Beheld
by Sinner
CHAPTER I
"And close the door."
She did as was demanded, though it was overtly apparent in her face that her
thoughts were elsewhere. She was concerned, disturbed, perhaps even scared. Even
after the door had clicked shut, she stood with her long, red, enamel
fingernails wrapped around its knob, staring vacantly downward, at nothing in
particular.
"Are you ready?"
"I think so," she said slowly, still in some strange trance, her gaze still
targeted toward the lower portion of the bedroom wall.
"Then have a seat," he said, motioning toward the antique wooden chair with the
red velvet seat that was positioned against a bare wall. He sat on his unmade
bed and rattled through a blackened box of pencils.
"I can't stay long," she defiantly volunteered as she situated herself in the
chair and instinctively jabbed her fingers into her short, brown,
strategically-rumpled coif.
"I don't want you to."
"Then why do you want to draw me?"
"Turn your body to the right, then look in my direction, though not directly at
me."
The forty-seven-year-old woman did as she was instructed by her younger brother,
almost ten years her junior. She did so with little or no question because she
was strangely intrigued and, as such, curious as to his motives and their
potential consequences. That is the exact reason she rapped on his back door
that afternoon, just as he had requested.
Other than the sound of sharp, hard pencil lead viciously scratching against the
soft, white paper, there was silence. Maintaining her pose, she scanned the
stacks of canvases propped against the wall behind he who drew her, as well as
the sketches pinned and taped to it. All the ones she could see were of sensuous
and slender young women, either nude or scantily clad in trendy apparel designed
exclusively for women of that type - a type of woman she was not.
Though I once was, she thought to herself. She recalled her own reflection and
how much she relished it, sometimes with a giddy excitement while at other times
with a secret stirring. I am sexy, she would proclaim as she'd admire her
exaggerated bust. I will be the object of men's desire. A thrilling notion for
her as a young woman, given the sublime nature of her own guarded desires - for
the passionate, for the sensual, for the lustful. Slowly and sadly, however, she
withdrew from the reverie and her eyes again began to focus on the paintings and
sketches and, again, on the women... and the woman she was not.
"So why do you want to draw me?"
"Why do you want me to draw you," came the voice from behind the sketch pad.
The truth was not an option. Nor was a good lie in the midst of such an
unexpected and difficult question.
"Who are all those women that have modeled for you? Women in New York?"
"Yes," he said quickly, after turning his head in the direction she was staring,
then snapping it immediately back to the paper.
The works were sensual, strange and dark, she thought. She felt compelled to
find out more, yet somehow didn't want to. However, semi-rational decisions did
not have an effect on her imagination. Brief and vague visions flashed through
her mind as she perused the paintings with her eyes. Each one she viewed would
momentarily come to life and she was there while it was being painted, witness
to the enigmatic atmosphere of a sophisticated and mystical eroticism she found
intoxicating but that she knew nothing about. The more she looked at them, the
more she loved them. Her brother's paintings.
"I have to go now."
"No, not yet," he said without pause, then made one last dramatic scratch on the
pad before tearing the top sheet from the spiral binding and handing it to her.
She stared at it for several seconds.
"How do you want me to pose for the next one," she asked.
