¶ … Painted Reality Jana sipped her drink. The cool bitter liquid skimmed down her throat and she stifled a gag. The cold sun beamed through the window and she wanted to vomit. She took another sip of the drink and stared out of the window, the frozen sun not even blinding her eyes. She put her sunglasses on anyways, as she was going to go outside, eventually. The sunglasses didn't protect her from the sunbeams or the eyes of her companions, whose vision was bearing down on her as she attempted to decide what to do next.

She chose pthalo blue as the base color for the sky. She decided to mix in some alizarin crimson to add a violet touch to the top of the sky. It would eventually be painted sky blue, whatever that turned out to mean, she decided. She dipped the brush into the alizarin crimson, mixed it with the pthalo blue, and applied some paint to the canvas. The watchful eyes glared down at her as she continued to work. Some of the eyes were behind cameras, and some were bare eyes.

Almost none of the eyes were associated with voices, but some were, and some of the voices did not seem to have eyes. She painted and the sun began to set. She took her sunglasses off in order to observe the canvas, and its stark brightness nearly blinded her. More blinding, however, were her companions' eyes. To her they did not seem like companions but often like unwanted intruders, and sometimes like evil animals. They saw phantasms in her paintings that did not exist, and reported on them as though they were newscasters. Sometimes the reports were so realistic...

Jana sipped her drink again and lit a cigarette. The smoke blinded the eyes a bit; it was a good cigarette. The ringing of the telephone startled Jana and she set her cigarette aside to answer the phone…it would be a respite from the eyes and voices after all. When she answered, no one was on the other side. "Dammit," she muttered, and immediately hoped the voices would not respond. She hung up the phone. "Phone call," said a low voice. Jana was so used to the voices by now that she felt merely annoyed. "Uh!" said another voice, apparently in response to the first voice. Jana sighed and cleaned up her painting materials. She was so accustomed to ignoring the voices that this mild exchange barely entered her consciousness. The eyes continued to glare down on her as she cleaned her materials and observed her canvas. The day's results appeared acceptable. Maybe she would paint more later, or maybe tomorrow.
Jana sat down in a chair and stared at the wall for a bit. Her mind was mildly numb, and the eyes and ears were drowned out for the most part. "Jana" one of the voices said, the one she had started to refer to as Todd. This time Todd was so loud she turned around just to make sure no one was there.

Jana saw only a blurry swirl of air and heard only a hissing of "sssssssssssss." She could barely breathe and felt a…