I walk in a slow circle around him, making certain that I maintain a solid grip on him at all times. He watches me warily, and I can feel the tautness in his muscles, signaling that he will fight when he feels an opportune moment. He will, of course, lose, but I keep my senses at their most alert, even as I look around for some useful prop. Being in such an out-of-the-way corner of the garden, there is unfortunately little, but I suppose I can make do.
        I peel his dress coat off of him, and back him against a sturdy tree. I pause, considering, then turn him about to face the tree, wrapping his arms around it. As I begin to secure him in place, using the jacket as a rope, he makes his move.
        He jerks away and twists and yanks himself free, turning and sprinting away toward the gathering - apparently hoping to find some safety in the crowd. Foolish boy, does he not know his punishment would be the worse, the more who chose to partake in the episode? He would find no safety there. It takes scarcely more than a minute for me to catch him - in my chasing after him, I guide him toward an area I know to be nearly impassable with dense vines and closely-grown bushes. He tries in vain to push his way through them, but, what is this? Oh! He did not realize the bushes were briars, an outlying hedge of wild roses. He cries out in surprise and pain, his white shirt growing quickly stained by the feeble sobs of his fragile flesh. I laugh in delight as I grab at him. His shirt tears away as he struggles against me, and his skin is torn on the unyielding thorns. What was once a blank palette of pure white, has been coated with a thousand tiny brush strokes of scarlet, the thousand half-tones which fall between red and white. How much more interesting this is!
        "You are nearly a work of art, my dear boy," I croon into his ear, smiling all the more as he struggles against me. "But really, darling, you shall smear the paint all the more if you continue so. You shan't get away from me, you must realize."
        Too enraged to speak, he turns his head and spits in my face.
        This, I do not take in jest.
        I growl low and slap his face, then throw him hard to the ground. I kick him and he curls up tightly, moaning, incapacitated. "Just where I want you," I mutter, turning him over with one foot to lay on his stomach, his naked back exposed.
        He is breathing heavily, still struggling, but less so, probably trying to collect his energy for a more focused burst. His head is turned to the side, but I can see that he still inhales the dust of the ground with each breath. But such air should suit him, he is made of no more than dust, bringing more of it into his pitiful little body should not trouble him. I reach over and break off a length of the briars, carefully peeling away the leaves and flowers, tossing them lightly over his back and on the ground around him. "There now... the picture is much lovelier. Rose petals are classic, you know. Cliché, at times, but that is only because even fools recognize their perfection, and use them so carelessly."
        He does not reply. His back rises and falls beneath my foot, which presses him to the ground, so I know he continues to breathe. I do not think he is unconscious, for his fingers still clench and unclench, grasping only dry dust and fallen leaves. (I made certain he should lie in a place where the ground was free from stones - I should not want him to have access to such unpredictable projectiles.) I wrap my hand tightly around the thorny branch, feeling the warmth of my own blood seeping through my clenched fist, heating my chilled skin. My lips press into a thin, curled line, as I raise the branch in the air, then fling my arm downward with all the force in me, whipping the spines into the vulnerable flesh of his back.
        He cries out, his body arching in agony, gasping for breath and thrashing against the ground, fighting with all the fierceness his half-animal body contains. But I will not let him go. I press my foot harder into his back, and I know he could not have guessed at the strength my slim frame contains. He had thought my build slight and powerless, my pale skin the sign of sickliness, my slimness an indication of weak musculature, but oh, how little he knows of us! Luce must have only hired him for the day, had he any experience at all with us, he should have known better than to fight me so.
        I lash at his back again and again, and each time his cries grow fainter. At first he tries to steel himself against the pain, and maintain his dignity and refuse me the satisfaction of seeing his suffering, and bear the punishment. Gradually, though, his body loses the will to fight, and slumps into the ground, simply accepting what it cannot escape. I do not let down my guard, however, I have seen this tried as a trick before, a ruse to let me think I might not pay such close attention.
        I pause a moment, to study the intricate paths of red which have been carved into his back. The lines do not all run quite parallel, but stagger, overlapping and curving slightly, with droplets and small rivulets running between them, tracing over every contour of the man's back, light as a lover's fingertips. I lean closer, peering intently, admiring the artistry of the crimson tendrils which wrap almost tenderly around his back, tenderly but with a deathly grip, as vines around a stone wall. They are delicate and lovely, but in time, will cause the utter ruin of that which they cling to.
        I trail one fingertip leisurely through the red paint, drawing it in graceful swirls over the pale skin of my canvas. "Such a lovely thing..."
        He coughs, sputters - I look at his face to see that the blood has trickled into his mouth. I can taste the acrid iron of it, feel the heat of it as it leaves and returns to the body from which it came.
        "Dear, dear boy... you have become far lovelier than you think. But you cannot see the beauty of this scarlet upon ivory silk... and even if you could, I know you would not properly appreciate it." As I speak, I continue my delicate painting, moving the paint across the canvas, never entirely disturbing the original lines but enhancing them by the addition of ornate details. He moves, and I frown, as my fingers slip unintentionally. "Now, now, there will be none of that! Darling, shall I have to make you still?"
        He growls threateningly and braces himself with his arms against the ground, making his strongest effort yet to move, to lift himself from the dirt. But my foot remains firm, though I allow himself to rise an inch or two - merely in the interest of giving him false hope, you understand, it is so much the more entertaining if the spirit has not entirely gone from them. "Dear child, you simply must remain still." I shove my foot hard onto his back, crushing him to the ground, winding him sufficiently that I am free to step away for just a moment, to grab a fresh branch of thorns and a sharp stone I had spotted not far away. I test the branch on his back, adding a fresh spray of spattered scarlet across the ornate patterns. He squirms, his breath coming now in ragged moans, and I smile, looking from a filigree of red and ivory upward, into one of golden emerald and pure aqua, the leaves dancing in spastic raptures in the warm sunlight. The color of the light has changed since I saw it last, it has warmed into a heavy gold, thickened and saturated, it falls densely to the ground around me, adding depth to the hues of crimson, enriching them with the condensed beauty of a summer's day. The party I have left is brought to mind, as my thoughts paint the red of the thousand dresses with that same light, and I wonder how their color should compare to this. I do not think it should be so rich, that it should receive so well the distillation of a day's beauty, the concentrated nectar of summer's golden life. Life clings to life, and so the human body will lean into the sunlight, even when it is bound within dust, for the soul yearns for its place of creation as strongly as the body clings to its.
        I crouch down over him, resting my knees to either side of him, trapping him beneath me. I set aside for a moment the thorns, and shift the stone into my right hand, using my left to brace myself against the ground, that I may lean close to his skin. I am still for a long moment, tracing the patterns, studying the movement and interplay of the lines, the delicacy of the thin curls, the pieces of stars which are scattered over the surface. "Ahh... there is beauty to be found in even the most unexpected places, my dear."
        He makes no motion nor sound in response. I sense that he still desires to get away from me, but that he is again waiting, reserving his strength to make another desperate attempt. Silly child, has he not yet realized the impossibility of such a thing? Whether this stubborn tendency of humans to refuse to accept a reality they dislike is endearing or obnoxious, I do not know, I have found it both, depending on the occasion and on the person. Just now, I am finding it an inconvenient annoyance. I have something else I should prefer to focus on. I check the sharpness of various points on the stone on my fingertips, until I have found the sharpest.
        I take the stone in hand and lean close to the man's back, and press the sharp point into his skin, pressing harder and moving slowly, until the red flows fresh as the cries from his throat, he screams and I grin as the paint is poured onto my palette for me. I pause, and inspect the line I have just incised. The edges are rough, raw, he flinches away as I poke gently at them, simpering in pain. Ragged, but it adds a lovely texture, I think. Besides, this shall certainly leave a scar, a wider, whiter one than those left by the thorns, and I should like something of this image to last. Slowly, deliberately, I make another stroke, drawing a long line, a line which begins as ragged and white, then flushes as a maiden first kissed, and then blossoms into vampish womanhood, growing full and scarlet, and the line swells with the fullness of color, until the color spills over and onto the space around, the line nearly lost in the overflow of saturation, the deepest and purest of reds, which catches within it the heated coruscations of the summer sun.....

        The light has dimmed by the time I am finished, it has turned to the faded vermilion of dying sunset, but I have captured the life and vitality of it in the thousand shades of red which swirl and circle and wash over the surface before me. It is finished, and it is beautiful, a glimmering representation of life and its endless yearning, its constant reaching beyond the surface in which it is trapped, always reaching toward even the faintest light... The patterns are as a thousand scraps of lace, cast into the very distillation of earth's embodiment of life.
        I begin to rise - and then remember that I had remained low to the ground for a reason. Movement. I was preventing movement from disrupting the creation of the beautiful thing. If the canvas moves, the paint will slide from where I have placed it, and all will be ruined. I study it carefully - there seems to be hardly any motion now. But the paint is far from dry, and I tire of kneeling here in the dust. I should like to return... at least, to retire, yes, retire in some comfortable room. There is always one near, I shall find one with sumptuous pillows and sleep for a time, and let my mind slowly drift out of the place of pure art it has been resting in, back into the more prosaic patterns of the world.
        But first I must secure my artwork, and make certain it will not be disturbed before the paint has set. I kneel beside it, and, taking great care that I should not touch any important element, I lift the head (the hair now matted and clumped together - it does not matter if that is moved, it is not a major part of the image) and slide the stained stone over the blood-slicked skin. It takes only a few motions before the bucket of paint is tipped over, and spills onto the ground, flooding out in a slow pool, and all motion is stopped. I smile warmly, moving away to take in the lovely thing I have brought into existence as a whole. The pool of red at the top works in rather nicely, I think. It gives the whole thing a downward motion, as an inverted triangle, which calls to mind things trickling down and falling, a reiteration of the idea that while the inward portion struggles ever-upward, the inevitable destination is downward. For all the yearning a life can hold, for all its struggles, it shall always, in the end, move downward.