It's not quite right

Flic rested the painting up against the front of the covered chair. Each of the two sides rested against one of the ornate arms, hidden beneath the old, splattered sheet, so the picture was angled at about twenty degrees. She prowled the room, eyes fixed on the canvas, looking for a new illumination, for the light to hit it in such a way as to show her where it was wrong. It was deeply frustrating to be so sure something was lacking and yet have no idea what it was. She had spent yesterday going over it with a magnifying glass but for all the tiny alterations she had made, she couldn't see any difference in the overall impression. She was becoming desperate.

She lit another slender French cigarette and squeezed the smoke out the sides of her mouth, fuming like an angry boiler. She lit another with the stub and continued pacing. The windows were grubby and flecked with bird shit, so the sunshine cast small oval shadows sporadically across the floor and walls. As the smoke filled the room, the light refracted off the swirls and threw out ethereal dancing patterns. The painting came alive. Flic knelt before it and tried to capture this beautiful quality of light.

The fixed shadows were easy enough, she simply darkened the areas which were there, filling in each oval as it was projected onto the canvas. The swirling shades of smoke proved more difficult. Eventually, she tied five brushes together and held them in one clawed hand, dancing them like a puppeteer as she traced them softly over the  picture, hoping to capture that essence of motion within motion.

She came to look at it again a week later and hated it. She picked up a bucket of black emulsion, meant for the back wall, and poured it over the picture.


Somehow, it got included in her next show and a collector bought it for fifteen thousand pounds. He told her that the thin shroud of black hid only the details but the relief of the brush stokes told the true story of obsession and irritation; nothing would ever be just right. She told him to fuck off. He smiled and nodded his head.

In a glasshouse.

The smoke plumed in thick swirls as the last of the weed burnt quietly. She tried not to inhale too deeply, not knowing what it would do. The smell swam around her as she sat hunched forward on the chair, holding a half-full black bin bag. She hated making decisions. She found she could put most things off until they resolved themselves or her hands were tied, for better or for worse. This choice, though, was the hardest by far. It was about belief, about who she was, about the past and the future and where, in all likelihood, the only true consequences would be up here, in her baffling brain.

Her old world was almost gone; she never knew how much it could alter. The earth used to be flat, a hockey puck around which the universe spiralled. This was an undisputed fact, until it wasn't. But the trouble with a changing truth is that, unlike all other types of change, it happens both backwards and forwards in time. The earth did not become round; suddenly, it had been all along. Her old world was the new world and she'd have to try to piece it together again.

The fire had died out by the time she stood up and she flicked through the remains with the toe of her boot. Perhaps she should have emptied the bag onto it too but would that have been for him or for her? She swept up the ashes and put them in a bucket in the greenhouse. There were only 7 tomato plants and a sunflower in there now that she'd destroyed all the marijuana, which was why it'd always seemed so lacking in colour in here, through the dirty glass. Where she had not asked questions, now she had been a fool but surely only a true fool would heap more misery on herself.

Her mind made up, she went out into the round world to spend a dead man's money.