The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!
The Color Purple
by Marge Simon
“I collect artists,” she says.
She wants three of me. One for the bedroom, one to tease and one to be nice to her vacuous friends. A crowd of flies haunts the drawing room. Brown spots on peaches. A room of scorched music and uncommon speech.
She admits she chose me for my smile and my purple tie. “A rich woman always bends toward a creative man,” she says. I grip the champagne flute too tightly. “Poor you,” she says, ministering to my wound with tweezers and a handkerchief of tears.
The skin around her eyes like cracks in Wedgewood china. So many lifts and still she’s down. She thinks that someday I’ll to paint her in the nude, careful to erase the years. Most bothersome is how she loves to show me off. Another cocktail afternoon swatting flies. She loves that part too. “Sarcasm is your style,” she says.
She insists that we do it her way. Champagne and candles. A rosebud curtained bed. All is orchestrated except me. A thing in her life that doesn’t quite work, doesn’t fit. But tonight, I had obtained a vial of Aconite. Just a few drops in her glass.
Our last toast together was indeed memorable, watching her gasp for air while turning a most exquisite shade of purple.
Fiction © Copyright Marge Simon
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com
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Spreading the Writer's Word 
Love this. So sensuous and wicked.
A darkly terrific story.