Phil was raised by his over protective, over bearing mother. He was an only child except for his twin brother who died only a few hours after they were born. Both children were born six weeks premature at a mere three pounds each. They were immediately put into incubators with oxygen tubes pumping life into their tiny, weak lungs. Phil survived while his brother died with the collapse of his lungs. Phil, of course, doesn't remember any of this, but his mother told him the story repeatedly in her "you should be grateful to be alive" speech. On the phone the lawyer told Phil that his father had left him everything he owned in his will including twenty thousand dollars and a house in Nashville, Tennessee. This was a great opportunity for Phil to change his life and get out of his usual grind of stocking car parts in a warehouse. 

On Sunday morning Phil left Ohio to head down south and start his new life. He would be back to get his belongings after he meets the lawyer and settles into his new house. This made up for the pain of not having a father and now the fatherless childhood he suffered for twenty-six years seemed like a worthy sacrifice. He met the lawyer at the house, signed the papers, and relaxed on his new living room couch. The house was a big three bedroom, two story home built in the nineteen twenties. It was furnished nicely and the basement had just been renovated. The basement was empty with a fresh cement floor. It looked clean and new except for a bubbled up part of cement in the middle of the floor. Phil didn't spend much time looking around down there because the lawyer informed him that is where his father killed himself. The worst thing about the house was the lack of water pressure, but that was no big deal, Phil would just have to take longer showers. He would eventually have to use some of the inheritance money to fix the plumbing. 

During his first night he heard loud rumbling sounds coming from the basement. The only conclusion Phil could think of was that the old pipes were making the sounds and eventually would break. That first night at the new place Phil couldn't sleep at all, he would just lay on his father's bed staring at the giant painting hanging on the bedroom wall. It was a spiralling black hole with red, blue, and grey all melting into black. If Phil stared at the picture for few minutes he could swear that he was falling into the hole. The picture made Phil extremely uncomfortable and when he finally fell asleep he had a nightmare of falling down into a black hole. The painting disturbed Phil so much that he woke up at five o'clock in the morning covered in cold sweat, took the picture off the wall and put it down in the basement where he wouldn't have to see it. Unable to sleep for the rest of the morning, he was extremely tired on Monday. 

He spent the entire next day on his fathers couch watching his fathers t.v. Around two o'clock he ordered a pizza and after eating about half he finally fell asleep on the couch. As soon as his eyes shut he started falling into the black hole again. Spinning as he is falling, it doesn't seem to stop and there doesn't seem to be any bottom. This time, however, he goes further down with his flesh burning off his bones and blood draining out of his eyes. This nightmare was so real that he woke up screaming. Somehow that picture got into his head so much that it was haunting him, driving him crazy. He needed to get it out of the house. Phil went downstairs to the basement where the pipes were rumbling and banging louder than before. He grabbed the painting and brought it outside. It      continue>

Phil woke up sweating again and more curious than ever about that picture. Where did it come from? Why did it disturb him so much? Who painted it? Phil ran outside and grabbed the torn up picture out of the garbage. Looking at it he noticed L. Bisset 2001 on the bottom right hand corner. Who was that? His father's name was John and Phil didn't know of any other relatives that could have painted it less than a year ago. Back in the house the pipes were rattling louder than ever and Phil could swear he heard yelling amongst the banging. That was it, he couldn't take it anymore. Everything was getting too weird. He went down into the basement and looked around. Phil noticed blood stains in the corner where his father must have killed himself. He also noticed some cracks and a small hole where the hump in the floor is. 

Phil ran upstairs, grabbed the hammer from the kitchen drawer, and ran back downstairs. The loud banging stopped but he still needed to find out what was causing it. He used the backside of the hammer to bash the hole in the cement and removing piece by piece there was definitely something under there. After removing most of the hump he saw it. There was a body. It's hands were broken and bloody from pounding at the cement over head. The blood was fresh and body looked as if it had just died. It was obvious to Phil now that this was the source of all the noises he had been blaming on the plumbing. 

Phil pulled the body out from under the floor and when he brushed the dirt of it's face he went into shock. The face was his but it wasn't him. He was looking into his own eyes only they weren't his. It was the person he had been seeing in his dreams. It was clear who it was. His twin brother, the one that his mother said died. He was the L. Bisset that painted that horrible picture. Phil's twin brother had been alive the whole time and was buried alive at the age of twenty-six. Phil will never know why. The only conclusion is that L. Bisset painted that picture and drove his father insane enough to bury his son and kill himself. Phil continued to have nightmares about that picture of the black hole and the very next day he shot himself in the head with one of the guns from his inherited gun collection.  End

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