The two men in cargo pants scheduled for an artful death and utterly unaware of it, stared at a statue in fine marble in the niche of a gallery as patrons carefully avoided them. It wasn’t the cargo pants. Money certainly circulated the gathering in lightly distressed blue jeans, white Oxford button-downs, and grey sport coats, the uniform of the middle-aged CEO. Even a few Silicon Valley hoodies meandered about. But power always has trophies drifting behind them in shimmering one-offs for the trophy women, or clean cut tuxes for the trophy men. The remoras knew how to dress for the sharks, and to stay in their wakes.
Neither of the cargo panted men had carefully groomed, well proportioned swimmers in their wake.
“It’s a take on Carravagio.”
Both men turned. The artist stood there, head cocked in curiosity.
“Carra—?”
“Judith Beheading Holofernes?”
Behind them, the statue writhed in frozen agony, a simple handsaw, rust-spotted, the wooden handle smooth with age and speckled in random paint colors, had been embedded halfway into the neck of the sculpture. The real world materials stood out against the pale marble smoothness of the neck.
“How the fuck did you get the blood to look so real?” one of the cargo pants men asked. He brushed crumbs from his shirt and reached out a hand.
The artist did not take it. He floated past them and looked at the neck. “It is remarkable, isn’t it?”
Somehow, the lithe, arrogant, bearded artist had found a way to capture the spray of blood from the thick jugular. And if one peered closely, the marble under the saw, where the flesh parted slightly, revealed skeins of muscle underneath.
“Never been close to a sculpture before,” the other cargo-panted man mused. “But, workmanship is workmanship. Damn.”
“How did you get it to look like… you know?” The man was referring to the infamous TV show host, the one too controversial for ‘mainstream’ TV. “Your art, you’re saying someone should cut his head off because of all those things he says. Well, said. Been running repeats on the show the last couple weeks.”
The artist nodded. “No. It’s not a comment on him, per se. It’s Judith and Holofernes. He’s Holofernes. See, the Assyrian general Holofernes, against the advice of all the other rulers in the area, invaded and shattered the gods of the land and forced them to worship Nebuchadnezzer. Just before the city of Bethulia falls, Judith, a widower, sneaks into his camp to seduce him, but instead saws off his head.”
A server in a neat bow tie and tux combo held up a tray of canapés. “Yet another man who fell from the top of the heap because he couldn’t keep it in his pants.”
The artist raised a flute of, what to the cargo-panted men, was a nasty dry fizzy champagne, and toasted the server’s comments with a shark-like smile.
“But where’s Judith, then?” One of the men asked.
“That’s a great question,” the server said. “Where is she?”
She and the artist shared a private smile for a moment.
“There’s something I want to show you, if you like this,” the artist said, breaking the moment. “It’s a piece of art no one here has seen yet, but they’re all a bit stuffy for this. It’s… a bit raunchy.”
The men’s eyes glittered.
The server, walked between them, the ghost of a lavender perfume lingered in the air after she passed, and the men ogled the soft, tight white trousers and cat-walk rhythm.
Like ducklings, they straggled after her through into the back of the gallery.
The artist stopped behind them, looked around briefly, and then shut the doors on the three of them.
A lock clicked shut, though the two men didn’t notice.
“Gentlemen.” The server set her canapés down on a nearby table and turned to face them. The way she said that word, it was clear, even to them, that she didn’t really mean it.
“What the–”
A single spotlight clanked to life, and light stabbed down from overhead to show a marble statue. A woman, naked, her back to them. Her shoulders hunched forward as she tried to cover herself from the front, or so it looked from where they all stood.
“This will be my masterpiece,” the server said.
“Will be?”
“Wait, who’s the artist?”
The server spread her arms and took a mock bow. “At your service.”
“Who the fuck are you?”
The question is more, “Are you B1tchesNeedMyDick21, or are you EatMeFlava?”
They both startled. Looked around.
She nodded. “Yeah. I thought so.” She laughed. “You probably don’t remember the paintings I did back in grad school. I was pretty psyched to be featured in the Columbus Gazette, and you filled up the comments section pretty nicely. But that wasn’t enough, you emailed photoshopped versions of my paintings around with dicks in everyone’s mouths. Then found every place you could review my work and helped yourself to their unmoderated comments sections.”
“What—“
“Here’s a story you’re gonna love, too. It worked. I quit. You won. No more paintings for Judith McCallister. I let you get in my head. ‘No one needs another dumb feminazi painting…’ it was exhausting. You assholes, who can’t even tell a Carravagio from a—“ she held up a hand. “It doesn’t matter.”
She walked away from them, still frozen in place, but anger had started to replace the fear. After all, there were two of them, just one of her.
“Bitch, you better—“
She interrupted again, hardly bothered. From the other side of the statue, in the light, she regarded them with an air of professional curiosity. Sizing them up, somehow, as she said, “I’ll tell you about a young Judy who cried herself to sleep. Quit art. Got a job, on a dig team of archeologists. Recording their amazing exploits as they broke into an Athenian tomb.”
They each took a step forward, expecting her to move, but she didn’t. She smiled.
“The men, the leaders of the dig, pushed to the front, first to open the grave we found. You remember the The Clash of the Titans where Perseus just yeets the head of Medusa off into the ocean? In legend, not the movie, Perseus gifts Athena the head, she fixes to her shield to create the aegis.”
The two men had moved, like stalking cats, to either side of the statue, that she had never once glanced down at. She locked eyes only with them.
“You can imagine how confused I was when everyone suddenly turned to stone, to flawless marble, and I, looking through the video camera, well, I’m still here.”
“What?” They thought she’d lost her damn mind. Artists did that. Crazy fucking people who got their heads all up their own asses trying to convince everyone a pile of rotting meat was an interactive ‘art experience.’
“Go on, look between those legs. You know you want to,” Judith hissed. “Just, look down.”
The man to her left frowned as he looked at the statue’s face. “Is that the other co-anchor that used to be on the show with—“
Disbelief still lined their faces, but even as he said it, he glanced further down, a slight leer on his face, and then horror rose as he saw the leathery, ancient face that stared back at him.
Judith watched the smooth marble form, and stepped between the two new statues. She grimaced. “I wanted more leering,” she whispered.
But the horror would do.
You never got quite what you wanted in a piece of art, there was a give and take to the process. Real life intervened.
She cocked her head and considered titles. “The antagonism of Richard Hartwright, AKA B1tchesNeedMyDick21, and his pal, EatMeFlava, as they stare upon a traitor to all women?”
That was a personal title. She’d put that in her notes.
“The Birth of Venus.” She’d need to get a clamshell for Traitor Venus.
A benefit for Planned Parenthood, she’d auction them off. Maybe that Venture Capitalist who said women shouldn’t be able to vote would win and she’d be able to deliver the set of the two men ogling ‘Venus.’
Staging him would be tricky, but oh would that be a prize.
Judith slipped a burlap sack over Medusa’s head, slung it over her shoulder, and grabbed a canapé on her way out. “We’ve got more work.”
And all because the gods cursed Medusa for being too beautiful.
Same old same old.
Sometimes though, it was pretty awesome when payback was a bitch.