The Demon on the Canvas

Description:

This terrifying image was one of the last drawings issuing from the troubled hand of Marine Lance Corporal Pablo Acevedo, the Patient Zero in Rachel Bloom’s vision restoration trials at Oak Ridge, prior to Pablo’s ghastly act of self-injury in May of 2025. Staff at the adjunct clinical facilities, where Pablo had been receiving care since the spreading psychosis began overtaking his mind, noted that his drawings had become ever more bizarre, mysterious, and frightening as his madness progressed. His sketches were filled with apocalyptic augurings, eldritch beasts and symbols unknown to any mythology, strange numbers, and tortuous shapes and geometric forms that seemed to infinitely twist and curl upon themselves. Eventually, several of these bewildering elements coalesced in the form of an otherworldly monstrosity that the perplexed staff simply referred to as “Pablo’s demon.” Tim catches a fleeting but unnerving glimpse of this image upon sneaking into Pablo’s patient room to investigate the Marine’s affliction – soon discovering that, to his horror, the demon’s “hauntings” are not confined to Pablo and his fellow veterans in the trial.