On the Verge

B
y this time in his career Franz Stuck had painted plenty of nude bodies. On this gray afternoon in Vienna, however, there was something different about the one that was forming under the sensual pressure of his brush. He painted like a man possessed, and perhaps he was, although it was nothing like the demonic possessions he had heard of or imagined in his darkest nightmares. The strange presence he felt animating his arms, articulating his wrists and steadying his fingers was disconcerting but also arousing in a way that went beyond sexuality and into the more rarified realm of creativity. He’d never felt more potent, more ready to give the vision before him an eternal life on canvas.

She was striking, graceful in her obvious deadliness, snakelike. Although no snake was present in the fraught space of his studio, the hard, muscular coils of a serpent began to appear beneath his quick but precise strokes as he moved from painting her nearly translucent white skin to the glistening scales of the tumescent creature. She stood before him brazenly, the woman who had found him and convinced him against his better judgment to paint her portrait, unaware of the snake that was becoming her mantle. He shuddered with a mixture of dread and longing as he formed the serpent using the same curving stokes of his brush to paint its viperous coils as he had the supple curve of her breast moments before.

He saved the faces for last, animating her eyes with a touch of sparkling white in each black orb before his brush moved slightly to the left, carefully rendering the geometric lines of two dazzling diamond eyes, malevolent lozenges of seductive evil that shone out of the darkness of the painting’s background. He traced a tenebrous bell curve next, populating it with razor sharp fangs, a dark maw opened in rident voracity. The snake’s head was nearly finished before he saw he’d placed it on the woman’s shoulder so that it seemed to form her twin. They both stared out at him from the painting with devastating dominion, and he realized in a flash of clarity the identity of the femme fatale that stood before him.

“Sin,” Stuck breathed, and the woman smiled. She sidled forward, resplendent in her cloak of wickedness, to glimpse her portrait for the first time.

“It’s perfect,” she whispered in his ear.

He wasn’t aware of when she left, only that when he finally lifted his eyes from the work the light in the studio had dimmed and the shadows stretched across the paint-splattered floor ominously. Wrapping his coat around him tightly he made his way down the creaking stairs to the cobblestone street outside inhaling the brisk night air. All the way home, and even after he had closed his eyes against the oppressive gloom of his bedchamber, the portrait remained stubbornly in his mind’s eye: a tribute to depravity, to craving, to fiendishness and rapacity, to beauty and sex and hidden passions. Sin, indeed.

F
reya walked quickly across the Quad, her messenger bag banging heavily against her hip with each step. She splashed through the puddles dotting the red brick pathway glad she had pulled on her Hunters that morning. She was late for Art History. Again. And today was the midterm.

As the clock tower struck 8:30, she started to run for the old wooden doors of the art building. She bolted inside, her wet feet squeaking on the ancient, tiled floor. The lecture hall was in the dank basement of the nearly century-old structure. While the campus buildings that housed the sciences and business school were all flashy glass and steel behemoths, most of the humanities buildings were in sad states of disrepair. Ruinously beautiful on the outside, the hundred or so years of wear and tear the insides had received resulted in a general sense of deterioration.

She reached the door of the lecture hall and winced as it squeaked forlornly on its hinges. Fifty pairs of eyes turned to meet her for a moment before returning to their busy scribbles, but it was the bright blue pair at the front of the room that most concerned her. The eyes of Professor Lior Dakryma followed her as she strode quickly to the podium. The man was tall and imposing with a lugubriousness that pervaded the atmosphere around him. Freya always envisioned him as a kind of Teutonic angel, full of a latent wrath and self-righteous superiority. She smiled apologetically, grabbed the test proffered to her by his elegant hand, and found a seat near the end of the front row.

Truth be told, she didn’t actually mind Professor Dakryma’s eyes on her, even if they mostly contained disdain. Tall and slim, he was young for an academic and had the kind of intelligent but careworn face of a man who had spent a few too many hours in dimly lit and poorly ventilated archives. With his penchant for black sweaters and dark jeans he always struck a dashing if somewhat gloomy figure around campus, and he knew it.

Pushing hedonistic thoughts of her handsome professor aside, she found her focus and started in on the exam. The minutes ticked by quickly, but Freya managed to finish the last of the essay questions just as the bell rang signaling the end of the period. She gathered up her things and filed toward the front along with the rest of the students to deposit her completed test near Dakryma’s podium. She was just turning to leave when his voice called her back.

“Should I expect to give you full marks again, Freya?” he said.

“I hope so,” she said, dodging her fellow classmates’ speedy departures.

“Imagine what you could do if you weren’t habitually late.”

“You know I work better under pressure, Professor.”

Freya smiled cheekily and turned to go. She was Dakryma’s work-study assistant, much to the fastidious man’s chagrin. He was a stickler for protocol, and her lack of punctuality offended his sense of the order and rhythm of things, though Freya knew she more than made it up to him with the speed and quality of her work. And she didn’t mind his arrogance; at least he had the intelligence and credentials to back it up. The accent didn’t hurt either.

Dakryma was a visiting faculty member from Sofia University in Bulgaria and a world-renowned art historian. She’d been more than a little thrilled when she’d applied to be his assistant, and he had chosen her from among a long list of qualified candidates. It didn’t pay well, and god knows she needed the cash, but she figured working for him, doing an excellent job, and gaining and remaining in his good graces couldn’t be the worst thing for a college senior on the lookout for potential job opportunities. It was still autumn quarter but graduation would be here before she knew it, and she wanted to have something lined up before the grace period on her college loans ended.

She left the lecture hall and made her way towards the basement café, Parnassus. The baristas always had a bad attitude, but the coffee was good and the place had a certain energy that only an art school coffee house could have. It’s where she did her best thinking.

Freya settled into one end of the worn couch in the corner of the café, spreading the latest issue of Hi-Fructose magazine across her lap. She took a sip of her latte, letting the foam linger on her lips before licking it away. Freya always relished these calm moments following the intense thinking and quick scribbling an exam entailed. She let her head fall against the back of the couch and closed her eyes. She’d have to remember not to sign up for any 8:30 am lectures next quarter. Hers was a more crepuscular circadian rhythm; sunrises just didn’t seem as natural as sunsets.

Sighing she opened her eyes again and caught her breath. Near the entrance of the café stood one of the most beautiful women she had ever seen. Her dark hair was caught up in a neat bun except for a thick fringe of sideswept bangs that highlighted her strikingly dark eyes. Her emerald-green blouse skimmed her body hinting at the enviable curves beneath, while her dark jeans hugged her full hips and long legs.

Freya was a great admirer of beauty in all its forms. It kind of went with the art history territory. Male or female, she was known to stare appreciatively at either sex. Her keen eyes always sought out the unusual and interesting, finding attractiveness in difference. It made her an inveterate people watcher, but she had never witnessed someone like the woman at the café door. Even after a brief glance, it was clear she was arresting, not only because of her classic glamour, but also because of an indescribable allure that was immediately apparent yet difficult to define. The juxtaposition made her impossibly captivating.