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Description
You're standing in the middle of a wide white brightly-lit room that's about to be opened to the public. You're a little bit nervous. It's your first exhibition in a major gallery and you're not sure exactly how it's going to go. You've been working all morning setting up paintings and adjusting them to get the best light but you're still fretting over whether or not you've got them exactly right.

Julie, your partner in art, thinks you're being silly. She is a bastion of cheerfulness, all of five feet with her polkadot sundress and auburn pixie cut. She keeps telling you've done everything you can and that it's going to be alright. You'll be famous by tomorrow, she says. You still have your doubts.

There's a patch on one of your portraits that could use a little more touching up, you think. Overruling Julie's protests, you unzip your paint bag. When you do, a brush bearing a splodge of blue paint floats out of it and dabs you on the nose.

You're not really sure what just happened. You do know that your nose is blue now. The offending implement bobs in front of your face.

You open your mouth to ask Julie what just happened and the brush darts inside your mouth to paint your tongue sky-blue. It's not dangerous - all the paint you use is non-toxic and safe for skin - but it thoroughly weirds you out. You snap your mouth shut. The brush pulls itself out from between your lips and coats them in a bright blue as well.

You spin around. Julie's looking at you a little funny.

"Did you just paint yourself blue?" she asks? "Is this some new avant-garde thing?"

Before you get a chance to respond you feel the front two buttons of your shirt pop open. You're wearing a white men's shirt atop jeans, your painting costume, and the brush launches itself down the front to paint a broad blue line from your chin to down between your cleavage. It finishes off with a little swirl around your belly button before sliding out the bottom of your shirt.

Your shirt pops open. It slides down around your arms and spins into a knot around your wrists, holding them tightly behind your back. You're standing in your bra and jeans in front of your best friend. A blush springs to your cheeks as your nipples pop out of your bra, barely revealing themselves, and are promptly dotted blue by the mischievous paintbrush. An upturned curve below your belly-button completes the sense of a blue smiley face painted down your belly - your nipples for eyes, your belly button for a nose.

You open your mouth. You're not sure what you'll say - perhaps an embarrassed squeal, perhaps a plea for help. It turns out not to matter. A sponge from your art-bag, used for dabbing paint onto canvases, lodges in your open mouth and gags you soundly. Tubes of paint in red and green join the brush, floating in the air as if wielded by some unseen mastermind.

The paintbrush does a little pirouette in mid-air and begins to decorate you further. It gives the eyes on your breasts long, sultry lashes and the mouth a coquettish smirk. You begin to struggle, especially when the delicate hairs of the brush begin to tease your nipples, but to no avail.

Julie's watching, aghast in horror. She turns to make a run for it and her panties - black with red polkadots, as opposed to her dress, which is red with black polkadots - slip down around her ankles. She trips and falls face- and breast-first into a tub of white paint that you could swear wasn't there a moment ago.

Something takes hold of her by the ankles and pulls her up out of the tub, then up and up further till she's hanging upside-down in mid-air as if caught by an invisible giant. Her dress falls down over her face, exposing the firm breasts concealed in a lacy bra and the flame of her red pubic hair. A brush with white paint begins to insinuate itself between the lips of her sex. Another begins to slide back and forth across the soles of her feet. From the sounds coming beneath the dress you guess that this tickles like crazy in both locations.

You're not sure what happened to the expensive digital camera she usually keeps hanging round her neck. It's only when you find it hovering in front of you, trying to get you both into the shot, that you realize.

You're not sure where the picture comes from, only that it's immense, portrait-size - in fact, exactly the size of one of your paintings. And it captures every detail of both your predicaments in high-res perfection. At this size you can see every pore. Still, the camera's not satisfied - it takes a few more pictures until it's gotten the exact one it wants. Then the photograph pastes itself across the face of one of your paintings, fitting perfectly into the frame as if it belongs there.

Another sponge, this one dipped in what must be ice-cold water, starts to wipe itself across your body. Something similar begins to rub between Julie's legs. You're being cleaned off, you realize. She's set down on the ground, still on her back, legs still in the air, sex still on display. You're forced to your knees, your arms pulled back and the shirt binding them wrapped around your ankles.

Your pants begin to unzip themselves. They pull down around your knees, revealing your simple grey panties, which hesitate a moment before shuffling downwards to expose the black curls of your own most intimate parts.

Your very smallest paintbrush, little more then a single hair, darts toward you. Slowly, dexterously, with infinite care, it begins to paint the lips of your sex bright red. It pays special attention to your clitoris.

All of the while the camera continues to record.

***

The show is a great success. The critics praise the wide array of photographs as "daring", "bold", "intimate", and "provocative", sure to be exhibited in galleries across the world. A real statement, they say, about the exploitation of women, one which must have taken tremendous courage to pull off. It takes real bravery, they say, to expose yourself in such a thorough and degrading manner, all in the name of art.

They reserve their real praise for the centre piece - no mere image, this, but a live performance. You and your best friend, stripped stark naked, painted a dizzying variety of colors, locked in a passionate embrace on a podium in the exact centre of the exhibition, maintaining the position for almost three hours. Kissing deeply, your hand squeezing her breast, her fingers sneaking up inside you. And the business end of a paintbrush sticking out of each of your behinds where they'd been carefully inserted.

The critics are left scratching their heads, though, as to why the words "Strip Trolled" had been painted in such large letters across your bodies.