I was scrolling through some old photos tonight, looking for something completely different, when I stumbled across this photograph I took in London back in 2010. I remember taking it, thinking it was in desperate need of a story. And so it’s finally getting one, though I’m skeptical that this isn’t the only tale this image has to tell.

Per usual, would love to hear any feedback, and be sure to check out all the other great fiction over at the #FridayFlash Collector.

---

THE MUSE

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.  She had been his inspiration, his source of passion — his muse.  They had loved intensely, perhaps too much so, but she never imagined the price she would pay when she tried to leave.

In hindsight, she supposed he had warned her, but his professions that he could not live without her, that he could not create without her, had fallen upon deaf ears.  She had never suspected the power she had over him, or rather the power she channeled through him.  If she’d known… Even now she could not honestly say she would have done anything differently.

But now he was dust, long since passed into other realms that she would never know.  She had longed for the day when he would leave the world, never suspecting that his obsession had made her immortal.  She was bound to every word he’d inscribed into history, every word burned into the minds of those he’d touched.  Even now, as she passed from one possession to another, she found herself missing him, despite everything.

As much as she loathed him for how he’d used her, what he’d made her, how he’d trapped her, she hungered to be with him once again, for she knew it was through him that she’d been brought to life.  But without him she could also never die.  Forever repeating the same triumphs and tragedies, over and over again, for any random spectator to witness and interpret how he or she saw fit, regardless of the truth.  It was not life.  It was not death.  But it was endless.  And it was torture.

---

© 2012 Elizabeth Ditty