Incident on Ath

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The figure was becoming far too bizarre in its depiction of pain. Thoughtfully Cornelius studied it, unsatisfied; no one locked in a personal hell of torment should present the likeness of a clown. The jaw was disproportioned and he altered it with a touch of the brush. The eyes, deeply sunken beneath flaring brows, held what could be taken for a glint of ironic amusement and the mouth, gaping, seemed to bear the ghostly vestige of a smile. Only the body gave him satisfaction; thin, gaunt, the ribs stark, the stomach a taut concavity, the musculature harshly delineated. The toes, like the fingers, were indrawn in the semblance of avian claws.

A man suspended by lashings holding his wrists to a beam. One left to die in isolation. A simple theme- what had gone wrong?

Irritably Cornelius set down his brush and examined the painting with minute care. The background, a coiling mass of amorphous vapor, was deliberately neutral as was the foreground, a raw expanse of sand and stone. The cross-beam, like those supporting it at either end, was of rough wood depicted with the same lack of fine detail in order to throw the suspended figure into greater prominence.

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