Brothers of the Moon

No Oil Painting-1

No Oil Painting

Will stood scratching and picking at the underside of the table as he watched Sarah unbuttoning her blouse.

“This has long been a dream of mine,” she said with a sparkle in her emerald eyes. “Tell me you have dreamed of similar.”

Will smiled nervously and took a step back.

The white cotton garment slid from Sarah’s shoulders exposing her large, bountiful breasts. Her milky skin was as smooth as cream and had not a single blemish upon its surface. Yet, despite the rest of his body being as stiff as a fire poker, there was one part of his anatomy that rebelled.

“Gaze upon them as you will,” she said, cupping both breasts with her hands. “Think on all the ways you will pleasure them. Let no morals bind your imagination.”

He watched as she raised a n****e to meet her extended tongue and then as she licked the fleshy bud, peering at him, he assumed, to see if she still had his attention. When she saw that he was indeed watching she rubbed her breasts together, teasing the n*****s between her fingers before sliding her hands down the gentle curves of her waist and over her hips to the top of her skirt.

“This is the prize you have hungered for, isn’t it, Will?” she said licking her lips. Her eyes glanced down at his flaccid c**k and Will noticed a small frown wavering on her forehead.

His eyes remained on her as she hooked her fingers into the top of the simple skirt she was wearing and pulled it down an inch. She winked at him and slowly turned around so that he was facing her backside. She bent forward, pulling the skirt down as she went and giving Will his first glimpse of her swollen labia.

“Come on, Will,” she purred, reaching between her legs and dipping a finger inside her glistening snatch. “See how I am readying myself for you?” She drew her finger out, bringing with it a thin strand of lubrication that snapped immediately. “Enter me, Will.”

Will stepped back until he was at the far end of the table. His eyes glanced first at his clothing that sat in a pile on the scuffed and worn floorboards and then at the door, which stood wide open to the forest beyond. He could snatch up his clothes and be amongst the trees in a flash. When he was far enough away he could dress and be back in the village in half an hour if he ran hard enough. But although Sarah had been banished from the village, there were ways a woman like her could find him. A black cat at the window. A raven flying overhead. A rat in the pantry.

When he made no move to accommodate her, Sarah straightened up and turned around. He noticed her eyes fall again to his wrinkled s*x, a wilted flower that drooped down from a thick tangle of light-brown pubic hair. A frown reappeared on her forehead as she walked toward him.

“What’s this?” she asked, her hand gripping his limp organ. “I see not even a slight effort on your part!”

Her tone was one of offense rather than of surprise, or even disappointment.

“Am I to understand from this pitiful display that you find me unattractive?”

Will could not deny that her slender figure and fine features were extremely attractive. Her full breasts and the long brown hair that cascaded in waves and curls over them were a male fantasy. Of that he had no doubt.

“I should say that you are an extremely attractive woman, Sarah,” he said, his tongue almost tripping over the words. “It’s just that…there seems to be a…misunderstanding.”

Sarah took a couple of steps back and put her hands on her hips.

“I would like to hear what this misunderstanding is,” she replied in a defensive tone.

“If only I could,” he replied, wishing for the matter to be dropped. “It would be dangerous to speak the words.”

Sarah let one hand fall from her hip.

“I can tell you it would be a good deal more dangerous not to give voice to those words.”

Will looked up at the ceiling, his eyelids fluttering like butterflies as he battled to find the courage to say what needed to be said.

“Due to an unfortunate quirk of nature, I do not have the…capacity to find you attractive in that way.” He swallowed hard. “I reserve my attention for the members of my own s*x. My desire is for men.”

Sarah’s eyes widened. Her pursed lips shifted into a half-smile.

“I beg your pardon?” she said. “I think my ears are failing me.”

“I am a lover of men,” said Will. “When I am able, which is not very often at all.”

Sarah nodded, the half-smile still gracing her face. She turned and walked to the far side of the room where there was a painting leaning against the wall, a landscape of a rural scene. There were green hills and a grove of trees. Sheep stood grazing on the lush grass. Toward the front, there was a small stream where the grass grew long and bulrushes proliferated.

“Do you like this painting?” asked Sarah. “A visitor from the city gave it to me as p*****t for curing him of a pox he acquired whilst travelling in the Mediterranean.”

Will looked puzzled. How was it that the conversation had turned from his love of men to art?

“I don’t know,” Will replied. “I don’t know anything about painting.”

Sarah tut-tutted him. “You don’t have to have knowledge of art to know if you like a painting or not. So do you?”

Will shifted uncomfortably on the spot. “Do I what?”

“Like the painting?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Good,” replied Sarah. “I was hoping you’d say that. Even if you are able to deny me one small happiness, I wish only the best for you.”

Will’s right eyelid began to twitch. It was nothing out of the ordinary. It did that when he was nervous or stressed, and at that moment he was both.

“What do you mean?”

Sarah rushed at him. She threw her arms up and began waving her hands about in front of him and on either side of him while chanting a series of unintelligible words.

“What are you doing?” he asked as Sarah continued her frenzied behaviour.

Suddenly he had an overwhelming urge to vomit.

She raised her hands above his head and began to rub them together as though she were warming them. Finally her chanting reached a crescendo and she threw her hands toward the painting. Immediately Will felt himself being pushed through the air in the same direction. There was not even time to cry out.

He hit the canvas but didn’t tear it. Nevertheless, he still managed to pass right through it. For a moment he was in a dark world. There were sounds, but they were muffled and sounded far away. He started to turn around and found it was like moving through a vat of honey. The atmosphere was thick and oppressive and there was a faint smell of oil. What had that damned witch done to him?

It was obvious he was inside the painting. Somehow, through her dark magic, she had transported him into the oil and paint and canvas of the landscape. Looking out, he could see blurred objects—the table, the floorboards of the cottage and a large pale shape that moved and could only have been Sarah.

“Hello in there,” he heard her say, though her voice sounded miles away. “I hope you’ll forgive me.”

Will’s lips parted in preparation to say something, but he found the effort to be beyond him.

“You’re too handsome for me to let anyone else have you,” said Sarah. “I dreamed of feeling you inside me, having you fill me with your seed, but that seed would only be wasted on other men. I can’t have all of you, but at least now I can have part of you.”

And so Will became a prisoner.

In the beginning, the hours seemed like days and the days seemed an eternity. On the first night, he discovered that his world was now reduced to the size of the frame. The darkness behind him went back perhaps a meter, if that. It was claustrophobic. He had never felt such terror before, and the thought that this was to be his world forevermore made him slide down the back of the painting, sobbing.

After a few months spent staring out at the fuzzy world he had once been a part of, he began to feel a numbness in his fingers and toes. As days passed by and spring became winter, the numbness crept along his limbs and got into his joints until he could not move anything but his eyes, his nostrils and mouth. One day, he realized he could no longer move even those parts of his body, yet worse was to come.

As the muscles in his eyes stopped working, his vision began to fade. The blurry images, inches away on the other side of the canvas, became just patches of light and dark until the shadows ate everything. His hearing was the last of his senses to go, and he wondered if this was what it felt like to die.