A scary looking subspecies of iguana. He was quite a well-known painter before he was imprisoned.

And after meeting you, he invited you to be his model. But when you learned of the concept for his new painting, you were overcome by fear and disgust, as he wanted to paint your death.

Pickman's family is of ancient lineage which, according to him, is descended from the aristocracy of a small kingdom. However, his great-great-grandfather's generation migrated to this country because of a disease outbreak. His grandparents built a house in the North Point area of the city, which is now well over a hundred years old.

As a young man, Pickman showed a remarkable talent for painting, using the bizarre curios and trinkets in his home as inspiration for his surreal, bizarre, and psychedelic paintings. Although his unique work was hotly debated in underground art circles, no regular galleries were willing to exhibit it. The mainstream art magazine Easel described them as "derivative vulgarity that appeals to the lowest common denominator."

The arrogance of the mainstream art world incensed Pickman: "Hiss, they call my work derivative and vulgar. Then I'll paint exactly what they want to see."

A year later, Pickman converted the basement of the old house into a private gallery and opened to the public. Initially, it did not attract many members of the art world, mainly young people coming to satisfy their curiosity. Word on the street was that the gallery was 10 times scarier than any carnival haunted house. One of the pieces titled Infernal Feast seemed to depict a nightmare scene in which several distorted, filthy monsters are consuming a poor soul as his torn clothes and smashed glasses lie in a pool of blood on the floor. It was both chaotic and ordered, like some kind of unholy ritual.

As word spread about Pickman's gallery, some members of the mainstream art world were attracted to it. One day, two editors from Easel who could no longer contain their curiosity came to see Infernal Feast under pseudonyms. One of the young editors said after looking at the painting: "If the editor-in-chief hadn't gone missing to escape his debts, he would have retracted his scathing review as soon as he saw this painting. It may be terrifying, but I must say that the lifelike depiction is more reality than fantasy."

The young editor was expecting his senior colleague to follow with a similarity enthusiastic comment on the painting, but the other editor trembled as he spoke: "Elliot, I...I recognize those glasses... Th-the ones in the painting... Th-they're the chief's. Look! His name's engraved on the frame!"

Art by【 GAbaba 】

From Back to the Dawn