Art of Death

Art of Death
By Stephen A Abell.

Number of Words: 295



My fork tinged off the stoneware plate.

“Hold still,” the artist cried, as I heard her pencil sketch out the tableau before her on the rough hewn canvas, “HOLD STILL!”

As if I had any other choice.

I’d met ‘Becca at a gallery event in Buxton. It was a little affair and we were two of the three artists parading their wares. The third, a strange squat woman who drove fast cars, and created sculptures from parts she’d scrounged at garages, didn’t talk much, which suited me fine, as I was smitten with Rebecca and her cold, aloof, mixed media work. Myself, born in the Peak District, had stuck with the more realistic medium of watercolour and gouache, to recreate the areas natural beauty.

We were magnets. I wished I could be as free as she: She wished to be as regimented as I. We spoke all evening long, sipping the free wine, and getting pretty tipsy too boot. We did well, though 'Becca did better, getting a couple of nudges for commissioned pieces.

That’s why I’m now strapped into this electric chair, in front of a table covered with The Stars and Stripes, an open McDonalds box, overflowing with French Fries, sits on the plate, on top of the fries rests a large T-Bone steak oozing blood. This is ‘Becca’s irreverently humourous take on an American gentleman’s commissioned masterpiece, which he wanted entitled “The Last Meal”.

‘Becca had moved onto the brushwork now. It was to be a mainly colourless work; mostly charcoal, with splashes of scarlet to signify blood pouring off the cold slab of dead cow, and in the red shocked face of the accused as the killing current cooked his flesh.

Oh God, Father in Heaven... her hand is on the lever...



For the contest "Daily Flash Fiction Challenge"  based on the prompt Include the words - Fork, Pencil, Brush.