Portrait (flash fiction)

There is only silence between us now. Shame, modesty lie tangled in the cast-off sheets. For the first time in my life, I am fulfilled. Spent. Though satisfied, I hunger for more. Tears of love fill my eyes.

The memory of our first time washes over me, my blood still pulsating as I awaken from my fevered dream into the nightmare of my reality.

My fingers burn with the urge to sketch him again, to etch his fading silhouette into my mind. But they've taken my second love from me, as well.

Although I can do so only scarcely, I scratch his form upon the wall. When my nails are left torn and bleeding, I paint him in the crimson copper from my veins until orderlies bind my arms around my body, and every breath I take is a suffocation.

His father, my ‘benefactor’, visits me in the asylum. Generations of old money have bought him everything from power and prestige to the life of a lowly painter left to rot between these walls.

Even he seems startled by my gaunt appearance. “How are you, my boy?”

He understands my silence for what it is.

“I thought you'd like to hear the happy news,” he says, sliding a color photograph across the table. That must have cost a pretty penny. “What have you to say now?”

I barely notice the poor blushing bride; I see only the sadness of the groom, in a prison all his own.

“Only that he was an experienced lover. Money cannot buy you an heir.”

His eyes darken. “I see you are still not over your sickness.”

With a snap of his fingers, they strap me down and hook electrodes to my head.

They want me to forget him, but I won't.

I won't…