I've been sitting on this one for a little while. I've been meaning to touch it up. Maybe if people like it I will. All participants are over 18 and fictitious.
...My name is Camille. I don't usually feel guilty for what I do. I don't now. It doesn't worry me, but it should. I feel the need to confess in some small way...
...My name is Audrey. I can't stand it any longer. I can't face my minister. Or sit opposite him in a confessional. But I have to confess to someone. And even if I lose my resolve and burn this note before anyone can read it, at least God will see it, and write down in the Book of Life that I repented. It started when I met a grad student named Camille...
...Do not mistake me. What I've done, I've done several times before, several times since and will several times again. Maybe I'm writing this because I'm bragging. So while I'm disclosing everything, I'll cop to that too, and start with the most sinister of my transgressions, which is also my favorite. Her name is Audrey...
...I was immediately enthralled with Camille. I was just a freshman in my first semester. I'd majored in acting...to get over my shyness. So enthralling me was easy. There's so much to see in art school, but Camille's image was designed to bait people like me. Confident and sure, she painted and did it her way, and if you didn't like it or didn't get it, you were stupid. And I let her lure me into begging to model for her...
...Audrey was a saint. I bet she thinks she still is, or wishes she still was and is trying desperately to be again. I met her during summer classes and and she had to be the only person at MICA who carried a bible around in one of those cover protectors. She wore crosses and didn't partake in vices and was in herself a blank canvas I needed to spill red all over...
...She looked at me like I was too fresh, too naive, couldn't possibly understand her work. Like I should still be playing with plastic dolls and watching Veggie Tales. But I didn't want to be that, and didn't want her to think I was that. So when a friend of hers passed us by and she asked this friend if she could stand in for a model who had cancelled on her...
...Audrey didn't even wait for her to finish. Before Danielle could tell me what I already knew, that she's always busy on Friday, Audrey blurted out that she was free, and fell all over herself to explain (again) that she was majoring in theatre. Her eyes were huge. So when I asked her to stand up and let me look her over...
...I nearly knocked over my chair. I did exactly what she asked from the very start, hoping, hoping, hoping she would choose me, interpret my image and immortalize me, finally pay attention to me and show that I was beautiful and visible and all the things I'd always wanted. My road to hell started with the sin of Pride, and no small amount of envy...
...I think I realized then and there as she voluntarily showed me her body that I wasn't an artist. Artists want a challenge. Audrey was a gimme. If you look threatening enough, and there's a fresh carcass lying equal distance between the two of you, even a grizzly bear will go after the easier prey. After killing you to make sure you don't get it, of course. Or because it can. What was I talking about? Oh, right, my point is, I'm not an artist, I'm a predator...
...I handed myself to her. I might have carried her home on my back if she'd asked. I almost did, but she had her own car. And that was it. I'd given myself over, just like that. I didn't even know her last name or anything more than her first name was probably Camille and she was a grad student and had stooped to giving me the time of day. I wasn't even listening when she told me she expected the very best models. And the most compliant. I just nodded and spluttered out promises...
...So fast forward to Friday morning. Wait, Friday? I met her on Tuesday...no, Wednesday. That's right, ashes on her forehead. So I didn't engage her beyond simply passing her once or twice on Thursday just to keep her on the edge of her seat, so on Friday she was nearly bursting with hope and joy and excitement and fear and all the things I wanted cooking inside her. She got there early and almost caught me making final preparations...
...Camille even looked frustrated that I was early at the old house. It just made me even more eager to please her and prove myself. It also made me blush even more. She invited/ordered me inside and I was at once hit with a wave of heat. She apologized for the air conditioning being broken...
...I'd turned up all three space heaters, and the radiator in my studio and chased my roommates out for the day long in advance. I'd told her she wouldn't be posing nude (this time), but she wouldn't be wearing very much, so she thought I turned up the heat to keep her from freezing. I just do that to help people out of their clothes, maybe take off a few of my own. My skirt and cami would be stifling before too much longer. But I'm getting ahead of myself...
...The living room was cozy. Tidy. Walls covered in silks and paintings, doorways sequestered off with bead curtains. Amazing that an artist of any kind lived here. An elaborate sound system glowed with blue lights in the corner...
...But I'll get to that. I brought her in and set right about taking her jacket and backpack and putting them somewhere she'd need to ask me for them to get them back. And then I showed her the outfit she'd be wearing. Totally innocent...
...She unwrapped the plastic and handed me a white unitard. I'd worn them before several times for dance. Taking some comfort in it, I turned it over in my hands as she led me to the bathroom, urging me to hurry up. She closed the door behind me...
...I tried not to make it too obvious that I was running across the room to where my easel was as I picked up my Macbook just in time to see her start pulling her shirt over her head. This wasn't the elaborate part. My iPhone was sitting there on the soap dish. FaceTime. She didn't even look. Grant money is fantastic...
...It wasn't until I'd taken off everything else and picked up and unfolded the white unitard that I realized it was starched. There was so much, it felt like it was made of canvas, not a thin layer of cotton...
...I'd positively soaked it in L-arginine. It's the main ingredient in all those orgasm gels and clitoral sensitizers you see at all the sex shops. You can buy it in powder form by the pound on the internet. She probably thought it was starched. She probably wasn't going to notice anything until she started sweating...
...I slipped into it. It felt strange on my skin. I'd started sweating with anxiety and the heat and it felt kind of sticky, but I emerged bravely from the bathroom showing as much courage, poise, and grace as possible. She was going to paint me. Right then it was all I wanted in the world...
...She looked almost totally lost. But she tried so hard. So adorable in her white skintight unitard, the legs coming a quarter of the way down her thighs. Not see through, not just yet. She held her clothes, folded with absolute precision, looking at me for guidance. I politely took them from her into the bedroom, putting them somewhere she couldn't get them back without help...
...When she came back, she directed me to sit on something. I'm not sure how to describe it, like an ottoman with a rounded top covered in a white sheet. She had me straddle it, and lean back, lacing my fingers into my hair. My knees didn't reach the ground, so my weight was between my legs, and I felt some kind of rubber or plastic ridge press against me...
...I would bet money she'd never seen a sybian machine before, so it didn't raise any red flags with her, and she climbed sweetly onto it. I'd set it up just high enough she had to take all the weight on her crotch. It wasn't a sybian machine in the strictest sense though...
...Camille told me she just needed some music to concentrate. She said something about WiFi as she turned on the stereo using her computer. Her sound system was quite impressive. It sounded like the music was coming from everywhere at once. It drowned out the cicadas outside, and vibrated the whole house. The thing I was sitting on vibrated too. I had no idea how I was going to concentrate on sitting still, let alone how she was going to concentrate on painting me...