Okay, so I haven't been on here for well over a year, but I was inspired to write this a few days ago after I finally got my hands on the last Demonata book. Without spoiling it, I liked it a good deal more than books 7-9. Anyways, once again a mention was made of the mysterious painting of Lord Loss "in the style of Van Gogh," and I got to thinking that van Gogh and Lord Loss seemed like a perfect match- he's exactly the sort of person Lord Loss would try to feed on. And so I came up with a bit of a back story in my mind about how the two met, and the history of the painting, and what van Gogh meant to Lord Loss. I worked pretty hard on this piece of writing, edited it over and over- knowing that I would publish it made me edgy. I've written myself to pieces getting this twelve-page oneshot to where I wanted it, and frankly, the comment about "dying a little more with each painting" refers more to how I felt about each revision. It's also what I consider my first real attempt at conveying strong emotions in fiction, so let me know how I do on that. Enjoy.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Demonata, or Vincent van Gogh, although I do have a copy of the Starry Night hanging in my room.

"And he dreamed yet another dream, and told it his brethren, and said, Behold, I have dreamed a dream more; and, behold, the sun and the moon and the eleven stars made obeisance to me."

-Genesis 37:9

"And now I understand what you tried to say to me
how you suffered for your sanity
how you tried to set them free.

they would not listen, they did not know how
perhaps they'll listen now.

For they could not love you
but still your love was true
and when no hope was left in sight on that starry

starry night
You took your life as lovers often do;
But I could have told you
Vincent
this world was never
meant for one
as beautiful as you."

-Vincent, Don McLean

St. Remy

1889

Lord Loss floated closer, the air thick with the man's misery. Not for years had he tasted such deeply rooted and fulfilling despair, not since his last chess game with the desperate old fool Bartholomew Garadex. Even the demon-spawn magician, however, could not compare in his wretchedness to this specimen.

Lord Loss had come across him quite by accident, while perusing the insane asylum at St. Remy in France. The insane had special flavors of sadness that could never quite be found in stable people, and Lord Loss enjoyed spending time among them when the commonplace sadness of the world grew to bore him. This man had the largest pain-body Lord Loss had sensed in a while, which was what had attracted the demon master to his cell.

It was a small, dingy cell, with paint peeling on the walls and the wood flooring dented in many places. There were two small doors, one that led to the hallway and another to the man's bedchambers, and a tiny barred window. The room itself was filled with dozens of easels and canvases with paintings on them in various stages of completion. A little ways away was a portrait of a tree standing on its own with no background yet. Squeezed in the corner farther off was a nearly finished painting of what looked like a bedroom done in garish colors.

The artist was standing with his back to Lord Loss at an easel in front of the window, a little black stool at his feet. On the sill, between the bars, a candle had been set, providing just enough light for him to paint by. It was dark enough even with the candle that the vast silky carpet of night could be seen outside the barred window, the silver array of glittering stars and the tiny village below them. A cypress tree rose from a crag not far away. From the windows of this home for the insane could be seen a view so beautiful that no man could hope to replicate it, although this man was clearly trying. As Lord Loss watched he dipped his brush into his palette, raised it to the canvas, and pressed down hard, so hard that the brush was crushed flat. The artist dragged it a little ways and then lifted it again, dipped it in a water glass and tapped it clean. So far the only thing that could be seen on the canvas was a spiral of blue and white and yellow and black that was taking shape in the center.

Lord Loss was not yet close enough to be able to sense what the cause of the man's despair was, although he could make a few guesses based on where the man was. Artists- as this man clearly was- never had an easy time of it on Earth, although to end up in an asylum was extreme. Inching slowly forward, invisible to human eyes, Lord Loss began to sap the artist's sorrow in earnest and understanding dawned on him. He now knew everything about the artist, from his name to his deepest fears and unrealized longings.

Doomed to fail, Vincent, doomed never to be known for the talent you truly are. You shall die and be forgotten, and your precious paintings shall crumble into dust, and that is as it should be.

"And that's exactly what I want," said the artist without turning around. "The worst thing that can happen to an artist is to become famous." Vincent van Gogh spat out the last word derisively.

Lord Loss winced. He had not meant to speak aloud, but that was not what had surprised him. He often talked to himself when he thought he couldn't be heard, sometimes rehearsing his words over and over for maximum sorrowful effect. Often if he whispered in people's ears his words would subconsciously get inside them and cause them despair that they would never understand.

No, what had surprised Lord Loss was that this artist had been perceptive enough to sense him. Normally Lord Loss could not be seen or perceived by humans unless he wanted to be, but there were exceptions… those with magic, or those close to insanity…

"I see you, Lucifer, here in the starless night that is my home," said Vincent, continuing to paint, still not bothering to turn around. "Yes, I see your hideous reflection in the window! Don't try to hide, Lucifer, for I've long known this day would come. I was a missionary, but even godliness could not keep the darkness away from me for long. You're here to bring me to my maker, I presume. Whoever that may be. If it's my soul you want, you're welcome to it. Go on, take it, it's brought me nothing anyways."

"Are you afraid of me, Vincent?" Lord Loss asked, drifting closer, relishing the man's hopelessness. Such an emotional feast as this one was not to be had every day!

"Course I'm not afraid," said the artist, now dipping his brush in white. "I know you're not real. It's finally happened now, I guess. I always knew I was insane, but this is the first time I've seen visions and heard voices. I always wondered what it would be like, and now I know. Point is, you're only a figment of my imagination, and I don't see why I ought to be scared of you when you can't do anything to hurt me."

"Fearsome enough for me not to be real, I should think," purred Lord Loss. "To lose one's mind is a fate worse than encountering any monster. Your head it all you have left to you, Vincent. I would guard it jealously, if I were you. You'll be a screamer slumped in a corner for the rest of your days without it."

Vincent dipped his brush in the glass of water again, wiping it clean of the white. "To be honest I don't much care. Nothing really matters to me anymore. If my dreams and shadows make for good paintings, I'm satisfied." But Lord Loss could tell that his words had unnerved Vincent on some level. Drawing out despair from humans was his specialty. He had a hundred thousand years' practice at it, and no starving artist in his thirties had any hope of brushing him off.

"You told me a moment ago that you didn't care about your paintings," said Lord Loss, no longer attempting to hide his curiosity.

"I care very much about my paintings," growled Vincent, his depressive tone suddenly replaced by one of bottomless resentment. "I paint them for me, not anyone else. I know I'm talented. I know I'm not so damn bad at it after all, not as bad as you'd think from how I never sell. No one gives a damn, but it's true. And I'm never sharing my paintings with the world, and you know why? Because that would bring people joy, and I don't want to do that."

Vincent turned to face Lord Loss for the first time; his eyes alight with the fury of the shunned. "The world's brought me nothing but misery, and I really don't feel like making it a better place in my own small way. Let the do-gooders say what they want. I owe them nothing. Where were they when I needed them, eh? Where was the goddamn world when I needed some company in my darkest hours? The world could get along without me well enough, and now it's arrogant enough to take my beautiful- my works of- to take my only true companions and pick them over, rip them apart in analysis, talk about how affected they were, how much they understand… I don't think so! The world doesn't give a damn about me as a man, and I might not be able to get it back for that, but I'm sure as hell not going to do anything that might make it a richer place."

"Well, then," said Lord Loss with an inconsequential shrug. "It seems we two have something in common."

"I'll bet we do, Lucifer," said Vincent, glaring Lord Loss down as if daring him to strike. He was not an unattractive man. Although rather plain, he was nonetheless good looking, with a full moustache and short reddish-brown beard that covered all of his lower face. His left earlobe was visibly missing, and he was clad in the nondescript white garments of the asylum, currently stained all down the front with several colors of paint.

"I may thrive off human misery, but I'm not Lucifer," said Lord Loss with a weary smile. He drifted forward until he came to a stop in front of Vincent, who sat politely down on the tiny stool.

"You look an awful lot like him," said Vincent. "Least I think so. Look, who are you, anyways? I think I have a right to know, seeing as you seem to know all about me."

"My name is Lord Loss." Lord Loss did not usually introduce himself to humans who did not know who he was, but then again few humans could ask without whimpering or shrieking. Lord Loss thought Vincent deserved a reward for his achievement.

"Lord of loss, eh? A servant of Lucifer, then. Same thing."

"No. I am a demon master and I serve no one but myself."

"That's two things we have in common, then. The serving no one part, that is, not the demon master."

Lord Loss folded his hands beneath his upper chin and said nothing. He was privately wondering whether or not he should take Vincent back to his own realm for torture. He decided against it almost instantly. Vincent did not seem as though he would respond well to torture. The happiest and weakest of humans were usually the ones who broke most easily, and Vincent was neither. Plus, in spite of himself, Lord Loss found himself liking this dark young artist, who cut so fine a figure sitting there hunched forward in the dark, paintbrush still in hand, refusing to be broken by anything thrown at him.

But Lord Loss could not let such a fine feast of emotion go to waste.

"You're more of a slave than you know, Vincent," he said after a pause. "You're a whipping boy for the world's problems. You've borne more heavy suffering than nearly anyone else, I can sense it. I sense all human suffering and I know that for you, life is about as wretched as it can become. No one you will ever meet has suffered more than you, and if you think anyone cares then you're sadly mistaken." Lord Loss was getting into this now, drawing from Vincent's deepest wells of sadness, putting his paranoid secrets into words and forcing him to face them.

"Not content merely to have things better than you, they have to break you down more, mock you and ridicule you for your strangeness. And still they don't care. They're as free and happy as lambs, and you despair as you watch them gambol about, knowing you'll never be one. Tomorrow morning the sun will be shining on that village down there, and children will play and make mischief, and couples will court, and you will watch it from behind the bars here in this home for the insane, a perennial outsider on life."

It worked beautifully. Tears began to form in Vincent's eyes, although he cast his gaze on the ground. As usual Lord Loss had hit the nail on the head.

"Don't fret, Vincent," said Lord Loss, holding out one of his lower arms to brush against Vincent's cheek. The tear water felt like waterfalls of sparking, quenching relief on his skin. "The world may care nothing for you, but you shall always find solace in the embrace of lowly Lord Loss."

Vincent's head sank to his lap and Lord Loss knew that he was going to drink Vincent's soul. It saddened him but it was not a choice. Once Lord Loss began to spin one of his webs of sorrow around a person, it only ended once he had succeeded in kissing that person and taking their soul. Even now he felt a third pair of his hands extend and take Vincent by the cheeks, slowly guiding his entranced head upward.

But suddenly Vincent's head jerked back, out of the demon master's grasp. With a cry he fell backwards off the stool, narrowly missing knocking over the easel on which he had been painting. He landed heavily on his back and then rose to his feet with a drunken roar. "HELLFIRE!" he shouted, and with one swipe he had picked up the tiny stool and thrown it to the floor. Again and again he smashed the stool, until only splinters and a few larger fragments of wood remained. He straightened up, breathing heavily, his gaze now fixed on Lord Loss. But as Lord Loss watched, Vincent's eyes lost their madness.

"Why didn't you attack me?" Lord Loss asked, his voice no longer hypnotic. "I was the one who provoked you."

"You didn't do anything to me," said Vincent. "You're not one of them. You're not one of those who revel in my-"

He broke off suddenly. Footsteps were hurrying down the corridor outside. "Hide!" he hissed.

Lord Loss had barely made himself invisible again when the door burst open. "Mr. van Gogh! Are you all right?" cried a dark-haired nurse in a long white gown. Her gaze travelled from the canvas to the wreckage of the chair to Vincent, who was still panting.

"Oh yes, madam," murmured Vincent shamefacedly. "I was… walking in my sleep, that's all."

The nurse looked at the candle burning on the windowsill and wasn't fooled. "If you need any assistance-"

"No, thank you."

"Well, if you're not sure, we could have somebody stay the night-"

"I'm fine! Thank you."

"If you're sure, then I'll-"

"Leave me alone! I'm fine!"

"Very well, then, Mr. van Gogh," said the nurse coldly and left, looking angry at being ordered about by a patient. Lord Loss heard her footsteps recede as she walked away down the corridor, felt her pain-body withdraw.

""That was foolish of you, Vincent," said Lord Loss. "She will report you to the head of this place, and he will use it as more evidence that you are insane."

"I don't care," said Vincent. "They already have enough on me that this one incident won't make any difference. Besides, she was more put out than truly angry. You notice she wanted to stay the night with me?" He winked.

"There are better things to be done by night," said Lord Loss, nodding towards Vincent's paintings. He was feeling ashamed that he had overshot, trying for despair in Vincent and instead eliciting anger. Such an amateurish mistake, one that he would have thought to be well below him. He felt a grudging admiration growing for this man who was almost a match for him. This man who had evaded his web without the aid of magic.

"Tell me," he said suddenly, "Have you ever played chess?"

"I lived in Paris for a while, said Vincent, picking up his bishop and moving it diagonally across the board. He had had only a basic knowledge of how to play chess but had caught on quite quickly, learning a lot in the past few hours. "I was actually doing pretty well. I tasted happiness for a short while. And then drink got the better of me."

"What happened next?" asked Lord Loss, eliminating Vincent's bishop with a pawn.

"Moved to Arles hoping for an escape, threatened my friend with a razor blade, cut off my earlobe for a hooker with selfsame razor blade, and ended up giving myself to this hellhole," said Vincent as if that were the most natural chain of events in the world. He gestured around him, taking in the tiny room full of canvasses, the wreckage of the stool that he had yet to clear away, the candle burning into a puddle on the windowsill. Dawn was soon to break, Lord Loss noticed. He would not be able to stay much longer.

"Really?" asked Lord Loss, his curiosity aroused. "Tell me more."

"Oh, of course you want to know. It's sadness enough to make you fat." Lord Loss had briefly explained to Vincent about how he thrived off of human depression.

"No, I was merely curious. I'm already receiving enough sadness from you to quench my thirst for a good while."

"How does that work, anyways?" asked Vincent. "The drinking sadness thing, I mean."

"I have a metaphysical straw of sorts. I can't describe it to you all too well, as you know nothing of science, and anyways the scientific words that could explain it haven't yet been invented and might never be."

"How do you know? Do you spend your spare time studying science?" Vincent moved his rook to attack Lord Loss' queen.

"No. I spend it sucking up misery from the human world, but I've learned some science in the process. Scientists and artists are a lot alike in some ways, and one of those ways is a tendency to melancholy. Why, Charles Darwin began to doubt his faith after losing three of his children, two as babies and one at the age of ten."

"Bah! I have nothing in common with goddamned Darwin!"

"Certainly not. You have no children."

"Not one. Closest I got was syphilis from the hooker I gave my ear to. All in all, I think she got the better end of the deal."

"Doesn't that dishearten you?" asked Lord Loss, moving his queen three spaces to the right and forcing Vincent's rook back. Since his failure earlier, Lord Loss was not planning another attempt to capture Vincent's soul. It was too easy, however, not to fall back into the habit of drawing out as much misery as possible from humans whenever he got the chance.

"Not really. How about you?"

"How about me what?" asked Lord Loss, taken aback.

"Don't you want children, Lord Loss? I mean, whatever passes for children in Hell?"

"For one thing," said Lord Loss testily, "I am not from Hell. I reside in a realm of my own, where I am the master. Quite a quaint place, too. A castle of web filled with all manners of demons imaginable. I'd take you there if you would be able to survive the experience. As for your question, demons can reproduce, but I never have. There are no demon masters who would condescend to mate with one as weak as me –for I am weak compared to them-and the common demons are little better than animals. In all my millennia I have never managed to copulate. Instead, I busy myself with the workings of the mortal realm."

"That's nice," said Vincent, falling silent. He moved his rook to the back row. "Check."

Lord Loss found that he had nowhere to move his king to take it out of check and no piece to capture the rook, so his only option was to move his queen into position to block it. Vincent captured the queen, Lord Loss captured to rook with a bishop, and Vincent captured the bishop with his own queen. "Mate."

With a sinking feeling Lord Loss realized that Vincent was right. The snakes in his breast roiled and hissed. To be beaten by an artist, a lunatic who barely knew the game! Such a shame. Lord Loss offered a stiff hand to Vincent, who took it without speaking. So far improved over that old geezer Bartholomew Garadex, who used to chuckle hauntingly and crack jokes every time he beat Lord Loss.

Dawn had broken outside the window. The night was no longer starry, and the village below was swathed in faint blue light, soon to wake up. The candle had finally gone out, no longer needed as the light from outside now faintly lit the studio.

"Well, then," said Lord Loss. "I must be off. I can only spend so much time in this magic-less world before returning to my realm. Besides, you don't want to be caught. They'll think you're even crazier if you tell them about me."

Vincent laughed shortly, and then asked, "You'll be back, won't you?"

"Of course. I can play another game of chess tomorrow night, if that meddling nurse doesn't-"

"Wait!" cried Vincent suddenly. "Did you say you live in a castle of web?"

"Why, yes," said Lord Loss, caught off guard. "Let me demonstrate…" He made strange passes in the air with his many arms as though weaving, and suddenly a length of web was twined between two of his arms. The strand grew longer as Lord Loss continued to draw it out, apparently from nowhere. "Touch it if you wish," he said with a hint of pride. "This kind won't stick."

Vincent reached out a tentative hand and stroked the web. For the first time that night he smiled an authentic smile. "Why, it's almost like canvas! How passing strange!"

"Indeed." For some reason, Vincent's momentary delight did not repulse Lord Loss the way human happiness usually did. He'd already had his share of despair from Vincent, and was so stuffed with it by now that it mattered little to him whether or not Vincent got away with a smile just this once.

"If you would allow me," Vincent began abashedly, "I mean, I'm no weaver, but it's the artist in me, I'd just like to perform a few experiments, so if you could possibly spare me a bit of your silk, enough to try painting on…?"

"It's not every day an untested mortal beats me at chess," said Lord Loss. "You've earned your request." Certainly he saw no reason why he should refuse. He drew from his hands a great length of silk, more and more of it until there was a coiled pile lying on the floor.

"Wonderful," grunted Vincent, bending down to stow the silk behind a row of easels, where the staff of the asylum would not find it.

As always Lord Loss was as good as his word, and he visited with Vincent again the next night. Once more they played chess and swapped stories of the human and demonic worlds. They did not visit for long, as Vincent preferred to work on his paintings. However, every few nights for the next several weeks Lord Loss would come to call. Lord Loss was surprised at how readily Vincent opened up to him about his artwork, although he would still occasionally fly into a rage if Lord Loss said the wrong thing.

Back in his own realm Lord Loss sat on his throne, playing with a dagger that had come into his possession fifteen hundred years ago by way of the boy who was then known as Bran. He tossed it up in the air and then caught it by the blade, musing all the while about Vincent.

His friendship with the artist was nothing radically new. Over the centuries, Lord Loss had become acquainted with a handful of humans who had peaked his interest, most often magicians or mages, occasionally half-mad loners with artistic talent. But for the first time, the demon master was actually considering how things might look from the perspective of the human being.

I come to Vincent in his darkest hour, he mused, as the dog-shaped familiar named Vein came sidling up to him, whining piteously. Lord Loss absentmindedly scratched Vein on her crocodile head, thinking, it's a wonder he hasn't try to kill himself by now. He must think he's insane, visiting with a demon master nights! I'm not even sure he isn't insane, although I'm fairly certain I'm real. So why does Vincent accept me as par for the course? Most other non-magic humans that I've met have needed all sorts of convincing, but Vincent took me almost for granted. He is a religious man, but I still don't see…

"Monsieur van Gogh is a singularly odd one, isn't he?" Lord Loss said aloud to Vein, who growled in agreement.

But maybe… maybe he's so desperate for companionship… that he doesn't care if I'm real, of a figment of his imagination, or the Devil, so long as he gets to talk to someone who understands him as I do. And it doesn't even matter to him that I don't look with a compassionate eye. That I leech off his misery for my own benefit. He just wants there to be someone who knows what he's experiencing…

Lord Loss threw the dagger suddenly across the room, and Vein trotted happily off to fetch it.

When the Starry Night was finished Lord Loss asked if he could have it. To his surprise Vincent refused, saying that it wasn't good enough.

"I thought you didn't want your paintings to be ogled by humans," said Lord Loss in anger. "Why not give it to me? I would treasure it as no human could. It would be a worthy addition to my horde."

Vincent smiled wryly. "Oh, I'll give you something for your horde, Lord Loss, but not anything as substandard as this little paint-splatter. Look, I can already see a dozen mistakes in it, and I've only been done painting it for a few hours. Not at all how I envisioned it, not at all… but that's all beside the point. Anyways, I've been working special on something entirely different that I intend to give to you."

"Might it have anything to do with the silk you took from me?" asked Lord Loss.

"It might." Vincent was grinning, proud in spite of himself. "I've been working with that silk and I'm fairly certain I can make a portrait out of it. You'll have to sit for me, and supply the thread, and you might want to do something to get those snakes to stop moving, they're a bit distracting-"

"A portrait of me?" Lord Loss asked in shock, clasping his hands to his chest mockingly. "I've always considered myself far too ugly to be made into a work of art, if I do say so myself."

"Of course one of you. I've already painted everything else there is to paint in this goddamn asylum! You can sit, can't you?"

"Why, yes, of course." Lord Loss was still wary.

"Good then. It shouldn't be too hard. I've practiced a bit with the new style and I think it's doable. I'll have to weave every individual strand as the equivalent of a brush stroke, but the result, I think, will be beautiful. It'll take quite a few nights of posing, though. You up for it?"

Lord Loss agreed, musing to himself about how very, very full of surprises humans were.

Vincent did the unthinkable and managed to transform Lord Loss' webby secretion into a work of rare beauty. He had taken the hideous form of Lord Loss and rendered it the most unearthly work of art that the demon master had ever seen. Whether by coincidence or skill he was not sure, but the painting-tapestry looked quite similar to Vincent's Post-Impressionist painting style, with each brush stoke visible. In this work, however, there were no strokes, only thin strands of colored webbing that were somehow would tightly to the other threads. Lord Loss could not begin to guess how Vincent had done it, and the artist refused to tell him. The secret would die with him, unless Lord Loss was foolish enough to take apart the painting –tapestry in the hopes of finding it out.

The image itself was perfect. Not a single pus-filled crack in his skin was out of place, the two strips of flesh in place of legs dangled perfectly against an indistinct greenish-grey background, and the snakes in his chest cavity might have been alive, so realistic did their undulations look. The painting glittered faintly in the candlelight, the only sign that it was made out of spider web rather than canvas.

"It's one of my better works, I suppose," muttered Vincent, hunching his shoulders until they almost touched above his head.

"I shall treasure it forever," said Lord Loss. "If only I weren't so ugly. If I were as attractive as Mona Lisa you would have the greatest work of visual art in human history."

Vincent allowed himself a short, barking laugh and a sip from his water glass. The water in his glass was a murky brown from having dipped his paintbrush in it to clean it, but he appeared not to care. As if seeing Lord Loss looking at him, he chanted feverishly to himself, "I kill myself a little more with every painting, why not keep my body dying at the same rate as my soul?" His eyes unfocused for a second or two and then popped back into focus.

"I've always thought that truth is beautiful enough without embellishment," he said, as if nothing had happened. "Ugliness only comes when people try to hide."

"I'm cruel through and through. I have nothing to hide," said Lord Loss. "Does that make me the most beautiful creature in the world?"

"No, you're not," said Vincent, his voice all of a sudden tremulous with hope. A delayed reaction from drinking the paint, Lord Loss wondered? "There are no starless nights, not in people nor in paintings, not even in you, my demonic friend. You could bear to get to know me, couldn't you? That's one star in you that burns in no one else." There were glitters of tears in Vincent's eyes, and his next words were husky. "Perhaps I was wrong… there'll always be stars in the dark. 'And Joseph dreamed yet another dream, and told it his brethren, and said, Behold, I have dreamed a dream more; and, behold, the sun and the moon and the eleven stars made obeisance to me.'" Vincent quoted the scriptural passage with a divine awe in his voice.

Caressing the edge of the painting with three of his arms, Lord Loss knew that his term of friendship with Vincent van Gogh was up. No longer did he gain sustenance from being around Vincent, now that Vincent saw Lord Loss as a friend and was happy around him. His rich feast of misery had been slowly declining since his first meeting with the artist, and although Vincent still had much sadness in his heart, none could be spared for the demon master.

This was how it always was for Lord Loss, on the rare occasion that he would befriend a captivating human who could evade his webs. Such an interesting species humans were, but Lord Loss could never learn everything he wanted. When there was no longer any misery present in the friendship it was no longer sustaining to him, and it would invariably become repulsive in his eyes. Lord Loss needed human misery to feed off of, and could not bear to go without it for long.

Lord Loss might still come to visit Vincent, but only rarely, so that his visits would not interfere with his search for sadness. Starting on his next visit to Earth he would have to seek out new sources of misery to keep himself going, perusing the poor houses and insane asylums and hospitals of the world, picking up scraps of woe here and there. He probably wouldn't even be missed by Vincent. The artist would be glad that he had one less distraction in the way of his painting.

"Always," repeated Vincent to himself, as the first hints of dawn began to show outside.

Auvers-sur-Oise

1890

Vincent van Gogh lay dying on his bed, his brother kneeling at his side. Lord Loss was present, of course, to savor the last gift that Vincent had to give. Over the past year the demon master has managed to stay an infrequent acquaintance of van Gogh. He was driven to visit occasionally even though he derived no nourishment from the visits. Vincent was happier with this arrangement as well, as in the last year he has begun to paint more and more prolifically. His painting had reached a fever pitch in the last few months of his life, and then he had had no time for Vincent at all. Lord Loss had come to check up on him out of idle curiosity some hours before only to find that Vincent had shot himself, destroying himself and his talent with one tiny capsule of lead, and never mind that he'd taken the gun and done it impulsively and he wished he could undo it and he wanted to live to paint now, life would not give him a second chance, it wanted him out now, it had already decided that Vincent van Gogh would die.

Vincent raised himself up slightly in bed, his glazed-over eyes focusing on something above him that his brother could not see. Lord Loss knew that Vincent was looking straight at him. The demon master raised a hand or two to wave a final good-bye, and a look of resignation crossed Vincent's face.

"The sadness will last forever," he said, and then he fell back and was dead, and his brother wept, his head face down on the sheets. Vincent's night, and with it all its stars, had come to an end that sunny day at the close of July.

Vincent's bearded face, grizzled and aged beyond his years by venereal disease and tobacco and alcohol, was no longer crossed at irregular intervals by shadows of stress and unsettlement. Never again would that brow wrinkle in tension, that face contort in a blind rage, those eyes become deep wells of madness that reached all the way to the reservoir of anguish and brilliance at Vincent's core. All that was gone, and not even Lord Loss could salvage the remaining paintings in Vincent, the ones that had never had their chance to come out. But he was happy, in spite of it all. For one thing, Theo van Gogh's grief provided him with a replenishing new sample of despair, something to temporarily quench his ever-gnawing hunger. For another, Vincent was now at peace. He was free of suffering as he'd always wanted to be. No more could anyone else get to him. The artist had, in the most perverse sense possible, finally made his escape.

Also, only Lord Loss knew the true meaning of his friend's last words. They were a testament to the demon master himself, the parasite feeding on sadness who had come to talk with him in his darkest hour, and the understanding that had grown between the unlikely pair, the one who thrived in sadness and the other who dwelt in it. The one who was able to give all that the other needed, if only for a short time, and receive something in return, namely complete understanding. Despair had made an artist out of Vincent, or the artist had made the despair, it was impossible to know. But Lord Loss had done what no human could do, and cherished both.

Back in his own castle, Lord Loss hovered for a long time in front of the webbed-tapestry painting of him. That work now hung behind his throne in a place of honor. Vein and Artery were fighting in the background; the sounds of snarls and ripped webs echoed throughout the castle. Aside from this painting, Vincent had only sold one in his entire life, to a friend who had taken pity on him. Now he was dead and decaying. Lord Loss smiled fondly, remembering the artist's bold declaration when they'd first met that he wanted his paintings to decay with him.

And then Lord Loss knew what he had to do. Vincent would not be lost to the ages, never known for the talent he was. He would not be forgotten as his paintings crumbled into dust, not if Lord Loss had anything to say about it. No matter how much Vincent would have wanted it, Lord Loss could not allow his beautiful friend to be forgotten. From now on, whenever a painting of van Gogh's was up for auction, Lord Loss would be there, invisible, and he would do the only thing he was good at. He would sow sorrow. Lord Loss would whisper words of sadness in the ears of all those who saw the paintings, so that they would see what he himself saw; the true value of the artwork, its tender and delicate beauty, and below it all the deep but fragile soul of a man who had had no place in the world, and had known his inadequacy and suffered for it all his life. And they would recognize the paintings for the treasures that they were, and celebrate them as such. Someday the works of artist Vincent van Gogh would be priceless.

I'm sorry for disrespecting you this way, Vincent. It was the least I could do.