, now burning a bright yellow, and its warmth seeped in under his clothing. He sat contented and pain free, the victims plight now ceased to bother him. This particular feeling was only to be short lived. He had drifted off for a while, but awoke to the pain around his neck returning, and it grew with intensity as he focused on the sharp objects about him in the room. His eyes rested on the fireplace. Looking up at the painting above it, he he gasped in horror. He could hardly believe his eyes, as he observed it was the painting he had seen earlier that evening in the Gallery.