Deviant Artists

A rainy night had fallen upon the Crystal Hill Art Gallery long after the last staff member locked up the building. Ironclad doors with heavy bolts sealed off the front and back entrances as well as the individual rooms where art was displayed. Discouraging thieves became even more of a requirement as the double paned windows were guarded with steel bars. If this wasn’t already a museum for art, it could easily double as a prison for the worst kinds of criminals.

Even the dark of night couldn’t suppress the shimmering beauty of the pearlescent marble statues. Curvy goddesses barely covered in silk tapestry. Armor-clad warriors carrying the heaviest weapons. Seductive mermaids with the sweetest grins. They all shined and reflected off of one another in the moonlight pouring through the stained glass windows. A dark paladin covered head to toe in spiky armor stood angrily across from a thickly muscled female orc warrior, who also looked ready to rip someone’s head off.

A bolt of lightning flashed in the night sky and as if on cue, the dark paladin and orc statues cracked and splintered, shedding large chunks and spraying specks of dust across the room. The cracks became deeper canyons until their marble coating was completely destroyed, revealing living versions of the warriors the art portrayed.

The dark paladin, Golo Quinn, dusted his hands and armor off while Junie Axel, the orc, kicked pieces of marble across the room like soccer balls. “Goddamn, am I glad to be out of that,” she said.

The two of them met in the center while Golo summoned a glowing orb with his palm and gazed around the room they successfully infiltrated. “Look at all of this crap…Look that this!” he growled. He shined the ball of light towards the goddesses and mermaids in particular. “Who in the hell wants to pay thousands of gold pieces just so they can have women in their rooms they’ll never be able to fuck?!”

“I bet if we found that Golden Dagger, we could carve better statues out of our own shit. Where the hell is it, anyways?” complained Junie as she dusted her leather armor off.

“Beats me. For all we know, the fuckers who built this place could have hidden it among one of the ‘masterpieces’. It could be in one of the mermaid’s bras for all I know. Or it could be up somebody’s ass. I guess we’ll never know until we start looking.”

Cracking her neck in both directions, Junie asked, “How do you want to do this? Should we sneak around like cat burglars or should we just wreck the shit out of everything?”

Golo shook his head. “It’s a little late for the cat burglar shit considering how we got here. I say we just smash everything to pieces. The art sucks anyways, so who’s really going to miss it? Plus, if we actually find the goddamn dagger, we could make our own pieces and sell them to the stupid curator for a cool payday. Come on, help me with this door.”

“My pleasure,” said Junie with a vomit-breathed smile. She effortlessly yanked one of the warrior statues off of its pedestal (while accidentally tearing its leg off) and started ramming it against the iron door. Though the dents in the door resembled meteor craters, the statue was just another worthless pile of dust afterwards. “Looks like it’s going to be harder than we thought. I wonder if any of these jerk-offs in armor are really that tough.”

“Only one way to find out.” Golo sent the ball of light floating overhead while he wrapped his arms around a mermaid and yanked it free, also with little effort. This time, he swung the statue like a baseball bat against the door, detaching its head, then its torso, then crumbling the flipper into powder. The door had even more massive dents, but it still wouldn’t budge. The dark paladin growled like a beast.

The two would-be thieves continued this process of ramming and smashing statues against the door until the entire room was caked in dust, causing Junie to sneeze a glob of yellow slime all over one of the goddess’s detached breasts. “Now that’s what I call a money shot!” she chuckled before burping loudly.

The iron door resembled a battered semi-circle rather than a symbol of security. All it took after every statue was desecrated was a spin kick from Golo’s metal boot. The twisted door crashed to the ground while Junie coughed and waved the smoky air out of their solitary confinement.

“Quit being a wuss and help me find the damn dagger,” said Golo while marching over the fallen door. He held out his palm and brought the ball of light back into his grasp, shining it over various paintings with nature scenes. Snow-covered mountains, enchanted forests with faeries, relaxing beaches with nude models, they all made Golo cringe and curl up in his suit of armor.

“If you spray some more dust in my face, I could sneeze again and create better paintings than these pieces of trash,” joked Junie while wiping her nose with her finger.

“Or you could jerk me off over a sheet of paper, either one sounds more profitable right now. Why would anybody think that painting trees is interesting?! They’re trees! They’re goddamn trees that don’t do a damn thing!” yelled Golo, who then punched one of the paintings and ripped it off the frame.

“Allow me!” said Junie as she and her accomplice went around ripping up paintings and cursing at them. Shredded canvases lined the floor and raging attitudes had the burglars banging their fists against the wall. They were no closer to finding the Golden Dagger. “This is horse crap!”

“Yes, I know how badly these paintings suck.”

“No, Golo, this is actual horse crap! Where the hell is that dagger?!” Junie folded her arms in frustration and slammed her back against the wall. The ridged frame of the picture behind her sent shockwaves of pain through her spine. She roared and held her wound while Golo pointed and laughed at her.

“Why, you little!” Junie turned around and started punching the hell out of the painting, bruises the size of molehills forming on her knuckles with every strike. Ignoring the pain in her hand, she ripped the picture off the wall and revealed something that instantly calmed her anger. “Oh my lord.”

Golo’s laughter turned to confusion. “What?”

“I don’t believe this. I knew it! I knew it was hidden among one of these pieces of garbage!” Junie stuffed her non-aching arm into the hole and pulled out a source of brilliant light that rivaled Golo’s fluorescent sphere. A pearl handle poked out of a leather pouch that the orc held in her hands like a kid receiving a Christmas gift. After a while of trying to contain her giggly fits, she pulled the handle and revealed the source of her and Golo’s greed: the Golden Dagger. The one artifact that could create pieces of art out of stone despite the user’s underachieving skill level.

Junie dropped to her knees and gazed upon the dagger with neon eyes. “This is beautiful. This is a work of art on its own.” Even though Golo wore a horned helmet that covered his face, the orc could tell he was smiling too. “We’re going to be rich…we’re going to be bloody rich!”

Holding the dagger like she was about to murder somebody with it, she tested its powers on the wall next to the mini-vault. Instead all she ended up doing was ripping a few chunks of wood. Nothing artistic, nothing glorious. “What the hell’s going on here?! Is this stupid thing just as worthless as the rest of the crap in here?!” She tried stabbing the wall again and had the same result: a whole lot of nothing. “This thing sucks! We wasted our time in here!”

Junie threw the dagger to the floor only for the magical artifact to float in the air before it had the chance to crash. The wide-eyed, shaky thieves slowly backed away from the artifact while it danced and spun around, shooting golden dust every which way and rendering the ball of light redundant.

With a mind of its own, the dagger stabbed itself into the wall and carved a proper piece of art within seconds. It was detailed. It was lifelike. It was…a mosaic of Junie Axel crapping her pants, to which Golo Quinn laughed himself into soreness yet again. The orc stomped her foot and complained, “Really funny, smart ass! Really goddamn funny!”

Junie lunged for the Golden Dagger’s handle only to have it fly away and carve yet another masterpiece out of the wall: Golo doing a striptease with a saggy gut hanging low. The dark paladin threw his gauntlet to the ground and shouted, “What the hell is going on here?! Is this some kind of joke?! When did a shitty piece of art become such a smart ass?!”

The anger tapered off into shaky fear as the dagger pointed at both Junie and Golo. Was the maniacal artifact going to fling itself into one of them? Was this how they were going to die? At the blade of a dagger with a sense of humor? Not yet. The dagger found more empty wall space and carved out a message for the intruders: “Frauds”.

Golo gazed at the message with hatred while Junie’s body convulsed in the corner. The dark paladin threw down his other gauntlet and yelled, “Frauds?! We’re frauds?! We’re not the ones carving these ridiculous-looking statues and painting these faggy pictures! We’re not the ones who suck! I purposefully stayed away from art class so that I wouldn’t have to make these pieces of shit!”

The dagger carved out another message on the wall: “Lazy”.

“Why you!” belted Golo as he chased after the floating dagger with his footsteps quaking the ground beneath him. The chase led him around the entire gallery, his legs aching and his heart thumping like a war drum. He jumped in the air whenever the dagger soared too high, but his heavy armor caused his shoulders and legs to burn with pain afterwards. He hunched over for a quick breather and even ripped off his helmet, throwing it to the ground and cursing.

The Golden Dagger spun around in the air before finding another empty space to carve a message into. All the weapon could muster were the letters L-O-S-E before Golo found a second wind and lunged at the blade with the last of his rage. His hands gripped the pearl handle with such force that he almost broke it off as it struggled for freedom. “I got you now, you little prick! Hold still! Junie, get your big ass over here and help me!” The orc remained cowardly in her corner. “Now, damn it!”

The orc took her time in getting up while Golo wrestled with the struggling blade on the ground. Junie slowly tiptoed towards the scuffle and hunched over her cohort, not wanting to jump in too soon. And then the blade jerked upwards and brought the dark paladin to his feet. Now it was Golo’s turn to hold the weapon like a murderer. “Wha…what are you doing, buddy? Golo?” pleaded Junie.

With a complete loss of control over his hand, Golo brought the Golden Dagger down upon Junie in a series of rapid-fire stabs that decorated the walls and shredded paper in blood. The dark paladin screamed, “No!” as his friend was being mutilated, but he couldn’t even release his grip. The blade kept raining down upon the orc until she was nothing more than a pile of broken bones, shredded skin, and pooling blood. The knife flew freely from Golo’s grip while the dark paladin pounded the floor repeatedly, tears welling in his eyes.

“What the hell did you have to do that for?!” Golo screamed, wiping an angry tear from his eye with his finger. “She was my friend, damn it!” The dagger lowered itself down into Golo’s field of vision and illuminated it with its golden glow. Dancing and prancing in front of him, the dagger’s light showed him a vision of beauty created from the madness of violence. Junie wasn’t just a mere corpse. She was a sculpture of something more beautiful than her wicked soul could become. “A mermaid? Seriously?! You…you made a mermaid out of my friend?!”

The Golden Dagger carved out another message on the wall: “Profit”.

“I…I don’t understand…you want me to sell this to the curator?”

One final message was sent loud and clear to the boohooing knight. It wasn’t he message he wanted to see carved out. It was the message he needed to see: “True art!”

Weirdo Alert

In Louise Bradbury’s mind, she could have been paid a million dollars per week and it still wouldn’t have been enough for what she had to go through. Making a decent cup of coffee was the easy part. Dealing with the “loony toons” who waddled through the shopping mall was where she believed she deserved a raise. Old men who couldn’t shut up about the 1920’s, teenagers who laughed like hyenas at every minor occurrence, middle aged men who kept trying to get the baristas’ phone numbers, that kind of shit.

Louise looked absolutely miserable behind the counter of her coffee bar with a hunched over body and a dull expression on her face. Customer service protocol always dictated that she had to have a positive expression, but she just couldn’t fake it anymore. Her attempts at smiles were more see-through than a wet T-shirt. Her engagements in small talk were so boring that she almost fell asleep on the job. And to think, this minimum wage money was supposed to mean something later down the line. What it meant, Louise didn’t know.

When a powerful sneeze sounded off in the background, that was when Miss Bradbury’s “weirdo alert” went off in her head like a police siren. She tucked her head down in her palm at the embarrassing entrance of a regular customer known as Denny Smith (she knew his name from his debit card information).

With a bucket of ice cream in one hand and a tablet in the other, Denny dragged his big ass over to one of the tables closest to Louise’s counter. With ice cream stains on his Snoopy shirt and blue sweat pants, the other customers couldn’t help but stare at him for the longest time. He sneezed so hard that it sounded like he blew his whole sinus cavity out, to which some customers got up and walked away in disgust.

Louise was one of the people looking on in wide-eyed terror as Denny shoveled huge scoops of vanilla ice cream in his mouth with no regard for the sweet treat dripping down his double chin. The big man even coughed up huge wads of snot and then swallowed them again, prompting even more horrified customers to power-walk away. Denny managed to thin the herd even more when he let out the world’s largest fart, which sounded a lot like a shotgun blast.

In between bites of ice cream, Denny said to the leaving customers, “It’s a natural function! I’m an American! I can fart if I want to! What are you going to do, arrest me for farting?!”

Digging deep for a silver lining in all of this, Louise thought to herself that Denny could have been doing her a favor by not making her deal with these other obnoxious customers. But if that was her only positive, then she still had the right to shiver in disgust and gag on snot herself.

Normally, the customer was always right (at least that’s what it said in Louise’s training video). But when her “weirdo alert” was going off in her head, it sounded too much like a schizophrenic nightmare. She clutched her head and gave off a subtle “Ugh!” before racing around the counter to confront Denny.

“Excuse me, Mr. Smith,” said Louise with her hands behind her back in feigned politeness. Instead of undivided attention, Denny gave her another nuclear bomb fart, to which she plugged her nose and shivered like she was having a seizure.

Only then would Denny look up from his ice cream and his tablet and say, “What? What’s your problem? It’s a free country; I’m allowed to fart whenever I want. It’s in the constitution.”

This sense of American entitlement sent Louise into a screaming rage complete with waving hands and a shrill voice. “There’s nothing in the constitution that says you can scare off my customers with your weird ass behavior! If you have to fart so badly, go to the bathroom across the hall! If you have to sneeze so hard that your tiny brain falls out, go to the goddamn bathroom, you fucking weirdo!”

Louise covered her own mouth in shock after dropping that F-bomb, as did several customers who were just passing by. The barista held her hands up in defense and whispered an apology before the customers shook their heads and strolled away.

With her new whispery calm demeanor, Louise patted Denny on the shoulder and said, “Look, all I’m saying is that you should try to act just a little bit normal and be a decent member of society like the rest of us. That way, people won’t want to run away in horror whenever they want to come here for a cup of coffee. You might even get a girlfriend one day, I don’t know!”

“First of all, dumb-ass” said Denny while pointing his sausage finger at the barista. “I can’t help it if I have to fart or sneeze. I’ve had allergies to pretty much everything since I was five years old. You think walking all the way over to that bathroom is going to solve anything? Hell no! Besides, do you think I give two shits and a flying fuck what anyone thinks of me? I’m supposed to conform to everyone else’s system so that I can have a slightly better chance of getting laid? Look at me! This is not the body of a man who goes around stealing women! This is the body of someone who’s addicted to ice cream like it’s crack cocaine, which sugar pretty much is!”

Folding her arms, Louise said, “Look, I understand if you want to be your own person, but come on, is farting and sneezing really a part of who you are? Is that the person you want to be? Do you really enjoy driving people away and being obnoxious?”

“I don’t know, missy, do you like standing behind the counter like you’ve got a stick up your butt?” Louise’s expression softened into solemnity at Denny’s accurate statement. He licked the ice cream off of his fingers and said, “You think I just sit around here every day like a dumb-ass and not notice everything around me? I see your looks of horror. I see you guys walking away like I’m the boogeyman. I guess a simple case of allergies will do that to people. I had no idea that medical conditions were so freakish. You think I enjoy having a runny nose and a snotty throat? Go back behind your counter and do your fucking job. I’ll stay here and do mine.”

“I’m sorry, did you just say something about a job?” said Louise while placing her authoritative palms on Denny’s table. “You mean to tell me that you get paid to shovel ice cream down your throat and make disgusting bodily noises everywhere you go? Shit, if I would have known that was even a career, I would have given up making coffee a long time ago!”

Denny yelled, “You fucking bitch!” while shooting up to his feet and accidentally knocking his tablet over. “Shit, now look at what you made me do! I bet that damn thing’s cracked!”

Louise knelt down to pick it up and waved Denny off while saying, “Don’t worry, it’s not cracked. I’m sure the cover on this thing…” The barista had a wide-eyed expression as she flipped through the photos on the tablet, but for reasons other than Denny’s farts and sneezes. “These paintings are beautiful,” she said. And they were, too. Paintings of armored medieval warriors, lightning elemental dragons, shadow magic-using wizards, and fiery ninjas. This kind of skill could have easily landed Denny a job at a comic book publishing house or even an art museum.

While Louise stared at the paintings with a bright smile she hadn’t formed in years, Denny said, “That’s the job I was talking about. I paint for a living. Well, I’m not really a professional. I’m not much of a marketer. It doesn’t matter how much effort I put into these paintings, because only one or two people want to actually buy them.”

Louise placed a hand on her chest like these paintings took her breath away, but then gave a sullen expression to Denny before saying, “Look, I don’t want to give you a lecture about…”

“I know! I know, damn it!” said Denny. “I know my weird ass behavior is keeping people from buying my paintings. But you know what? Nobody gives a shit about artists anymore. Everyone wants me to be an engineer or some other kind of science nut. As long as people are going to turn their noses down at me, I might as well act as crazy as I want.”

“Denny, I’m so sorry,” said Louise in a sheepish voice with her head tucked.

“Yeah, you’re sorry now that you’ve seen these paintings! You could have been sorry long before you saw them, but no, you had to be like every one of these ignoramuses here at the mall and gag in disgust like a bunch of bitches! Maybe I’ll get over my allergies someday! Maybe I’ll also get over my sugar addiction! But until then, you can feel free to forget about me, because I don’t want to be famous in a city that doesn’t give a shit about art!”

Denny yanked the tablet from Louise’s hands and threw his bucket of ice cream in the trash before marching away. Everything the pudgy man said was right and Louise didn’t want to admit it to herself (regardless of having no choice). The barista sat down at one of the tables and held her face in her hands while sobbing quietly. She chastised this poor man over bodily functions when really he was the most beautiful person in this entire mall. Louise had no artistic talents of her own and those paintings made her jealous. She tried so many times to be as good as Denny, but everyone laughed at her and told her to get a “real job”.

Then she thought to herself, “Fuck this real job!” Louise took off her apron and threw it behind the counter before running after Denny screaming, “Hey, wait up! Wait!” She didn’t know what she would expect once she caught up to the “weirdo”. Would Denny teach her how to be an individual? Would he teach her how to be an artist as good as himself? Would he turn her away like Louise tried to do a few moments ago? No matter what the outcome, Louise Bradbury had to find out before it was too late.