In Over Her Head by Elsie Russell - Parnasse.com

ambini."
Max's room, the most baroque of the guest rooms was also a
little sinister. Hanging from the plum velvet walls was a huge Flaying of
Marsyas, a slapdash copy of Titian's masterpiece. The room screamed
with the agony of the martyred satyr. Gold braid trim around the doors
and on the curtains only brought out the yellows and reds of the
painting. The Muellers weren't fazed and relaxed into the mass of
cushions that were piled up on the king size bed, bunching them into
the right shape for relaxing and talking.
"What is this horrific painting? How can any one go to sleep
with a thing like that hanging over their head?" Penny asked, sitting on
the corner of the bed.
A flashback of the barn after a good hunt, the smell of blood
and of deer entrails and Mr. Clean filled the back of her head. All the
blood, matted hair and bone glimpsed earlier that day blend in with the
painting above the bed. Carcasses hanging from the rafters like laundry,
rough tongues hanging out sideways. Bowie knife in hand like golden
haired Apollo she had felt her fear take over―the dry sound of skin
tearing from muscle as she pulled down the skin of the buck she had
killed. The flayed skins were piled up on the black hefty bags in the
corner. First the crack of the gun, then the realization that the animal
crumpling in the bushes was her doing. Her doing. And she had killed
again. And the violence had followed her here.
Maia shrugged and slapped out a Marlboro Light. Penny looked
up at Apollo with his crown of laurels and his slash of white blade,
crouching like a common criminal. The angel violinist was the only
character who didn't look utterly demonic, even the little white dog
greedily slurping up the satyr's blood had red spots for eyes.
Max laughed, looking at the painting upside down from his
pillows. "Isn't it wild? I always stay here. That's his copy of The Slaying
of Marsyas by Titian from his days at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. You
know the story?"
"Yeah, it's pretty gruesome," Penny said. The ferocious brush
strokes swooshed and leapt over the surface of the canvas with sloppy
but accurate abandon. Maia had said he was a better dancer than Ula.
He certainly was a better painter than Dick would ever be.
Max droned on,
"I see it as symbolic of the struggle between the primordial
forces, the raw purity of pastoral and hunter gatherer cultures and the
invading values of western civilization, that is, agriculture and
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