Flash Fiction Friday: Post-Coital Musings of an Art Aficionado

Vivianne is curvy and sensual, with the grace of a Botticelli goddess. Despite her insistence on kinky sex, she is the least chaotic person I know. She's the kind of person who could settle agitated, churning waters with a gaze. Right now she sleeps peacefully beside me, her form a beautiful still life painted upon Egyptian cotton. Her perfect breasts rise and fall, an enigmatic smile threatening to upturn her lips. When I first saw her I felt like Bacchus beholding Ariadne. I want to put her in a frame and hang her on my wall.

Someone's here. Her husband! His first punch turns my face into a Picasso.

-Jack

Though the 208-word limit imposed last week was difficult, I found this week's 112-word cap much easier. And although I checked out this week's prompt on Monday, I really didn't think about it too much until Thursday afternoon, at which point I wrote my extremely short story in just under an hour. After last week, I had a better idea of how fast the words add up, and a sense of how many lines 112 words should be. My first draft exceeded the limit but I compromised on some word choices, and deleted a couple extraneous passages. The photo prompt, featuring a woman kneeling behind a picture frame (seen above) initially had me at a loss, but I decided to write from the perspective of an art lover who is so captivated by a woman's beauty that he wishes to frame and display her in his home.

I'd like to take advantage of this space to note the various art references in my story. The narrator's comparison of Vivianne to "a Botticelli goddess" refers to The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli. Mention of Vivianne's "enigmatic smile" is a subtle reference to the Mona Lisa. Mention of Bacchus and Ariadne refers to the Greek god Dionysus, who beheld the princess Ariadne on the island of Naxos and wedded her, though the narrator is likely considering Bacchus and Ariadne by Titian. And of course, the darkly comic closing line refers to the influential Spanish cubist Pablo Picasso.

Additionally, I attempted to post the prompt photo in high-resolution, but it was apparently too wide and Blogger truncated the right-hand edge. Should you care to see a larger version of the image, or for that matter if you'd like to take part in Flash Fiction Friday, head over to Erotic Flash Fiction.