Beauty is the essence of life. May the perfect prosper and the imperfect perish.
(Trigger warning: violence and suicide.)
September 11th, 2023
Venus Academy of the Arts – a school of prestige and beauty. Persephone let the clicking of her heels against the spotless marble floor guide her into the classroom. 101: Face & Form. She swung open the heavy wooden door, filtered light angling upon her face.
“Welcome to class, Persephone. For your debut project, you will be working with Valentina.” The teacher gestured to a young woman with auburn hair cut sharp around her neck and wide brown eyes with piercing ebony pupils. “Valentina, please stand. This is a long term project, ranging roughly a month. I expect you two will get along well.”
Valentina nodded and as her frame set into motion, Persephone began to learn for the first time what beauty truly meant.
“I’m sure we will,” said Valentina, a small grin dancing across her face.
***
September 13th, 2023
“One black coffee, please. Coarsely ground, no sugar, no cream.”
Women filed into the university’s café in a disarrayed daze as the clock’s arrows revealed the time to be 6:00. Persephone stood in pearl-adorned heels and a snowy satin dress. As her gaze drawled across the room, her thoughts began to lead her elsewhere. Her line of sight caught an off-white ligneous door with a golden knob. She quickly collected her coffee and made her way through the doorway.
Locked doors lined the walls of the building as Persephone trailed down the halls, trying knobs unsuccessfully. A glass door at the end of the hallway beckoned her to an empty balcony. She pushed open the door and was met with a chilling, autumn breeze. Moving towards the railing, her hands traced the glossy stone patterns. A plume of steam appeared before her red lips as she released a sigh.
“Do the freshly trimmed hedges of the morning weigh so heavily on your mind, Persephone?” A soft, amused voice spoke.
“Isn’t this an art academy? I believe medieval English belongs to the school of literature,” Persephone scoffed.
Valentina crossed her arms across her rosy lace dress, and leaned to face Persephone with the bold auburn of her eyebrows raised inquisitively. “Sit with me, allow me to give you some warm company on a cold September morning.”
“You hardly know me, what warmth would you possibly wish to grant me?” Persephone laughed lightly, treading closer towards the pale-skinned Valentina.
“Perhaps you can repay me with some wisdom. Tutor me my dearest artist. Fresh bears the fruit of a new mind, or so I’ve heard.”
Valentina slung herself into the crook of a lattice-back chair and eyed the adjacent one. Persephone, in an abnormal compliance, sat.
“You seem quite social, so pray tell why are you alone when there is a room full of people not too far from here?” Persephone inquired.
Valentina’s eyes shot out towards the horizon – falling upon the ground, and then finally bearing into Persephone’s. “It’s complicated,” her voice colder than before. “Not many people want to sit by the only gay girl in an all girls school. Scared you might catch it, right?”
Persephone laughed, a hand laid on her chest. “Please, I caught it long ago.”
A look of interest suddenly fell over Valentina. “Is that so?”
“Perhaps you could give me some warm company after all. It does get lonely being the only new girl…” Persephone smiled coyly.
***
October 7th, 2023
Her hands moved across the line of Valentina’s jaw. Her lips. Her perfect lips, and down to her neck. Her fingers explored lower, till they bore into the wetness of the clay. She had never been so captivated by a living form before, but something almost primal within her sought to sculpt the perfection that was Valentina.
Persephone sat in the middle of her art studio, her stool positioned in front of the sculpture. This: the fruit of her efforts over two weeks. Nothing was more important to her than that her sculpture was perfect. There were nights where she laid restless at the thought of not satisfying the true beauty of her subject. Doctors may label it – anxiety, insomnia, OCD. To Persephone, it was life.
“I will make you the essence of life,” she murmured to the untalking piece. “I will make you beautiful.”
A ringing echoed throughout the somber studio walls, and Persephone went towards the vanity holding her phone. The phone call read Valentina’s name. In the mirror, Persephone’s blue eyes met a reflection tucking her flowing blonde hair behind her ears.
Picking up the phone, she heard her voice. “I was beginning to think you wouldn’t pick up, but hearing your sweet honey voice makes it all worth it.”
“I’d never make you wait, my beautiful muse,” Persephone said, opening the door.
***
October 11th, 2023
“Can you hand me the chisel, dear?”
Valentina sat before the piece, debris of porcelain scattered beside her heels. Their project was beginning to reach completion: a collection of ancient figures and arched doorways carved into shining white stone. Persephone stood above Valentina, observing the scene before her.
She’s so perfect.
Valentina looked up to Persephone, tender brown eyes meeting Persephone’s gently parted lips. Smirking slightly, Valentina treaded lightly towards her.
“How do you feel, darling?” Persephone reached out her hand to Valentina.
Valentina took Persephone’s hand with a sigh, and leaned against her soft shoulder with a sigh. “I’ve seen better days. It’s one thing to create art, and another to present in front of a whole lecture hall. Full of people who know nothing.”
“We’ll always be together. You have nothing to worry about…”
***
October 12th, 2023
Valentina had always wondered what Persephone’s private art studio contained. Each day, for hours, Persephone would linger in the studio to only exit at the break of dawn. Valentina had had a growing desire to open the door to her studio since the moment they met. And today, on Persephone’s birthday, Valentina finally had the perfect reason.
Holding a bouquet of jasmines strung together by a pearl-white ribbon, Valentina knocked thrice, knuckles drumming against the varnished surface of the door.
There was no response.
“Persephone,” Valentina called, peering into the spyhole of the doorway.
Silence.
“I’m coming in, ma chérie,” Valentina leaned forward and pushed open the heavy door.
Slam.
The impact of Valentina’s figure falling to the ground echoed throughout the hallway – white flower petals scattered across the spotless marble floor, now marked. An eye peered through the spyhole. In her hysteria, Persephone had slammed the door against Valentina’s beautiful visage.
There was nothing more important to Persephone than hiding what she had done. The replica of those same piercing brown eyes, sharp-cutting hair, and stunning pale as porcelain skin. Her creation, her obsession.
“Valentina?” Persephone whispered, not daring to look through the spyhole.
She opened the door, trying to steady her staggering breath. There lay Valentina, hair strewn over her face, limp on the ground.
What had she done?
***
(Trigger warning: death.)
October 13th, 2023
“Valentina,” Persephone threw open the door to Valentina’s dorm.
On the windowsill, her figure sat, knuckles white. Valentina’s face looked out the window, gazing at the gardener trimming the hedges.
She turned.
“Persephone… Yesterday…” Valentina’s voice rang cold and wooden.
Persephone first saw the black crudely framing the eye that once was pure.
“...I don’t understand…”
The bruise ran along her face – a stain, a deformation, a mistake.
“Can you explain what I saw? That day, behind that door?”
“A lot of mistakes can happen behind closed doors.” Persephone whispered, her blue eyes falling upon the mistake. “How tragic…”
Persephone’s ears began to ring. She had to fix it. She had to fix her.
Valentina’s throat was forced into Persephone’s hands – she molded, kneaded, sculpting the blissful silence that would bring her beauty back.
Valentina crumpled like paper to the ground.
Persephone ran – before her mistakes could chase her.
🕊
Persephone’s shaking fingers found their way around the bronze knob of her private studio’s door. She glimpsed at the dent formed on the shining wood surface before seizing a chisel in her mania.
The chisel flew from her grip and found its way to the iris of Valentina’s ceramic eye.
In a dire rush, she found her way to the sculpture and let a sob escape her lips. She stopped; tears of the insane were not beautiful. Instead, she collected a rope and dashed down the hallway, sculpture in hand.
Once in the empty lecture hall, Persephone propped open the doorway with Valentina’s figure – we are both mistakes.
🕊
The body hanging from the rope knocked against the doorframe. Beauty is the essence of life – the dead are not beautiful.
The imperfect always perish.
Written collaboratively by Nat and Anya.
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