Body Art Read Free

to look around.
    “ I want
nothing from you.” The voice replied. “I just paint them… give them
new life.”
    “ Then why
am I here?” Jeff shouted.
    “ Because
it is what they wanted,” explained the voice.
    “ What the
hell does that mean?”
    “ Ask
them,” the voice whispered. “Only they know.”
    Jeff stepped
closer to the car, watching as the skin began to peel away, the
paint bubbling as if heated from within and running down the
bodywork, only to reveal the tender flesh beneath. He reached out
and placed his hand on the roof of the car, his palm resting over
the swirl of her belly button.
    “ What do
you want from me?”
    “ To
feel.” The reply came from all angles, a harmonic sigh that
whispered to Jeff.
    “ Why are
you doing this?” Jeff cried out. “You were the special
ones.”
    “ How dare
you,” she snarled, her bloodied eyes snapping open and glaring at
Jeff. “You had no right.”
    Jeff staggered
backwards, falling to his knees as tears blurred his vision yet he
still saw her raise from the car, paint becoming flesh as she
separated from the metal canvas. He swung his head from left to
right and witnessed them all being reborn, climbing down from the
walls and moving towards him.
    “ I loved
you all,” Jeff sobbed, looking up into her eyes. “But I loved you
the most.”
    “ Then let
me return that love,” She hissed at Jeff, dropping to her knees and
staring him in the face. “Let me show you how your love feels.” She
thrust a hand forward, penetrating skin and muscle.
    Jeff felt the
searing pain in his gut and looked down at where her wrist
disappeared into his torso, blood staining the white shirt fresh on
that morning. His mouth opened and closed but no sound came.
    “ Can you
feel me inside?” She probed with cold fingers. “Is it good for
you?” She leaned forward and ran her tongue along his check, the
unnatural roughness feeling like a thousand barbs as it tore the
skin away from the soft tissue under the surface.
    They surrounded
him, hands reaching out to tear at his clothes and skin just as he
had with them. He wanted to scream but fingers pushed in around his
Adam’s apple and crushed it with inhuman pressure.
    They continued
to crowd in on him, suffocating him with their eagerness to return
his perverse love. They tore at him with abandon, taking the flesh
and returning to the walls with their trophies and smearing the
remains over the concrete surface, using his fluids to paint a new
picture.
    The entire time
she never left his side, holding him upright in her intimate
embrace, waiting until he was truly naked, exposed as he had once
exposed them.
    “ Enough,”
she said, lifting Jeff to his feet and leading him towards the
wall, bloody footprints left in his path.
    “ But I
loved you,” Jeff coughed through a throat full of blood.
    “ You
don’t know the meaning of love,” they said as one. “But you will
come to learn the meaning of suffering.”
    She pushed Jeff
against the gore smeared wall. The pain was like nothing Jeff had
ever felt before and he finally managed to scream, spraying the air
with a red mist as the sound bubbled up from his tattered
windpipe.
    The scream died
as he became one with the wall, the wet blood drying around him as
his flesh bled into the concrete and he joined those he had once
loved.