The Illusion of a Portrait

         She knew exactly what had happened to the people in the painting. For years she had been haunted by what her mother told her. Her curiosity as a young girl was what led her to her horrifying understanding of that painting. It hung in the foyer of the large estate she grew up in. Her father had passed away when she was just about three years old. Her mother inherited his extremely vast wealth, and used it to pay for a staff to raise her daughter. She was a quite stern and severe woman. The stories she used to tell her little girl were few and far between, but when she did tell them, they stayed in the mind forever. She remembered one morning in particular. Her mother was helping her get ready for school, which was a rare occasion. They were picking out shoes, when her mother caught her staring at the painting. It was of a young man and woman, who were assumed to be married. There had always been something very off about the painting. Their faces had absolutely no semblance of a personality. They stared forward but didn't seem to be looking at anything. They both had on matching red scarves that didn't seem to go along with the other clothes they wore.
"Your father painted that," her mother remarked. "I think it's his best work," she stated, placing her hand to her chest.
"Who are they?," asked the little girl.
"Well sweetie, they were actually servants of this very house. Your father enjoyed painting people he saw on a daily basis, and he would paint them for hours, sometimes days on end. That's why the only way he could get them to pose for that long, was if he sliced their throats. That way he could have all the time he needed to prop them up and paint every last detail." She looked smilingly at her daughter. "Your father was such a talented man."