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Category: Horror
Description: Benjamin Moulton is losing the race against time. But Seina can change all that--forever.
eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, 1995 Blood Muse
Fictionwise Release Date: June 2003

8 Reader Ratings:

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Words: 4089
Reading time: 11-16 min.

"That has to be the worst piece of crap I've seen in some time."

Benjamin Moulton looked away from what could only charitably be called a sculpture, startled to hear his thoughts echoed so precisely. The speaker was a petite woman, not much over five feet. She wore her blonde hair short, the cut too ragged to be called a pageboy, although that's what it put him in mind of. He expected her to be dressed in black--after all, well over half of the people milling through the gallery were. But she wore a maroon jacket which was a little too large for her and far too light for late January in Ohio, and a simple pair of jeans, not even designer as far as he could tell. In Benjamin's estimation, that gave her more real taste than ninety-nine point nine percent of the people in the place, himself probably included.

He smiled. "Don't hold back; tell me how you really feel."

She chuckled, the sound more mature, more knowing than someone of her apparent years should have been capable of making. She seemed to be in her early twenties, at most. "I could go on, but why bother? That ... object isn't worth the time it would take."

Benjamin looked at the sculpture again. It was by an artist he'd never heard of, someone named Kopinski. The piece was a hunk of wood, nothing more than a small upright log, really, that had been scored numerous times with a sharp object, the deep cuts criss-crossing and zig-zagging in random, senseless patterns. The hand-lettered placard on the wall said it was called Orpheus Screams, and that the artist was willing to part with this masterpiece for the paltry sum of $365.

He turned back to his newfound fellow critic. "Come now, surely you can see what a bold statement the artist is making," he said with a smirk.