The Painting

It was a cold morning.

Amelia checked her clock.

Ten to eight.

Right on time, as always.

She opened the door to the clinic and walked in.

Even colder inside, as always.

The air-conditioning in that building was merciless.

She moved briskly, in the hopes of gaining the warmer temperatures of her office as soon as possible.

She passed the desk clerk Augustine with her usual quick smile and wave.

The clinic would have been a terribly drab place with its off-white and sickly blue walls, had it not some of the most talented artwork mounted around its lobby that Amelia had ever seen.

Oil paintings of gathered sail boats at dock upon emerald green sea, pastel works of unfamiliar and curious faces in portrait.

Everywhere her head turned she was greeted with some form of beautiful imagery to counteract the otherwise monotonous nature of her surroundings.

Her favourite piece sat right beside the door to the nursing quarters.

It was an original piece, painted by a local man who lived on the streets, making what money he could selling his works to the "high" art gallery just down the road.

The painting itself was a top-down view of a couple in bed, their saddle-brown legs entwined betwixt sheets of deepest ruby.

Their lips sit millimetres apart, and from that small central point between them unfolds an explosion of flames from a pin-prick inferno.

Oranges, yellows and whites bursting outward with such sudden and furious vigour that the viewer cannot help but be mesmerised by that fiery focal point.

This molten core, this sun, illuminates their faces and torsos brilliantly, barely losing its lustre as it travels toward the edges of their bed.

The detail and effect of the flames across the piece is so absolute, so overpowering, that at first a viewer may disregard the rest of the piece's majesty in awe of how astonishing those first ensnaring details are.

But slowly, as their eyes eventually wander from that blazing allure, they will surely behold next the veracity with which the artist painted life into the rest of his work.

To the left of that super-heated centre, the man can be seen.

His arms are wrapped tightly around the woman, his large and muscled bare chest pressed hard against hers in passionate embrace.

His eyes are closed, face locked in a grimace as he rests his forehead against hers.

You can feel his longing for her.

A longing so deep the unison of their souls could not be enough to sate it.

And who would argue with such logic, she is a goddess.

Thick, ash-blonde hair billows out behind her in messy plumes of white and grey that reach right down to her backside, which her hair there covers tastefully.

She looks peaceful, her grey-green eyes dilated and resting calmly, lovingly upon her lover.

But something is amiss.

Her mouth twinges slightly downward at the sides.

Tell-tale lines tug and crease her face ever so gently in its softest places.

Then, the curveball.

Surrounding the bed on all sides, an abyss of darkest night.

Of deepest ocean.

The fire alight between them tries to cast its radiance out and into that chasm, to quell that eternal void.

But those beams are torn apart in violent, scratchy jagging strokes of jet-black no sooner than they arrive at the edge of the bed.