Writer's Notebook

This week's Fiction Friday's prompt:

Pick one item from each column. Roughly sketch out a short scene that includes the character you selected and the situation you selected. The scene should begin or end with one of the characters performing the action you selected. Don't be too literal--there is creative leeway as long as the building blocks are still recognizable. This scene should be generally compatible with your character from last week's challenge whom you can discover here.

Character: an extraordinarily lazy artist
Situation: finds out his/her mother is cheating on his/her father
Action: punches a clown


Jennifer checked through each of her canvases before leaving the house. She was excited at the prospect of so many ideas and felt sure that more than one of them would sell. True, the market for surrealist paintings was decreasing right now, but these were such special ideas. She cherished each one of them and in her imagination saw them splattered all over the canvases she had prepared. One day she would conjure up the energy to actually transfer the best ideas to canvas. But that would be a shame. Putting an idea onto canvas was so concrete and surrealism was repelled by the concrete. It thrived on ideas and imaginings but the moment they became real, they just weren't surreal any more. So she put the canvases, all bearing the familiar signature Jennifer Surreal, back in their familiar corner and left for the gallery. She knew better than to affront Jules Mainard-Brandsniff with white canvases. He wouldn't pay a penny more than what it required to have her ejected from his office. But since one has to eat, she would visit his gallery first to see if there wasn't something in there she might persuade him to buy. Indeed, he had so many paintings and a memory that was as short as his eyesight that all that was required was the right dose of conviction in her voice to persuade him that this particular work belonged nowhere else than where it was hanging right now. Mind you, the Mainard-Brandsniffs of this world were no dupes. This particular speciment might be stupid enough to buy a painting he already owned, but he would pay any price for it. She would have to be at her most seductive in her own offputting way.

Arriving at the gallery Jennifer found she had more or less the run of the place. Just two other art lovers were there plus the security guards who looked very much like some classical sculptures of Mr. Mainard-Brandsniff's predecessors. Wandering round her attention was caught by a new acquisition, not even painted by her, which she had never seen before. A man and a woman shaking hands in front of an upside down cup of tea. From the way their fingertips met it was obvious, that they would soon subsitute the tea for a bottle of wine, and let everything else come as it must. Jennifer examined the painting closely. This was the work of a real genius. It would be easy persuading Mr. Mainard-Brandsniff to buy it. Yet, as Jennifer looked, the two figures began to swim about in her mind. She looked again with a vague feeling of familiarity and it was not long before she recognised the portraits of her mother and father on the canvas before her.

Jennifer was devasted. Tears rolled down her face and burnt large holes into the ground where they fell, so bitterly acid were they. How on earth could her father do this to her? His marriage vow to love and cherish anyone other than his wife, was so sacred. How could he be so mean? She stormed out of the gallery into the crowded streets. She had to let out steam somehow. Anything! Anyone! But it must be right now.

The clown on the street corner didn't even see the glove as it struck directly between his knees. But the impact sent him reeling. The blood sppurted out in different colours trickled up to his face adding a realistic touch of his circus makeup. The flyers he'd been giving out flew in all directions. Jennifer grabbed hold of one as it blew past. Grand Opening, it announced in bold invisible letters. Jennifer was devasted and amazed. It was only now she realised that the clown upon whom the boxing glove had reeked such a horrifying revenge, had been none other than Mr. Jules Mainard-Brandsniff, art-connaisseur, gallery owner and her secret benefactor. And the Grand Opening was for her very own show to be entitled Shades of White. So the man in the picture had not been her father after all. It was Jules and he was in love with her. Chastened by this truth and unable to cope with the emotions of the last half hour, Jennifer sought a lonely sanctuary at the bottom of her favourite wine bottle where no one would find her.