Present Imperfect - Tales from a town called malice - it's not as bad as it seems

Present Imperfect

Cigs is busy with press week and his new job at the moment, so has (possibly unwisely) left me with the keys to this place. Mwahahahaaa! Ooh, the raw power ...

Nine Black Poppies will be returning when he has some more time. In the meantime, here's a short to keep you all occupied. You'll be pleased to hear that I'm not going to be inflicting any of my rubbish on you. Well, only a minimal amount - the opening sentence is my particular brand of genius, but the rest of it is all down to Mr Sigh.

Keep commenting, my lovelies. It's been too quiet round these parts recently, and you all know how I love a gossip.

Katja x

It was a good painting although there was something missing. She had made him look too beautiful, like a court painter prostrating himself before a king. His face was more symmetrical, the true mathematical measure of beauty and his eyes shined with an intensity that they seldom managed anymore in real life. She had missed the truth behind his crooked smile. This figure on the canvas was a hero that never laddered his tights, more Superman than Spiderman, saved from the problems of a real life. I liked his ugliness in the flesh – the chipped tooth from the time a drunk girl stumbled into him when they were getting into a taxi, the scar on his arm from when we twisted our arms up and under the bar to steal drinks from the padlocked chiller cabinet. The face on the canvas smirked at me. I didn't want to look at it directly. I stared at the reflection in the polished glass of the gallery doors. I held my compact up and looked at it as if I were staring out of a submarine at the vast eyes of a sea monster. It was a good painting. I couldn't deny it. It had technique. But his soul? His soul had dispersed like smoke from a pipe on a windy afternoon. All that was left was a shadow like ashes shaped into a silhouette on a wall in Pompeii. Little pieces of it are in quick snap photos taken with cheap cameras that nudge each other conspiratorially in the box on the top of my wardrobe. Bits of it rest on slips of paper slipped into books on my shelf, in letters he sent me when he first loved me. Not in this painting of hers. It's a good painting but it's not a painting of him.

2.4.07 10:00

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To date 13 Comment(s) TrackBack-URL

amillionpieces / Website (2.4.07 14:33)
But the first sentence is the very best, of course!
x

(sorry ciggy, but you knows I have to say it!)

Katja / Website (2.4.07 16:37)
Peter, Peter, Pumpkin-Eater, you are very naughty! I am editor today and I am cracking the whip - what do you make of the story, first sentence notwithstanding ...?

amillionpieces / Website (2.4.07 18:03)
Oooh, cracking the whip? I never knew that was your style dear, but whatever floats your boat.

The story is very good, as ever. Is the painting a metaphor for the relationship itself?

Katja / Website (2.4.07 19:07)
Ooh. I hadn't read it like that, but that makes a lot of sense. You're a bit clever, innit.

amillionpieces / Website (2.4.07 19:11)
That depends on what was in Mr Sigh's mind. Maybe neither of us read it as intended!

Amy / Website (3.4.07 10:05)
Liking this. Very well written Kitty Kat.

Katja / Website (3.4.07 10:53)
Er - I didn't write it, Ames. I just gave Cigs a starter for 10 and he ran with it. 'Tis good though, I agree.

Amy / Website (3.4.07 10:56)
Oh..pants. I misread it and thought he'd written the first line and then you'd written the rest. Oops.

pog (3.4.07 13:18)
I thought it was a painting by the woman who replaced the narrator. I like the piece a lot.

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