THE ILLUSIONIST

A portrait caught somewhere between prayer and possession. the chapel behind him feels abandoned, but not empty the kind of place where the walls remember every sin whispered inside them. While the figure stands in front of it with that dead, knowing stare.

Bruised shadows, hollow eyes, old religion, rot, guilt, and heat hanging in the air. inspired by the darkness of Ptolemaea by Ethel Cain that feeling of being dragged through something spiritual, violent, and impossible to escape.

I found you where the chapel rots, with rain inside the stones, the nettles fed on both my hands and left me there alone.

The saints looked down with hollow eyes, the moon was dead I called your name into the dirt and heard myself instead.

He wore the dark like Sunday skin, hands folded where the rot begins. No prayer left behind his eyes, just lilies watching, pale and wise.

That was the thing people remembered most about him.

Not the black suit. Not the flowers. Not the way he sat in that old chapel like he belonged there.

It was his face.

That made people want to forgive him before they even knew what he had done. The kind that made you think maybe he was broken, maybe he was grieving, maybe somebody had hurt him first.

And maybe that was true.

But it did not change what he became.

The town used to say he was quiet. Polite. The kind of man who held doors open and lowered his voice around old women. Nobody wanted to believe the missing girls had anything to do with him.

Then people started noticing the lilies.

Fresh ones every week.

Always white.

Always left in the chapel before sunrise.

He never cried. He never confessed. He just sat there under the cross, staring like he was waiting for God to say something.

But God never did.

Nobody in town said his name after the church bells rang for three nights straight.

They found him sitting in the old house at the edge of the fields, wearing the same black sweater he vanished in, hands folded over the chair like he had been waiting for someone to come home. But his eyes were different. Not empty. Worse than empty. They looked full, like something had crawled inside him and learned how to stare through a human face.

His mother said he used to be gentle. Said he used to hum when he was nervous.

But now he only sits in the dark.

And when the room gets quiet enough, you can hear him whispering to the walls or maybe to himself..

I keep telling myself I wasn’t always like this.

There was a time when I could walk into a room and feel normal. I could laugh at the right moments, answer people without thinking too hard, look someone in the eye and not wonder what they saw looking back.

It’s how still everything gets inside me.

I look up like someone might tell me I’m not too far gone.

But no one ever does.

Some nights, my mind becomes a locked room full of strangers.

they wear my voice. they know my fears. they whisper things the world swears it never said.

i stand in the mirror, trying to look human, trying to remember which thoughts belong to me and which ones crawled in through the cracks.

the darkness doesn’t scare me anymore. what scares me is when it starts answering back.