An Act of Unspeakable Violence
Lucy came running up the stairs, screaming, crying her eyes out. She was tragically upset.What had she seen?
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"Hey, don't give the rhino such a huge butt!" Calvin joked. The girls giggled. "It's making me uncomfortable."
"Yeah, well maybe if your ostrich wasn't staring at it, I wouldn't be so inclined..." Kathy retorted. Gray paint dripped from her brush onto the ground beside Calvin, while he brought gooey ostrich feet to life. Michaela turned up the 80's music on the radio. "Gosh, turn it down, Michaela! I'll get the urge to dance and fall of the ladder!" Kathy said. Michaela just kept dancing and making squiggly brush strokes.
Over the edge of the stairwell, Kathy could see people looking curiously to see what on Earth was going on down there. What a weird place to paint a mural, after all! It was a stairwell down to a basement office. People probably passed by every day without even noticing it was there. Kathy hoped their work wouldn't go unappreciated. But at least it was fun for them.
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Alaina lifted the tarp up over the edge, with a flourish.
"Whoa..." The group stood almost speechless, admiring her work: a large stately white swan, the centerpiece. Alaina was just simply a master. There seemed to be something deep within the swan's darkly lined eyes - some secret wisdom. They could hardly separate their eyes from it.
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I listened to Lucy. She was still wailing, mortified, as she clung to her mother. It was very hard to watch...but for a moment I couldn't move or look away. "Mom, they killed my animals!"
I went down the stairwell, and I was horrified.
The walls were raped by hordes or red paint. Blood...blood on everything...on the beaver, the ostrich's legs, the hippopotamus, the monkeys, lying in pain, their bones broken...everything meticulously and torturously reworked, excruciated. The animals were twisted in strange and sickening positions. Blood lined every feather of the swan, encircled its eye, giving it a desperate, maddening gaze. It looked as though it had snapped under agony into horrified disbelief, unable to even face this reality anymore.
I walked up the stairwell...I turned around, walked up...I took steps...I left, that place...I returned, to the world...I, I looked back at Lucy, I just stared...back up the stairwell...into the light...over to Lucy and her mother...
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Jim turned around just in time to see a huge pink blob of incoming paint impact his blue shirt. He started laughing in slow realization, and looked up at Lucy, laughing harder. He flicked little dots of bright green back at her, forming streaks upon her face. "Hey!" she lunged at him with her brush, almost knocking into the wet paint on the wall. Her nascent flamingo watched in amusement. It wanted to clean the little bits of green off itself, but unfortunately, it was a static creature, given the opportunity to view a tiny but heartwarming piece of the world.
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What many days of hard work produces, one night of evil destroys.
Paint anyway.
posted by Andy @ 12:13 PM
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