(NB: I'm out of this phase now, but over several months in the past year I went nuts over this old school actress from the Sixties and Seventies named Lori Saunders (real name is Linda Marie Hines). This story is based on a film she did then which was titled alternatively Blood Bath OR Track of the Vampire. It's a great film which is part gothic horror, part avant garde satire of art, and part forlorn romance sort of; anyway, I hope you enjoy and I recommend seeing the source).

REPRESENTATIONS OF REJUVENATION: A BOLD BATH OF RESPLENDENT REBIRTH

By Quillon42

Melizza had come for Dorian the first time in a mirror.

It was while the neophyte painter was applying colors to her own cheeks, the lady looking at her vanity's glass to ensure her foundation was firm across the features. Then of a sudden staring back, not a countenance of the coryphee dancer that she had once been only so many months past, but the face of someone similar, yet a visage so much more villainous in fact.

Dorian still wasn't sure as to whether she had altered her life's artistic focus all on her own. Before that exasperating confrontation over in Tony Sordi's studio, the pretty performer was certain that ballet stood as her bastion against a more mundane existence, and she took every opportunity to make this known to the world. Whether it be on a finished wooden floor or on an uneven sandy shore, the lady had so conquered every plank and every dune with the same grace and gusto. Each twirl had blissfully been a fresh turn away from a future too calm and conventional, each spin another spiral in support of that elegant platform through which she could express herself and influence others.

Yet it all changed so dramatically for Dorian that night during that terrible…incident with Tony.

This man in whom she had seen so much, so much potential in an incredible ability to create…yet in the end only a diabolical desire to destroy. She saw an uncanny sort of allure in his secretiveness; if only she had known sooner what he had been concealing in his sanctum sanctorum of sculptures too authentic and paintings too veracious in what they demonstrated.

After Erno, the Sordi from centuries past embodied apparently within Tony, after he had been cast in wax to waste away for all time, after that evening in which Dorian had been mired in a mesh of ropes and nearly razor-erased from existence, the dame of dance decided some days later to return to that site of slaughter and salacity, she still shaken by the incident yet intrigued by the prospect of life of painting, in place of pirouetting as she had been made to do since a single-digit age.

When she retrieved an errant brush in the corner of that nook of carnage, and she tried her hand at uttering images on a whim, Dorian found that indeed she could invent visually in the medium, and from there took up the oils and other materials to assume a new artistic calling.

So it was in this state that the ancient entity Melizza, who scores of decades ago had condemned the bloodline of Dorian's now-destroyed boyfriend, had sought to affect further the present day through spiritually inspiring the ravishing girl who had resembled her, and by way of this becoming the invincible vixen of Venice Beach. In truth, it was the medieval Mel who had supplied the spark within Dorian to pursue the paints in fact. Yet when the beautiful banshee peered through the looking glass and scanned the modern-day maiden's oeuvre, she found herself less than impressed at the energy and ebullience emitting from each of the artworks in fact.

For one, the ghastly girl took umbrage at what appeared to be naught more than an awfully unspectacular arrangement of squares situated on a staid field of earthy hues.

"My baseness, girl," began the feisty geist as she deigned to appear to the other now, "I've occupied your id of late so that you could paint what basically amounts to a checkerboard covered in centuries-removed manure?"

Dorian found herself partly stunned and partly steamed this moment. Here was, indeed, the ghost of whom she was sure had been occupying her psyche all these weeks, a confirmation of her greatest, most latent consternation…yet how dare she critique her work so cruelly?

"What you see is a most intriguing sort of abstraction," replied the retired rugcutter instantly, "a quaint framing of quadrilaterals that I call 'Free Space.'"

Fuming at what she believed to be such an offensively flippant response to her valid inquisition, the lissome Lizza tossed her tar-tinted tresses over a shoulder in indignation. "You are not a maven at this sort of art, my dear…but rather a menace of mehness!"

And with that, the fancy phantasm took her leave, with Dorian remaining at the archaic studio there in a swirling daze of resentment and bewilderment.

Melizza had come for Dorian the second time in a canvas.

So it was most often that the ravishing revenant had made her entrance in this manner, as after all it was the fact then that Erno Sordi had imprisoned her soul in the largest painting on the wall in that Venice Studio, or so the legend persevered.

This time, the dame from the darker ages had hoped that her expressive successor would have benefited all the more from the increase in nightmares brought upon her these past few weeks…

…Yet Melizza was once again…"nonpluzzed," shall this author say, at the sight of the supposed scare resting upon the easel directly ahead of her.

It was to an extent a milieu that was gloomy and dreary to be certain. There was something missing from the representation, though, which the macabre madam did not appreciate one iota.

While there were shadowy shapes approaching a small chateau on a purpled plain, and the moon was a rotund and foreboding medallion upon a weary teal sky…there was nonetheless an absence of gloom, of dread sufficient enough to scare or even to unsettle. "Are these acolytes attending an occult ritual at a sacrilegious shrine…or is it a line for an outhouse by the lake?"

"Madame," started Dorian with much disdain, "if my 'Spirit House' is unsatisfactory to you, then I would suggest you possess a paintress more susceptible to your…shall we say, shadings of character, someone more to your lurid likings."

Furiously the femme from the earlier age fumed as she looked back at the painting which contained her soul. "You artsy harpy…I will grant you one more opportunity to get this right.

"When I return hence in another several lunar phases, you will give me renderings of ravage…you will show me depictions of despair…you will present me with portraits of pulverization of the human form in fact—especially those of the male form, as Sordi so eviscerated the image of the female for so long, too long indeed."

Then in a hoary huff the vain virago vanished once more from the sordid Sordi scene.

Melizza had come for Dorian the third time in a DeLorean.

Borrowing the wing-doored wonder from the pinnacle of human civilization that was the 1980s, the sultry seductress spun on in ever abruptly, she sliding and scooching the ashen machine into an unused corner of the studio.

Nonchalantly in turn the temptress from the Twentieth Century continued at her artwork, she unfazed utterly by the explosive arrival of the other.

"What travesty I behold now in this vain venue, Venice Beach! I endow you, Damsel Dorian, with potential to put forth a Blood Bath™…and you produce a…a…a 'Water Tower'!"

Verily it was not a shock of pandemonium for once as the ghost had hoped, but rather a scene so picturesque, was the depiction of the Neapolitan triumfeminate of blonde, brunette, and redhead that the girl had grafted together with her varied hues, the image calling out to a far more rustic and innocuous atmosphere than the morally degenerate domain which Dorian had occupied.

Intending to wreck then replace her proxy of the present, Melizza started toward Dorian with stiletto in hand (the sticker, not the shoe).

At the last moment the latter turned and aimed with a weapon of her own.

[SPLLLLLAT]

Terrified Melizza looked down at the red mess upon her gown, she partly in shock that her form could be at all harmed and somewhat frightened that she may soon cease to exist entirely.

"Oh relax, you antediluvian shrew," chided Dorian. "As with the fluids flowing all throughout this studio, you too have been the subject of a painting…a brand new painting to boot."

Of a sudden, a bath of psychic abatement, a deluge of transcendent delight washed all over Melizza. It was as if the pellet with which she had been shot had been loaded with Paxil in addition to paint. Near to her the other woman shrugged, the resumed humming to herself as she continued with her Tower.

"Apparently my fiancé Max was right about the power of Quantum Energy in these groovy little guns. So much more effective than anything…Formal."

To be sure, the proto-presence of all perdition who here played Abdul (i.e. Sid Haig) and the rest of the creative crew abounding would agree as well. Dorian would also in time be able to use the painty pistol to bring back Daisy and Donna in addition to all of Sordi's other victims…and Melizza too would stick around to share in the vivid aesthetic visions of Venice Beach.

She wouldn't even doff her dirtied dress, as the others saw the stained satin as nothing less than brilliant and exquisite.

AFTERWORD

Again I have been in love with Lori Saunders (or here she had gone by Linda Saunders technically) for a time. The film on which this story was based is called, alternatively, Blood Bath, or Track of the Vampire, and it is about an hour and a few minutes long and it is awesomely craptacular. You can catch at least the Track version in pieces on Youtube and all now. It has Sid Haig in an early role as well and the other actors are all very interesting and intriguing. If you like Saunders here also, there is a show "Petticoat Junction" which I've seen all 222 episodes of and she is in most of them; it's a quaint rural kind of program and all episodes of that as well are on Youtube. Honestly the show comes recommended by my ass as well.

As for the works of art mentioned in the story, they are all of them featured in the Art Gallery section of Lori Saunders's personal website (I know I sound like a psycho stalker and such).

(I'm not; really).