A Portrait

Experimental assignment.

The studio that Lily sat in was obviously set to be condemned, even if she hadn’t seen the sign outside. It was stripped bare of embellishment, and left to rot until the day that the building collapsed into rubble. She felt as if she was the only thing that was alive in this dilapidated hellhole. She was perched onto a small stool with her legs crossed underneath her cheap skirt, and set aside to resemble a lady. Her knees jutted out from muscles thinned from unnatural causes, likely the starvation diet she used to stay skinny as a corpse. Her arms were barely strong enough to keep up her posture, which wished to sag like a scarecrow, and hold up the copy of “The Picture of Dorian Grey”. Finally, she was forced to drop it to her lap.
“Can you really do it?” She asked, with the eyes painted with coal in line thicker than the eye of Ra angling up to the artist on the other side of the canvas. The artist unbent his neck and raised his head up so he could make eye contact. His angular jaw, with tipped off into a goatee, was sharp enough to cut through any sense of security she may have managed to cling onto up to this point.
“I always keep to my promises. We have a deal, and thus, I will help you be beautiful. It is very simple.” He answered with a voice imitating the lower range of a Stradivarius violin. “Now, please tilt your head a bit, dear. I wish to accentuate your jaw line.” She attempted to do so, though the muscles in her neck were so tense that they couldn’t afford much in the way of movement. Though it felt to Lily like tremendous effort, the artist could see no difference.
“Are you always so tense?” The artist asked as he set down his paintbrush and walked over to adjust her himself.
“I don’t feel tense.” She replied, and confirmed the artist’s theory with her voice. It trembled and the words were strained as if they fought past a silk noose. Perhaps she had forgotten what relaxed muscles felt like. The artist reached for her head with finely manicured fingers, but Lily sharply turned away, and tightened the edges of her eyes as if stricken by rigor mortis.
“Why do you flinch? I am only trying to help you.” The artist asked. “That is why you came here, isn’t it?” So I can help you be more beautiful?”
Lily released her eyes to glance at the artist to check if he was sincere. Her hand twisted a lock of her mahogany hair, which wrapped around her as if to bury her away from a threat. The artist had a neutral expression; relaxed eyebrows, slight turn-up in the lips, eyes focused on her.
“Relax. Let your muscles become like water.” The artist assured her. “Confidence will make you beautiful despite everything else.”
‘Easy for him to say.’ Lily thought. He was beautiful, she was not. She didn’t have coal hair that framed her face, nor the fluid movements, the hypnotic voice, the stylish suit. Her list could’ve wrapped around the world of things that she could never possess.
“Look at your shoulders!” He sighed, voice edged with frustration from her resistance. “They are nearly pressing your ears together! How can your mind think with that pressure? And your chest! It doesn’t lift with breath. An overzealous priest could bury you and never know the difference! Please, please let me do my work. I will not hurt you.”
The artist gestured to those flaws, but Lily still didn’t let him near her. She tried addressing it herself, but only shifted to millimeters that hardly counted. Finally, the artist could no longer watch her struggle. He circled her to massage her choked neck and shoulders. The sudden touch made her cry out, and she jerked away, causing her to fall off the stool. The stool, pulled by gravity onto the leg of the easel, landed on the studio floor with a smothered bass note. The paintbrushes clattered nonsensically, like tiny church balls. The canvas flipped away the safety of the easel onto the sea of captured paints.
The artist rushed to his canvas, past Lily, who hugged herself on the cold, bare cement floor. He lifted it to reveal his unfinished work ruined by spilled turpentine and pointless color splattered from corner to corner. A giant glob of black covered Lily’s face on her portrait as if captured by diseased death’s hand. The artist sighed in disappointment, but resisted anger from twisting his features. He turned the canvas to show Lily the damage, and said;
“Will you help me fix this?” She didn’t speak. She didn’t move. She just stared at him with wide eyes. Suddenly the rage bloomed on the artist like a rush of blood on a wounded soldier. He threw the easel to a wall, where it splintered into a million pieces. He stormed to a desk, and lifted a thin stack of papers.
“This was our deal!” He shouted, and then gripped the edges to tear it apart.
“Wait! You said you could make me beautiful!” Lily cried.
“You tried to cheat me; pay me nothing!” He snarled.
“I said I’d give you-”
“Your soul belongs to everyone! It belongs to the newest fad, to a television show!  You are whatever your peers say you are. You can’t control it. You cannot give what is not yours.” He tore the documents in half, rights across the signature that had been written in blood. He tore it again and again, and then cast the shredded corpse at her. The pieces fell like snow in a graveyard onto her withering being, and she began to shed tiny quiet rivers from her horrified eyes. Her body retracted into a ball, with those sharp knees stabbing her chest, and her back and neck so stretched that they were viewable with just a glance. Her head tilted to the ground and the tears splattered freely to the floor. The artist exhaled his anger, and watched Lily crumble into a sobbing mess. He memorized the image, and walked away.

At least now he had an honest portrait to paint.