In flashbacks, the past of Vincent Omata, a man living in Gotham City, is shown.
As a boy, Vincent loves to draw lying on his bedroom floor for hours at a time. Ignoring his father's criticisms, he enrolls in the fine arts program at Gotham University as an adult. There, his professor deems him not talented enough to succeed and cruelly suggests a career in dentistry instead. Over time, Vincent's fruitless struggle as an artist causes the deterioration of his relationship, ending in his girlfriend Charlotte walking out on him after six years.
In the present, Vincent is painting Arkham Asylum's gates, but is fired for his slow pace of work and defiant attitude. He seeks solace in a bar but is tormented by ghosts of his past in the form of fiery demons: his father, his art professor, Charlotte, and his former boss at Arkham. At the bar, Vincent encounters a pale woman in black clothes and gothic makeup. Immediately enamored with her, Vincent expresses a desire to paint her portrait, but the woman explains she has to go and exits the bar to meet Pedro, an employee who has collapsed and been taken away by emergency vehicles.
Vincent staggers home to a decrepit apartment. He shoots up on the couch and falls into a deep sleep, only waking to the sound of a crash. Vincent looks out his window to find the woman being yelled at by two strangers. Vincent defends her from the window, but when he goes outside to help, he finds her alone, the two people revealed to the viewers as victims of a recent car crash. The woman offers to see Vincent's work, and he brings her up to his apartment.
Inside, Vincent is shy about his unfinished canvases, and his demons ridicule him. The woman remarks that he is gifted, but there is a spark missing from his work that was lost long ago. Vincent explains about his childhood spent on his bedroom floor drawing, and how it felt like time stopped when he was creating. He again mentions painting her portrait, explaining that he sees something special in her. She graciously agrees to pose for him. As Vincent prepares to paint, the demons tirelessly try to distract him but he ignores them. While he paints, the demons begin to die, burning out one by one. When he is finished, Vincent is amazed with his work until he realizes that it is still evening and time has stopped.
It is revealed that the mysterious woman is Death of the Endless and that Vincent died from a heroin overdose hours ago. Distraught, Vincent posits that at least his portrait will be a worthwhile thing to leave behind. However, when time resumes, ash from the cigarette in Vincent's corpse's hand falls onto some loose papers and sets his apartment on fire. He attempts to save the painting, but his ghostly body is unable to touch it. Vincent begs Death to stop, but she remarks that the end of his story was written in the book of Destiny long before he was born. As the apartment burns, Vincent asks her to save the painting as his last wish. As she morphs into his younger self, Vincent recognizes Death as the character of his childhood drawings. He thanks her and Death leads him by hand to the afterlife. Later, after the fire is extinguished and Vincent's body is carried away, firefighters are surprised to find everything destroyed but the portrait.
