American Gothic by Grant Wood 1830

(As you see from the above picture, the image I had of this painting in my head doesn't entirely match the above picture/representation of it. Well, enjoy the story.

Tale of a Portrait

By Chris Coutu

There's two of them. Both staring into my soul. They have been there forever. They always will be.

Their eyes are reddened with hate. They glare into the essence and try to tinker with it. Always trying to change you. Make you what you aren't. Their hair, slightly out of place because of the wind. Their grim faces, hiding any true emotions. Faces hardened from being there forever, from being.

His hands, gripping the pitchfork, like it's the best weapon there is around him. Gripping it like a strangler with their hands around someone's throat. His eyes grow more furious the longer I stay here unable for him to meddle with.

Her hands, they clutch her apron in a grip of death, ready to whip the apron she wears 'round her neck, and choke the life out of you with it. Her eyes bore deeper into me, trying to meddle with my soul and growing angrier and angrier with the fact she can't.

I allow myself a little smile at their frustration.

Their clothes of black, ready to attend a funeral. He no longer wears the clothing of a farmer, but the suit of one attending a funeral. She, her black dress, reeking of death. The only optimistic color is the white of her apron which would whip away and kill me already if she were a live person standing in front of me.

The land behind them goes from day unto night, with no moon. Behind them everything darkens. No longer giving off a feeling of life, but one overly intoxicating, to anyone else, feeling of death.

I shrug it off.

The landscape behind them is still illustrated as living, but by looking at it ceraintly doesn't seem it. The trees give off death, not oxygen, not life. The animals of the woods know not fear or kindness for humans, but death for them. They seek to kill.

What once was a farmhouse, is now a morgue. Two stories, filled with dead bodies and dead souls. What was the farmyard, now the cemetery. It's former rocks and bumps and hills, tombstones and mounds of dirt over the dead.

And in front of it all, now that their in their element, not faking to be nice--like before--they grin most evilly. They want to take me in, but it will never happen. They plan to take me in, but no a stranger walks in. The overly intoxicating smell brings him (in) like a child to candy.

He stops to look. He sees the picture of a kind farmer holding a pitchfork, next to his wife. Both standing in front of their farmhouse in the middle of the day. Their hair slightly trousled because of the breeze.

Then they bring him in. They freeze his body, and his soul, being able to do so to a normal mortal. His body stands there, still, waiting. His soul rises up from his body, a swirling of blue color. Then, by power of those in the picture, his soul draws toward them. When his soul reaches the picture it goes from 3D to 2D. The soul floats past the two keepers of the graveyard, up the steps, and in the house.

Next to me then, the man's body disappears. I quickly refocus on the picture and in the yard there is another mound, and above it another gravestone.

They grin and the night, darkness, and stench of death fade. Now replaced with day, light, and the wondrous smell of life.

The farmer and his wife smile, the glint gone from their eyes, satisfied for now.