Mid-Week Flash Challenge - Week 165

This week's picture prompt is sadly untraceable. It's all over pinterest, but I can't find anyone crediting it. Lots of people calling it street art, but where and by who? I tried loads of foreign sites. Even the Turkey Tribune used this for a poet to write to, but didn't credit the source of the art. Such a shame cuz I love it but I don't know where it is or who did it. 

It took a while to get my writing mind working again, especially with so many distractions going on in my real world, but when I did I went dark - my normal mode - and I rather like how it turned out. 

The General Guidelines can be found here.

How to create a clickable link in Blogger comments can be found on lasts week's post here.

There is also a Facebook group for Mid-Week Flash, if you fancy getting the prompt there.

Speechless

She wanted to speak but couldn’t. Her mouth was open, but she couldn’t get her throat to make a sound – not that it would make a difference if she did, they wouldn’t hear her.

Yet she could hear them, and even feel them touching her nose and lips, marvelling at them, at their perfection encased as they were in concrete. They discussed the artist and how brilliant the lines were; how he had achieved such a believable representation of the real thing, not knowing that it was the real thing, only covered in a layer of quick drying cement.

As for the artist, he believed her dead. He thought he had given her a lethal dose of anaesthesia; he believed the muscle relaxant had not only paralysed her but left her unable to breathe. He’d been wrong. She’d been conscious the whole time, but because he’d glued her eyes shut she’d been unable to let him know – or maybe he had known and that was why he’d glued her eyes shut.

After he’d done what he had wanted to her body he had put her into a mould, one that enabled the outline of her lower facial features to penetrate.

She’d felt the weight of the liquid as it was poured over her, but with her mouth open she’d enabled a small gap to remain, and despite blacking out a few times, when he’d removed the mould and placed her upright, she’d remained alive breathing through a tiny slit.

The only muscles she was able to move were those allowing her to draw in a breath. Not a deep breath, a slither of air that kept her conscious – part of her wished it didn’t.

She didn’t know how much longer she would remain alive – the pain of starvation and the weight of the stone covering her were all consuming – but while people were close by she would keep trying to make a sound – any sound, in the hope the truth of the artist would be revealed.

She tried not to think about the other statues he’d shown her that night as they’d wandered around the exhibition he’d held at his mansion. She’d been so star struck by this famous artist taking an interest in her, ignoring his other guests and lavishing his attention on her. He’d talked about her wonderful features, comparing them to his other sculptures, pointing them out. All of them displayed various women’s body parts: a bent knee and a top of the thigh on one piece of wall, a shoulder and ear on another. She’d admired the detail, right down to texture and curve. She’d had no idea.

Now she knew she wasn’t the only one, but how many more were there? His pieces were sent all over the world. If she could shudder at the thought she would, but it faded as she blacked out once more – maybe for the final time. She could only hope.