He knew he shouldn’t do it but once he got the idea in his head it was stuck there. Paint — watercolors of course — this red headed bathing beauty in front of him as an abstraction, red all over and with a round head instead of natural. Chroma, he knew. His former existence. “Okay, keep still,” he requested to his paid model for the day. “I’m about to start.”
Wannabe boyfriend but way-too-plain, way-out-of-his-depths Butchie Hawkins looks on very interested from the other side of pool dipping Carrcassonnee (she’s back!). What he lacks in looks he makes up in mind powers, namely psychic abilities. He’s going to ask her out after all this is over. He’ll be more on her level then. Because this wasn’t just a painting. This was *real*.
—–
Later:
“What have you *done*?” she cried, no longer the person she knew and loved and admired inside the finished product. “Where *am* I?”
“Just follow the yellow ball,” he said from his side, also part of the art work now. “Follow it all the way into the grave.”
She backed out of that death scene as fast as possible but she was indeed the ball now. Stuck.
“Thanks for *nothing*,” she said as she bounced away, cash in hand but wanting a lot more for what he did to her image. Greg Ogden had made a breakthrough today at the Aisle of Palms Pool. He didn’t have to paint pretty all the time. He could paint ugly.
Sunklands 