Theodore Cray said they called to him from the sky. He painted their portraits at night. We laughed at him.

“They’re lonely,” he said, hiding the canvases.

We scoured his house and burned the paintings in his kitchen. “It’s over,” we said. “No more.”

And then Theodore Cray was gone.

Amanda E. Phillips writes unsettling stories from Sacramento, California. See more at amandaephillips.net.