" Joel turned and walked to exit the room. He needed to get Chris and leave. Stuff the rain. Suddenly, a feeling washed washed him. He turned back, staring down at the many paintings lining the room. Something urged him to touch one, admire it, but which one?"
None of the ones he'd looked at to tell the truth.
However as another flash of lightening and thunder rumbled and shook
Dusk Manor and the long room he was in the brief lighting
up of the room by the lightening flash revealed some of the dark corners of the room further away from him.
On the distant wall furthest away from him hung
askew what looked like a small painting covered up by a
curtain or drape.
Intrigued Joel cautiously ( he is only a five foot tall 90
pound weakling after all )
walked down the uneven creaking floorboards and stood beside
the drape covered mystery painting.
Immediately apon his fingers brushing the centuries old drape
the fibers in it disintegrated and fell to the floor as little
more then a dust heap.
Without its covering the diamondback framed small painting
was easy to see.
The actual canvas on which the watercolour had been painted
measured 12 inches height by 18 inches wide,a mere pipsqueak
by the standards of the magnificently huge gold framed oils
that on the other walls pretty well boasted about their value
in the artworld.
This less assuming painting,Joel noticed it was titled
"The Dusk Worm 1856 Walter Bellamy"
did not feature Joel in it,as if this watercolour would have nothing to do with modern day riff raff.
Instead it featured Dusk Manor itself,obviously a earlier 19th
century Dusk Manor
in the background and in the foreground were three carefully
composed figures.
A nude blonde young woman,her body turned so as not to offer
too much of her anatomy to the viewer.She lay on her back
on a red cloak on the ground and was staring up at a heroic looking male figure clad in a medieval suit of armour who had his
sword out and was pointing it threateningly at the third character in the painting,a monstrous sized snake ,dark in colour,more a blackish green,which sported fish finned wings
and two front forelegs that were hovering over the nude young blonde.
It was hard to tell where the woman ended and the Dusk Worm
began but it was clear that painter Walter Bellamy's message
was that the serpent and the woman were the same character,the Dusk Worm.
It was a dark painting indeed,likely darened by about 170 years
of grease and aging.
Joel's eyes flickered between the fine well built male heros body
and the much more slender and vulnerable image of the blonde
haired monster-woman,
Of course he had a hunch that touching the figure of Mr Hero
would change him into a likewise person
and that touching the serpent would turn him into a
huge black green snake,and touching that maiden in distress
would turn him into a similar being.
Joel just stood there for a few minutes,pondering the matter
and then decided
"You only live once,why not spice it up "
So carefully he stretched out two fingers and touched both the
figure of the young woman and the worm at the same time.
He blanked out to the pssage of the minutes ticking by
as his body reflowed and reshaped itself,as well as the clothes
he wore.
His breasts well out,her dark black green bra and panties
enclosed her modest bosom and her skirt and blouse
and evening jacket flowed over her body as her hair
lengthened,turned more yellowish
and her mens Nikes turned into her womens Adidas.
The change complete,with just a hint of the devilish serpent
Joelina now had inside her the
Cursed Wtercolour released its hold on its latest
student and the former Joelina gasped in shocked and uttered a
modest high pitched squeak as she realized she'd gotten what
the painting had offered her
to be a shapecrafty serpent-maiden....