Ten Years Later …
Joe sat in his art class staring at the nude model posing unenthusiastically atop a wooden stool. Her breasts were much smaller than what Joe preferred.
Her hips, ass, and thighs were likewise barely existent. She was proportioned very much like a prepubescent girl rather than a grown woman. Not at all the type of woman that normally roused the beast. But something about her was getting to him. Her big, vulnerable, doelike eyes, the seductive smirk turning up the corners of her thick lips or the way they seemed to be constantly puckered as if blowing a kiss.
Something about her was arousing him.
And that was just not good.
Years ago a psychiatrist had suggested painting as therapy to help Joe deal with the trauma he’d been through. They thought it would be good if the shy young boy learned to express himself creatively. Since then Joe had used his art as an outlet for his fantasies, but as his fantasies had begun to twist and pervert he’d had to hide his work from those who wouldn’t understand it. He was now beginning to think this art class might not have been a good idea. It was hard to hide your art in a room filled with thirty other students.
Joe’s hand trembled as he dragged the paintbrush over the canvas. More and more red found its way into his palette as he imagined ripping the waifish model open and tasting her insides. It was just one more sign that he was starting to lose control of himself.
Earlier that day he’d received a call from his father reminding Joe of how much he was paying for his education and that he’d better not be out partying all night and getting shitty grades like he had his first year in college.
‘Don’t piss away your chance to make something of yourself by going out every night chasing those college sluts. There’ll be plenty of time to dip your wick in those split-tails after you get your education. College ain’t all about beer bongs and toga parties, boy. Don’t fuck this up! I can barely afford to keep you there now. I’d be retired now if it weren’t for you─you’re the only reason I keep working. But you’d rather get drunk and bang every coed slut you see. Young, dumb, and full of cum. You’d better control that shit this year, boy! Don’t let your grades slip again. You hearin’ me, boy?’
Joe listened halfheartedly. Loans and government grants were paying for his education; all his dad did was send him spending money. He could easily replace that eighty dollars a week with a job. Even McDonald’s paid more than that. But something about talking to his father always made the beast hungrier.
His dad always pissed him off and the anger seemed to trigger the lust.
Joe’s hands whipped frantically back and forth across the canvas. His palette was now almost completely red, white, tan, and pink. Blood, bone, and flesh. He was painting the model from the inside out. He was also panting hard and staring at her so intently that she began to shiver as she stared back. Joe could feel eyes on him, in back of him. He could hear them gasp at the mayhem on his canvas. But he couldn’t stop painting. An erection was tenting his pants as he slashed at the canvas with his brush.
Finally, the model snatched up her clothes and ran out of the room, breaking the trance Joe had found himself in. The room went completely quiet. Joe could still hear his own breaths coming hard and fast like a steam engine at full speed. He struggled to get himself under control even as he became aware of the stares of his peers and the professor. She was the first to break the silence.
‘Uh … Joseph? That was a pretty intense session there. Do you mind if we take a look at your canvas?’ The professor was another starving waif with no appreciable nourishment on her gaunt frame. Her skin hung loose against her bones as if someone had already sucked out all the muscle and fat. The bones in her face stuck out prominently and her eyes were sunken back into her skull. Her dried nest of blonde and gray hair hung in a tangled mess down to her shoulders and her hands were perpetually stained with paint. She had always reminded Joe of a walking, talking skeleton.
Joe said nothing. He watched stoically as she lifted the canvas from the easel in front of him. The rest of the class was closing in on him, stepping from behind their own easels and crowding in tight to stare over his shoulder at his masterpiece. The canvas dripped with red. There were gasps all around.
‘This is some very passionate work, Joseph. What inspired you to create this?’
The woman’s voice trembled. She’d be calling his counselor the minute class was over. They’d have his ass on a psychiatrist’s couch by the end of the week and once they found out everything else that was in his head they’d stick him in a straitjacket and toss him in a padded room. He had to say something to dissuade them from thinking he was crazy, but he couldn’t focus. The proximity of his fellow students was making his mouth water. The air was thick and humid with the smell of warm, young flesh. He stared from one to the other, not looking at their faces but at breasts squeezed tight into little T-shirts and blouses, nipples pressed against the fabric, naked thighs sticking out from beneath shorts and skirts, bare arms, necks, even the shaved calves at the bottom of a pair of Capri pants were arousing him. Joe wanted to scream.
Worse yet, he wanted to attack.
‘I don’t know. I-I’m sorry.’
‘No, don’t be sorry. This is wonderful work. An artist should be passionate. Raw bleeding passion is what makes an artist and if this is what you have inside of you then you should do quite well. It reminds me of Francis Bacon.’
The art teacher smiled at him, laughing at his obvious embarrassment. Joe tried not to be insulted by her delight over his discomfort but he felt as if he was being patronized, even mocked.
Joe looked at the canvas again. It did look a little like something Francis Bacon would have painted. He looked back at the art teacher’s forced smile and now recognized it as little more than an attempt to reassure him. She was not ridiculing him. Not baring her fangs.
‘Thank you,’ Joe whispered sheepishly.
‘It really is an intense piece.’ Despite her praise, Joe could still hear the nervousness in her voice and smell the fear in her perspiration. His nostrils filled with the scent of her arousal. Luckily she did absolutely nothing for him sexually.
His classmates continued to gawk at his work, some praising, some condemning, others casting nervous, disgusted glances his way. Finally, the model, who’d run out of the room, came back.
All eyes turned to her as she tiptoed back into the room with a robe wrapped around her and her shoes in her hands. The slender woman looked over the teacher’s shoulder at the canvas with her big, nervous, watery, doe eyes and then at Joseph. She shuddered. An insecure smile crept tentatively onto her lips, testing the waters before splashing across her face.
‘Is this me? Is this how you see me?’ Her voice was small and timid but there was something sultry in it too. Her eyes locked with Joe’s as if challenging him.
‘Yes. That’s what I saw.’ Joe averted his eyes. Ashamed.
‘I like it. It scares me. Nothing’s ever really scared me before.’
‘Then you can keep it.’
‘What? You can’t give this away. At least let me pay you for it.’
‘No. It’s yours. You inspired it. You should have it.’
The model looked down at the canvas again with the angry slashes of red ripping through the pinks and tans and she shuddered once more. ‘I inspired it?’ she whispered, awed.
‘Yes.’
‘Then let me take you out to dinner or something to pay for it.’
Joe looked up at her with that carnivorous lust still brimming in his eyes. ‘I don’t think that would be wise.’
The girl’s mouth opened and then shut again. She wandered out of the room holding the canvas in front of her at arm’s length, just staring at it. Everyone else got up and slowly filtered out of the room behind her. Joe quietly gathered up his things and left as well.
He was so aroused that he almost sprinted across campus to get back to his dorm room to masturbate. It was late and he was hoping that his roommate would be out at one of the bars or something so he’d have a few moments alone.
He was barely through the door before the phone rang. It was his father again. He was drunk and in the mood to confess, to unburden his soul.
‘Look, son, you know I love you, don’t you? You’re the only good thing in my world and I don’t want you to turn out like me. That’s why I’m so hard on you, boy. I just don’t want you to wind up like me. I don’t think it’s in you anyway really. You’re too soft. Do you know what I am, son? I’ve done terrible things, boy. Really awful things. Not even your momma knows about it. But I think you should know . . . ‘
‘You’re drunk, Dad. Go to sleep.’ Joe hung up the phone and climbed under the covers. He didn’t quite feel like masturbating anymore.
He slept for two hours and when he awoke there were three messages on his answering machine. They were all from his father.
‘Joey? You there boy? I shouldn’t be saying all of this on a damned machine. Answer the phone! I’ve got to tell you about that kid Damon, the one who attacked you when you were little. Joe, pick up the phone!’
Joe pressed the button to erase and the next message came on.
‘Look … that Damon kid … I knew him. I…
Joe erased that one too.
‘There were a lot of women … and kids. I couldn’t control myself. It was like … an addiction.’
Joe hit ERASE and pulled the phone cord out of the wall. He plopped down in front of the computer and opened a book to read. It was a zoological text called Perfect Predators. Joe smiled as if laughing at some private joke.
