Therapy Bits

As the auctioneer’s gavel came down, all eyes turned to her.

Clara stood at the edge of the room, her gloved hands trembling as the murmurs swelled around her. Lot 237—a dusty, nondescript painting—had just sold for an eye-watering sum, far beyond its appraised value. It wasn’t the painting itself that drew such interest, but the rumor that it concealed something hidden by its long-dead artist: Elias Moreau, her great-grandfather.

She hadn’t meant to bid. She only came to watch. But when the room began to buzz, when the suited men started raising their paddles with a quiet kind of desperation, something in her twisted. She raised her hand, almost involuntarily, and watched the numbers climb.

Now, the gavel had fallen. She had won.

A reporter snapped her picture. A collector whispered her name. And she, newly inheritor of the unknown, carried the canvas out of the hall, past columns and chandeliers that had witnessed secrets before.

Back in her small apartment, Clara set the painting down and stared. The brushwork was typical of Moreau—haunted, messy, full of eyes where there should be trees. But she wasn’t looking at the art. She was looking for seams.

Hours passed. Finally, in the bottom corner, beneath a layer of peeling varnish, she found it: a small flap in the canvas. Inside was a folded, yellowing letter, its seal unbroken.

She opened it with care.

"To whomever finds this: the truth was never in the art—it was in the silence between strokes. I leave to you not a confession, but a puzzle. My final work lies not on canvas, but in blood."

Clara’s breath caught. The painting wasn’t the masterpiece. She was standing in it.

Fandango’s Story Starter #205 – Facts, Fictions & Fantasies