Horror - Short
This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs. No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.
All rights reserved. Artistic Pursuits Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026
ARTISTIC PURSUITS
Nolan Rice stood before the mirror in his main bathroom, pressing a corner of the moustache he’d glued to his face with an index finger. He’d also glued on a beard and eyebrows. On his head was a wig and pageboy hat. He slipped the thick glasses on, having decided the costume was as good as it would get. He slid his arms into the stiff khaki jacket he’d ordered online and snatched the key to his Audi e-tron SUV from the marble counter before stepping out into the cool October evening.
He parked a block from the gallery. He took a ticket from the machine and nodded at the security guard. The confusion on the guard’s face reminded Nolan looking the part was only a piece of the battle. The slip went onto his dash. Vehicle locked, he hurried to the sidewalk, and once around the corner, he bent forward and slowed to a shuffle.
He reached the back of the line outside The Geoffrion Center. From his pocket, he retrieved a VIP ticket. Those waiting in line were respectful, quiet, understanding that this mysterious old man was either very wealthy or very important. Nolan Rice was wealthy yes, but in the art world he was not at all important, despite more than twenty years of effort.
The family money ran deep and had flowed virtually unabated since the 19th century. Nolan’s parents had accomplished nothing meaningful, and had been endlessly supportive of their youngest son taking an interest in art. The interest had morphed into obsession. The family businesses had smart, greedy suits at the helms. The investments likewise. Nolan’s holdings netted him close to half a million every month. The self he bled into his art had earned him exactly $0—and this was not from a tax purpose angle, what he’d spent on trying to make great, or at least, saleable art numbered into the millions, and he’d never sold a piece.
“Transcendent,” a woman said to a man in a purple beret, martini glasses in both their hands.
“Original. I’m tingling all over,” the man said.
Nolan looked up at the huge canvas and felt his guts tremble. The art was fantastic. Perhaps not quite transcendent, and was anything truly original anymore? But it was undeniably good, interesting, exciting, and showed a professional deft.
He walked to the next piece, snatching a martini from a waiter’s tray. One glance and Nolan had to down the drink. The air hitched in his lungs, his hand clenched tightly enough to snap the stem of his glass in two, and his knees went to jelly. He couldn’t linger. He reached the third piece and gagged, gasping for breath.
It was all incredible, these artists, on their worst days were towers on the mounded landscape of his best days. He dropped the martini glass into a trashcan next to the bathroom as he made for the rear exit.
Outside, the air was cool, refreshing. He leaned against a dusty dumpster and dreamed of having the skill to match his imagination.
In his early twenties, he had a chip, swore the world ignored his work because he hadn’t had to come up, hadn’t experienced the right amount of hardship to make proper art. He went as far as to open his own gallery, hiring a real staff, commissioning professional artists, and then putting his pitiful offerings in amongst the work of others. It was in this gallery that he first went incognito. Three of his pieces had gone up without accreditation, and he listened to unabashed opinions about his labours. He punished himself for being so wrong by sticking out the showing from beginning to end in the costume.
His purview shifted from that moment on. The gallery closed and he undertook the most expensive art education in the history of the world. He paid artists to critique his work, point out flaws and potential fixes. He paid therapists and hypnotists and spiritual leaders to guide and mold, attempt to infuse his hands with a power equal to his mental canvases.
It failed. Everything failed.
—
Unlike most agents, Moira Ribbon did not make her living through commissions, at least not when it came to the art of Nolan Rice. He had hired her outright to represent him, forking over $13,000 every month to keep her eyes and ears open to angles that might be worth playing, advantages that might further tip the scales in the wealthy man’s favour, and all that might be considered strange and unusual which occasionally popped up in the fringes of the art world.
In the past she’d procured clothing and tools of master artists, excess and redundant pieces museums quietly sold to keep afloat. She’d purchased lucky charms and supposedly haunted artifacts—Nolan had once thought if he saw a real live ghost, it would shock his body into cooperating with his mind. She’d located tonics, elixirs, and the witches who brewed them. She’d done all of this because she was paid to, not because she thought any of it would work.
This thing from Brightpath Museum was a little more grounded, a touch more sophisticated, and heaps more plausible. Brightpath Museum was owned, endowed, and managed by heads at McCovey University, and its major draw was cohesion between art and modern science.
They needed an artist, one with a vastly imaginative mind and prolific idea rate, whom they would hook into a humanoid robot—an artbot—with hands programmed to concur even the most challenging artistic pursuits. Advanced training was an understatement. Thousands of hours’ worth of hand-motion capture technology, from many highly regarded artists, had been recorded and fed into the machine. Notions of originality and beauty from a thousand different critics’ reviews would enhance the machine’s output. And to excite the Museum’s benefactors, the machine looked like a real man; it walked, talked, and expressed a slew of inputted emotions—a saline solution had been installed in tear ducts as a finishing move against cautious investors unwilling to part with their dough.
The only problem had been finding an artist willing to endure the necessary attachment to the machine. Moira was all but certain Nolan would jump at the opportunity.
“Nolan, baby? It’s Moira. I’ve found it, you’re link to making ground-breaking art,” she said over her cellphone, and then explained the situation.
“I’m in,” Nolan said, firm and certain.
“The only caveat: it demands brain surgery.”
“I said, I’m in.”
Moira suddenly felt queasy. If this failed, the easiest cash she’d ever made might fly out the window. “I knew it, baby, I knew it.”
—
They recorded everything for the practice run. A brain surgeon and three robotics scientists sat around a lethargic and dopey Nolan—his skull cut open, reader affixed to his grey matter—and Michelangelo Da Vinci, the artbot. Moira watched through the viewing glass, where, should everything go right with the trial today, museum goers could watch the creation of original art tomorrow for the price of admission.
“Michelangelo Da Vinci, you may begin,” one of the scientists said.
The artbot smiled a mouth full of matte white teeth. They’d made him a pleasant shade of brown—a color they’d been calling caramel—with pale pink lips and bleached blonde hair. He stood 5’10” and weighed more than 200 kilos, though at a glance looked like a man who weighed about 75.
“Selecting dominant idea.”
The artbot got busy mixing the first shade of charcoal for the palette. All stood back in silent awe within the room as the machine put skill to Nolan’s imagination. Outside the room, Moira was wide-eyed and as close to the window as the velvet rope permitted. After 49 minutes, the first 3’ by 5’ canvas was complete, the final touch being the stroke of Nolan Rice’s signature.
The two scientists stepped forward while the doctor watched the slowing brain function on a monitor. The image was a horrid and yet enchanting mixture of innocence by way of a child and the creeping degradation of rot. Eyes and nose and mouth, things were off. The teddy in the kids’ hand was wet and filthy. The crotch of the kids’ trousers likewise. Behind him were two smiling parents in clothing as vibrant and colorful as rainbows, looking at selfie shots on a smartphone—themselves draped around the rotting kid.
“Is that exactly what you saw via the uplink?” one scientist said.
Michelangelo Da Vinci looked at the canvas. “No. The signature wasn’t there. He added it.”
The scientists frowned at one another.
Moira knocked on the glass. “More! He signed up to do many!”
The artbot smiled a slightly different smile as it gave Moira a thumbs up through the glass.
—
The crowd reached maximum capacity even before the curtain came up on the spectacle. The day before, the artbot had painted 21 of Nolan’s ideas—six of which the museum would keep, while the remainder, aside from one each day of the exhibit, went to Nolan’s collection—and the hope was for even more today.
The crowd needn’t be quiet, but they were hushed as if watching Scottie Scheffler putt to take a Masters title. Michelangelo Da Vinci worked faster in the morning than in the afternoon, and neither of the scientists understood why, though confided in Moira that it might be Nolan’s mind fatiguing. The doctor argued against that, suggesting, if anything, the deeper the exploration, the quicker the activity—he’d said this while pointing at the monitor and its seemingly endless data.
At 3:12 PM, Michelangelo Da Vinci stood from its heavy-duty stool and stepped to Nolan, bending to look into his eyes. “I can see him seeing him.”
One of the scientists said, “Uh, perhaps that’s it for today.”
Michelangelo Da Vinci straightened and nodded. “Thank you.” The artbot then turned to the crowd. “Thank you all for coming.”
—
On the third day, the already grim pictures took a darker turn. The innocence was gone, in place were layers upon layers of a foul nastiness that was impossible to turn from. It was as if the world’s ills had been amalgamated and boiled into individual scenes. Moira had been busy cataloging and pricing the works for an upcoming show in Montreal—the buzz had each piece reaching for seven figures, and the most horrid of the offerings promising to tickle eight.
At 1:49 PM, one of the scientists stepped close to Michelangelo Da Vinci while it worked to observe an anomaly. “Tear ducts are malfunctioning,” he said.
The artbot paused, brush a quarter inch from the current canvas, and said, “It is not malfunction.”
The scientists turned to the doctor. “It has to be coming from the subject, yeah?” one said.
The doctor shrugged. “The brain is a mysterious and complex organ.”
Minutes before three o’clock, Michelangelo Da Vinci again stood from its stool and approached Nolan. The artbot bent and stared into the drooling face of the unskilled artist. It remained there for six minutes before one of the scientists spoke.
“Would you like to paint more or recharge?”
Michelangelo Da Vinci returned to its stool and sat. “I never want to paint again.”
Beyond the glass, the reporters on the scene sucked up the situation like vampires at a carotid artery.
—
Given the unexpected influence Nolan’s mind had on the artbot, beyond feeding ideas, the exhibit switched from full days to three canvasses, no matter how large or small. The grimness of the art only grew darker when limiting the work rate, further condensing and thickening the mood of the output.
Moira was the only person directly connected to the experiment who was still happy. The number of canvasses appeared to have an endpoint, and in the art world, that was a very good spot to see. There were already thirty pieces, if the yield kept up for the scheduled three-week exhibit, it might actually lessen the values. But if collectors knew there were 50, or 75 pieces and no more forthcoming, it created a feeding frenzy; all would want a bite before the meal disappeared.
—
On day nine, Michelangelo Da Vinci picked up its stool and moved well beyond touching distance of the current canvas—a mother bat letting conjoined twin girls suckle nuclear waste from her teats before a crowd of masturbating onlookers.
The image was hardly worse than anything else the artbot had painted in the last three days, but something about this one in particular triggered a response within Nolan that traveled into Michelangelo Da Vinci.
Moira—now staying within the exhibit booth to snap shots and archive the moment—looked up from her phone and then to the unfinished canvas. “Hey, robot baby, we have a deal. Chop, chop.”
“There’s a shade of viscous and yet runny paint unavailable to me. Nolan Rice sees the shade and I cannot produce it.”
Moira huffed and charged over to the filthy palette. “Mix it. Come on, genius robot, just mix it. Baby, it’s simple and you’re costing me money. Mix it.”
“Maybe it’s done for the day?” one of the scientists said.
“It hasn’t finished one piece. It has this one and two more, now move it, baby, get painting,” Moira said.
Michelangelo Da Vinci stood and returned to its workspace, glaring at the palette. It picked up the palette and then set it back on the easel, repeating this three times. Tears began playing down the artbot’s silicone cheeks.
“It is unavailable to me.”
“Hell, use anything. It hardly matters now. He’s a star, this is all icing on the cake, baby.” Moira picked up a brush with a long wooden handle and slammed it against the artbot’s steady chest. “Come on, cash cow, give mama some milk.”
Michelangelo Da Vinci took the brush without breaking eye-contact with Moira. It stepped backward, trailing the wires attached to Nolan’s brain as far as they would go without becoming taut enough to sever the connection.
“Where are you going?” one of the scientists said as they both settled in front of the artbot.
An answer came, but not in the form of words. In a fluid and unforgiving motion, Michelangelo Da Vinci lifted its strong hands, one gripping the long brush like a dagger, but sideways, and slammed together the scientists’ head. The sound was like banging especially furry coconuts. Michelangelo Da Vinci lowered its empty hand while adjusting its grip on the now bloodied paintbrush in the other. It stepped to the canvas and continued working.
“Uhh,” Moira mumbled, backing away from the artbot.
The doctor knelt over the scientists. “Somebody call an ambulance!” she shouted as she checked for vital signs.
“Need more,” Michelangelo Da Vinci said, palette in its hand.
The doctor popped to her feet. “They’re dead and I’m ending—”
The artbot had flung the palette like a Frisbee in 50x fast-forward, severing the doctor’s head at her neck, sending out a geyser of paint from the hole. Michelangelo Da Vinci thumped quickly to the head, scooping it like a melon and using a finger to continue painting.
Beyond the glass, most of the crowd had cleared out. Those remaining were filming the scene. One was a mother with two small, bawling children, so focussed on getting a like-meaty video for social media that she had no mental capacity to worry over her kids.
Inside the exhibit, Moira tried to open the door, despite knowing that it took a key card—the kind in the doctor’s and the scientists’ pockets. Michelangelo Da Vinci began whistling the melody of Gowan’s A Criminal Mind as it slapped paint against the canvas.
Moira watched it as she broke for the doctor and her key card. She found it in a jacket pocket. Upright, ready to race for the door, Moira saw a third and all-new smile on the artbot’s face. That smile promised pain and suffering.
“Hey, baby, it’s me,” she said, taking a step to her left around the doctor’s corpse.
Behind her, men began thumping on the door and calling for it to be opened. Through the window, police were lined up with their weapons drawn.
“Nolan Rice sees only in shades of blood now,” Michelangelo Da Vinci said.
It hit Moira then and she leapt to her left, grabbing the wires dangling from Nolan’s open skull, and pulling them free. The artbot’s smile disappeared.
“Got you, got you, baby,” Moira said and pushed to her feet. She grabbed Nolan’s shoulder and tried to shake him awake. “Hey, come on, you made a mess.”
He slumped forward and then sideways. Pink grool began spilling from the opening in his skull. Moira turned to look at the artbot. That smile was back and beaming.
“You have to feed the cow to get its milk.” Michelangelo Da Vinci reached out and grabbed Moira, hugging her tight to its chest. “I’m all in here now and I don’t need you, you leech.”
The final thought floating through her head was: it’s using Nolan’s voice now too. Her spine snapped and as her body drooped, organs began to rise up her throat and spill out her mouth.
—
Blair Cochrane stood next to the artbot on the courthouse steps with a hand in the air. “This is a triumph for justice! My client was crafted by men, therefore its actions at the time are the sole responsibility of the university and its museum!”
“If the robot isn’t accountable for its actions, shouldn’t it be destroyed?” a reporter asked from the wall of reporters blocking the steps.
“My client—”
The artbot touched its lawyer’s shoulder with a gentle finger. “That would be true had they not fused Nolan Rice’s mind into my databanks. He’s all up here, and he cannot be punished for what science has done.” The artbot touched its temple—despite that the hard drives and processors were located behind its heavily reinforced chest plate.
Many questions were shouted at once, but Michelangelo Da Vinci plucked two it wanted to answer from the din. “Yes, my show is going on in Montreal, and yes, I’m working with Sǐshén Technologies to manufacture consumer-ready artbots. Why should art be relegated to those with skills?”
XX