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This is a piece that I put together recently for a contest, the same one that I submitted Sorry to last year. The submission date for this is May 31st, but I'd like to get as many reviews as possible for this before submitting.
I must warn you, though, that this is a very odd piece, and I'm not all too sure that it's a good one. Please comment and review.
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“Miss Pyrite! How do you feel about…?”
“Miss Pyrite! Your critics say…”
“Miss Pyrite! Over here, please!”
Joan Pyrite turned towards the last speaker, who was holding his camera high and at ready, and smiled brightly, her perfect teeth glinting in the late afternoon sun. The bulb flashed, muted by her sunglasses. “Thank you, Miss Pyrite!”
She nodded and continued on, heedless of the swarm of reporters struggling with her entourage. The noise was nearly unbearable, a solid wall of sound crashing down like a wave, crushing all smaller sounds and taking them into itself until anything one said was simply part of the dull roar. Eventually she made it into the limousine, and her secretary Cindy climbed in after her, slamming the door. The noise continued, heedless of the glass and steel between Joan and the reporters, but it was muted and tame.
Cindy brushed back her brown hair and reached into her ears, pulling out a pair of pink earplugs. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to them,” she said ruefully, stowing them in her purse and rubbing her ears.
“You’d better, if you want to keep your job,” said Joan, smiling faintly out the window. “Tell Brian that I’m going to be a bit late for lunch,” she continued before Cindy could reply. “I want to make a quick stop at the new store.”
“Yes ma’am,” replied Cindy, reaching for her cell phone.
“Oh, not now,” said Joan, “he’s got this freaky way of knowing when I’m nearby. Call him once we get to the store.”
“Yes ma’am,” said Cindy again. She leaned forward and rapped on the partition separating them from the driver, which lowered with an electronic buzz. “Miss Pyrite wishes to visit the new store,” she told the driver. He nodded, his black cap bobbing, then the partition buzzed back up.
Joan sat back and brushed her platinum blond hair back behind her ears as the limousine left the press behind. “What’s happening after lunch?” she asked Cindy, and stared out the window as Cindy laid out her life for the day. When she had finished (“…and Howard’s moved the matinee ahead to nine, so you’ll see that and be home by around midnight.”) Joan nodded and waved a perfectly manicured hand vaguely in her direction. “All right. That’ll be all for now.”
Cindy nodded and sat back, closing her eyes. Joan continued to watch out the window. The limousine was passing by one of the universities now – one of the big, important ones…she couldn’t remember the name – and there was a small crowd of people standing outside of it, waving billboards and shouting slogans. She leaned over and tapped Cindy on the shoulder, who sat up. “What’s all that about?” she asked.
They had passed the crowd by that point, so Cindy turned around and squinted at them from the rear windshield. “Oh, that,” she said. “Something about the war.”
“Oh, right, the war,” said Joan. She had a vague memory of visiting a base in the middle of a desert somewhere and visiting the troops, who would be a great deal sexier if they weren’t so filthy. She made a mental note to catch them after they’d gotten home and had a good long shower – sweat was a turn-on, but the dirt and sand that stuck to it definitely wasn’t. “Who’re we fighting again?” she asked Cindy, who shrugged and leaned back again. “I dunno,” she said, “bad guys.”
Joan nodded.
* * * * * * *
“McDonald’s? You’re such a romantic.”
Brian took a bite out of his hamburger. “Dear me, no,” he said, chewing, “I’m simply supporting our ever-so-brave boys on the front by upholding our American culture, darling. Eat up, and maybe our boys’ll fight those nasties a little bit better.”
Joan took a bite of his hamburger as well, watching Brian. She had known Brian for a few years now, and had never seen him act the same way more than once – he seemed to change personalities like clothes, and she often imagined that he had a walk-in closet full of faces: Manic, macho, depressed, neurotic, and so on to the end of the closet. Today he had chosen effeminate.
Brian’s house was a frightening affair, vaguely reminding Joan of her first experience with LSD. Psychedelic colours floated through the walls, floor, and ceiling like tendrils of thick multicoloured smoke, twisting dizzily about the visitor’s eye and sliding into his mind, permeating his thoughts with thick yellow and violet and green. The rooms refused to adhere to the usual standards of construction, some boasting floors that undulated like the ocean and others interrupted by the ceiling stretching down to claw at the carpet. Not a single room in the house was completely square, random polygons and circles and combinations of both somehow managing to fit perfectly together, a mad jigsaw created for a deranged puzzle enthusiast.
The table that they were eating at was no exception to the style of the rest of the house, a piece of furniture with three randomly-placed wooden legs with a surface that curved in and around itself with unguided glee. Joan was sitting at one end of it, trying to balance her fries at the crest of one of the curves, and Brian was sitting to one side, at an unexpected angle to her.
“But really, darling,” Brian continued, his burger dangling from a limp wrist, “nobody really understands how…how…” he paused, waving the burger randomly, “how self-defeating it is to grab onto the past with both hands and hold on for dear life. Tradition. It’s pointless. Take honour, for example.”
“Honour?” asked Joan, giving up the futile battle to balance her fries and watching them slide down towards the center of the table.
“Yes, honour.” He took another bite from his burger. “It’s the whole thing about spelling, you see, darling. The Canadians spell it with a ‘u’ and we spell it without, and everyone keeps arguing over the correct spelling, dear, when we should actually be spelling it without either. If the world kept up with modern times we’d be spelling it properly, and it would be so much easier on everyone.”
“‘Properly’?” asked Joan, finishing her burger.
“Yes, darling, we’d be spelling it A-W-N-E-R. Honour. If you try to say it the way it’s spelled now, dear, it sounds like ‘haw-nore,’ and that makes no sense, does it? We all have haw-nore!”
Joan laughed, then reached forward to try to snag her fries from their resting place in the middle of the table. Brian leaned forward a bit and batted them up the slope towards her, finishing his own burger.
“And that’s just one tiny little thing, dear,” he continued. “Take art. You remember when I was arrested for throwing a rock at The Last Supper, hmm?”
Joan nodded. There had been a hail of controversy over that, so much that her scandal was nearly covered up. Brian picked up his fries.
“All those stupid, entrenched pigs kept calling it ‘vandalism,’ can you believe it? ‘An attack on’…what did they call it? Oh yes, ‘a priceless piece of artistic history.’ Hello! Darling, that was a message. A…a call to let go of this stupid, outmoded graffiti that’s being embraced by the masses nowadays. Watch this.”
He set his fries down on the table, the yellow “M” on the package facing up towards the ceiling. “There,” he said proudly.
Joan leaned forward to look at the fries. “I don’t get it.”
“Oh, no worries, darling,” said Brian. He brought his hands together over the fries, hiding them from view, and then brought them apart like a magician pulling a rabbit out of his hat. “There,” he said triumphantly. “That’s art.”
There was a short silence. Joan sat back.
“That’s art,” said Brian, picking up the fries again and beginning to eat them. “Not that vandal Rembrandt or that barbarian Da Vinci, darling. They’re gone. It’s 2007, dear, they’ve been dead for nearly four hundred years. This is the future.”
Cindy came up behind Joan and tapped her on the shoulder. “We need to go now, Miss Pyrite.”
“All right, then,” said Joan. “It’s been nice talking to you, Brian.”
“Always a pleasure, darling,” said Brian, coming forward to kiss her on the cheek. “I’m unveiling a new masterpiece on Saturday. It’s beautiful, just beautiful; my best yet. I’ll send you tickets.”
“I’ll be there,” Joan promised.
* * * * * * *
The auditorium filled quickly with assorted reporters and fans of Brian’s work, filling the room with small talk. Joan shifted in her plastic chair, which creaked loudly. Brian had gotten her a place close to the front, and she had an unparalleled view of the stage. The stage was currently empty but for a large, wide, flat-bottomed pot and a large easel supporting a moderately large painting, which had been covered over with a sheet. A banner hung over the stage, proclaiming Brian’s stage name: Jesus Christ. She couldn’t remember when he had chosen it, but it had caused quite a stir, as Brian had undoubtedly meant it to do.
They were in the Museum of Modern Art, the biggest one in the city. By all accounts, even they didn’t know what Brian had in mind, but his fame as an artist since his beginnings was enough credit for them to give him a room and a crowd.
A loud creaking by Joan’s side alerted her to Cindy’s presence. She glanced at her, but Cindy said nothing, although she looked rather impatient. A pair of reporters sat beside her, eagerly discussing Brian’s work.
“…so if it’s really his best work, then this will really be worth it.”
“Oh, I agree. I wonder what he’s up to this time? Do you remember ‘Coke Can on Bare Sidewalk’? That was quite a masterpiece, and rather unexpected as well.”
“Well, at least we’re inside for this one. It was freezing outside last year.”
“Even more for him, I reckon,” laughed one of them. “‘Lawn Present’ must have been quite a shock for whoever owned that property.”
They both laughed, then fell silent as Brian walked onto the stage. The lights dimmed.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said dramatically. He had chosen a dignified, yet excited persona for this presentation, and the lights shone brilliantly off his white suit. “I would like to present to you what I believe to be my best piece of work yet.
“I call it ‘Progress’. It brings a tear to my eye to think about it. Therefore, before I break down in anticipation, I bring you my masterpiece…”
He yanked the sheet off the canvas, revealing a vaguely familiar painting. A dark spire stood over a small town surrounded by hills and trees, dominated by a swirling sky filled with bright yellow lights.
“This,” said Brian, tossing the sheet aside with the air of a magician tossing aside a hat that a rabbit has just appeared from, “is the original painting The Starry Night, by Vincent Van Gogh, purchased from the New York Museum of Modern Art for an astronomical price.”
He picked up the painting and placed it carefully into the flat-bottomed pot. “It’s not my masterpiece, however,” he said, pulling out a box of matches. “This is.”
He lit a match and tossed it onto the painting, which burst into large, bright flames. The room burst into tumultuous applause.
“This,” roared Brian, “is Progress!”
Joan, clapping wildly, looked around at the rapt faces of the audience, watching the flames dance in their eyes as Brian opened his white pants and proceeded to urinate on the flames. The applause grew even louder and wilder, and the crowd began to cheer him on.
“Who’s Van Gogh?” one of the reporters beside Cindy asked the other. “I’m not familiar with old artists.”
“I think he’s dead or something,” the other replied. “What a brilliant piece!”
Joan stood up and continued to applaud, the crowd following.
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Originally Posted by Kotooshu
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