Sunday Short: Portrait
- Faiz Faisal
- 4 days ago
- 3 min read
The air inside St. Jude’s Asylum for the Incurable didn’t just feel cold; it felt heavy, like breathing through wet wool. Nurse Elena Vance kept her gaze fixed on the cracked linoleum tiles as she began her 11:00 PM shift.
Every night was the same. To reach the active ward in the West Wing, she had to pass the "Dead End"—a corridor in the shuttered 4th-floor surgical wing. And every night, she felt the weight of the portrait at the end of that hall.
It was a tall, vertical frame containing the image of a woman. The figure wore a tattered grey gown, her skin the color of curdled milk, and her hair a tangled shroud. Her face was always slightly turned away, shadowed and indistinct. Elena hated it. She never spoke of it to the other nurses; the hospital was depressing enough without feeding the rumors of it being haunted.
Midway through her shift, as she hurried to fetch fresh linens, her silver pen slipped from her pocket. It clattered loudly, rolling twenty feet down the dark hallway toward the Dead End."Damn it," she whispered, her voice swallowed by the silence.
She crept toward the pen. As she knelt to reach for it, the flickering overhead light groaned and died. In the sudden gloom, she looked up.
The woman in the portrait wasn't looking away anymore.
She was angled forward, her neck twisted at an impossible degree. Her eyes—dark, hollow pits—were locked directly onto Elena’s. A thin, grey hand seemed pressed against the inside of the glass. Elena’s heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird. She snatched the pen, scrambled to her feet, and bolted, the sound of her own frantic breathing echoing off the peeling wallpaper.
Morning finally came, gray and drizzly. In the breakroom, Elena’s hands trembled as she gripped a lukewarm coffee.
"Sarah," Elena said, her voice cracking. "That portrait at the end of the 4th-floor hall… the woman in the grey dress. We have to move it. It’s… it’s disturbing.
"Sarah paused, a bagel halfway to her mouth. "Portrait? Elena, there’s no art in the surgical wing. It’s been stripped bare for the renovation."
"Don't joke," Elena snapped. "I see it every night. Come with me.
"Determined to prove her sanity, Elena led Sarah up to the 4th floor. The air grew thinner, smelling of dust and old rot. They reached the hallway. Elena pointed a shaking finger. "Right there. At the end of the—"
She stopped. Her blood turned to ice.
The wall was gone. There was no frame. No canvas.
At the very end of the hallway was a tall, narrow window looking out into the abyss of the rainy morning.
"See?" Sarah said softly, placing a hand on Elena's shoulder. "Just a window, El. It’s been there for sixty years."
Elena didn't respond. She was staring at the glass.
The window was on the fourth floor, overlooking a sheer drop to the concrete courtyard below. There was no ledge. No balcony. Yet, as the morning light hit the glass, Elena saw the faint, oily smudge of a handprint on the outside of the pane—and a few strands of long, grey hair caught in the rusted window frame.
She hadn't been looking at a painting. She had been looking at someone standing on the air, pressed against the glass, watching her from the dark.
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