Every night, it visits. Watching. Whispering. Waiting.
The Bleed—born from my ink, now feeding on it—has me drawing its master: something ancient, monstrous, not meant for this world. I don’t know how it started. A vision? A curse? A calling? All I know is that I brought it to life… and now it won’t leave until I finish.
It crawled from my sketchbook—bent, black, and wrong. Its limbs don’t match. Its face changes, frame by frame. One minute it’s smiling like a child, the next it’s grinning with all the teeth I’ve ever drawn. It speaks in floating speech bubbles that hover and pop with a sticky sound. They smell like rotting ink.
I didn’t create The Bleed. I uncovered it.
Something in me—something broken—drew the first line, but it was already waiting beneath the page. Like it knew I’d come.
I used to be someone. Underground comics, cult following, panel signings. People used to care. Now it’s all gone. Nobody buys prints. Nobody reads hand-drawn stories anymore. Algorithms sell comics now. AI floods the market with soulless, synthetic trash. And me? I’m a ghost with a pencil.
The Bleed found me in that emptiness.
Now it whispers ideas I can’t ignore. It tells me how to shade, how to smear, how to bend anatomy in ways that hurt the eyes. It hands me memories I never lived—visions of twisted cities, skies like bruises, bones arranged like architecture. It says I’ve been chosen to bring its master into the world.
I tried to stop. Burned the sketchbook. Ink still showed up on my fingers the next morning. I smashed my desk. Pages reappeared—taped back together, drawings more complete than before.
And now, the last panel is calling.
The Bleed stands in the corner of my studio, watching, grinning. Always grinning. Speech bubbles drift up from its shoulders like steam. “Almost done,” they say. “You’re doing so well.” My hands move without me. The panel grows. Shapes take form.
The master—its master—is coming through.
A god? No. A devourer. A parasite from beyond dimension, a thing made of teeth and sound and screaming ink. Its shape hurts to look at. I draw it anyway.
I don’t eat. Don’t sleep. Don’t care.
The final page is almost done.
Tonight is different.
The candle flickers. The paper hums beneath my fingers. The Bleed’s shadow stretches across the walls, shaking with excitement. I don’t even blink anymore. I just *draw*.
And then, I finish the line.
The page shudders—then tears.
A noise erupts from the sketchbook. Like laughter and thunder and a thousand pages ripping in unison. The walls split open like bindings. Ink pours across the floor. Something vast and slick and snarling pulls itself free of the page, dragging the smell of forgotten worlds with it.
Its eyes are voids. Its hands drip other realities.
It’s here.
And I brought it.
*“I drew it. I bled it through.”*
