The Oval Portrait

Flash fiction from the master of the macabre, Edgar Allan Poe. A wounded gentleman, with his valet, breaks into an abandoned chateau in the Appennine mountains. The walls of the bedroom in which they situate themselves are decorated entirely with paintings. The gentleman's eyes fall upon a portrait of a young girl. He reads in an accompanying book the story of the portrait's creation and the fate of the subject caused by the artist's obsession with representing the girl with lifelike perfection.Public Domain (P)2020 Bob Gonzalez