Stars and love in the gilded temple of painting, where pastries and mediocrity were scattered like breadcrumbs on wooden floors, and mediocrity strutted in sequins, flaunting a shallow decadence and ignorance as if they were sublime artworks. Fringe Smoke, with a cigarette held high like a crown of absurdity, ascended the stage with her phoney allure, composed of black veils and vintage diva attitudes. Sugar Puff managed a last-ditch performance: duck lips in elevators, mirrors, and gilded entrances; her book of pastries and amorous fancies was gathering dust, her fame a whisper carried only through the clownish echoes of paid applause; her obsession was a freak show, a crime-comedy, a circus of imitation.
Meanwhile, the haughty café girl was humming seductively inside the run-down building. Their beloved mistress, Decay Queen, reigned with an iron fist in one hand, while seducing her young girls with soft feathers to secure her whims. Fringe Smoke strolled across the cracked, ageing marble, her fingers fluttering as if the crowd were applauding with every step, her hips swaying in a futile attempt to imitate elegance; Haute Couture Hysteria fashion perfumes draped her like a fading ribbon of believability, every pout, every smirk a dramatic deformation of the truth, cigarette ash falling like confetti onto the frescoes that peeled and mocked silently.
Decay Queen, swollen with self-indulgence, oversplashed her flock with precious jewels and pricey scents, each gift treated as a token of obedience, every flourish a display of vanity, her generosity exaggerated, her self-esteem gargantuan. The young gals, many years her junior, adored and faltered in confusion, while the art templum suffered under the weight of centuries of neglect: rafters sagged, floors slanted, frescoes wept in colourless sadness. Foreign and local newspapers whispered of imminent collapse, yet she lay in her castle of luxury, measuring allegiance through pleasures, secret love affairs, and flashy gestures. Every mannerism teetered on the verge of ridiculousness, as if the sanctuary of art itself were ready to collapse at the screams provoked by her antics.
Meanwhile, the café girl twirled with purposeful innocence, pin-up smiles glued to her face as if they were wallpaper, dispensing literary advice with the grandiosity of a stage actress; her gestures were enormous, every word hollow, echoing emptily through the gilded corridors. She was merely a living prop in the drama of absurd ambition.
Perfume, smoke, and sugar swirled in a toxic storm. Fringe Smoke flicked her ashes like a jester in full parade; Sugar Puff flailed frantically in obsessive submission; the café coquette gestured like a puppet on invisible strings; and Decay Queen gazed down upon them all with a victorious smirk, the queen of rot, lavish and ridiculous, lavishing fortunes on whims, whims on vanity, vanity on chaos.
The grand temple of painting itself, a monument to centuries of human achievement, creaked, groaned, and whispered; its frescoes curled, marble cracked, mocking every over-the-top gesture, every insignificant ambition; its shadows shattered, floors trembled, ceilings sighed at the endless parade of fools.
In this theatre of folly, extravagant lust, promiscuity, and grotesque desire, every perfume, every sigh, every desperate glance celebrated rot, and the gilded halls that were once the sanctuary of beauty and eternity had become a stage for caricature, their echoes filled with sorrow and grief, sighs, quiet tears, and fatal surrender, while the absurd court carried on with its never-ending, ridiculous, and bacchanalian spectacles of folly.
Elisabetta Esther
