after Portrait of Picasso, by Salvador Dali (Spain) 1947
by Lorette C. Luzajic
Waiting out the last few tumbles of the dryer cycle, Jenna poked through an assortment of discarded junk on the corner shelf. The building tenants left book discards and sorry houseplants hoping for rescue. She picked up an old paperback, Ovid, then put it back down. Previous impulses to read The Metamorphoses had never materialized.
There was a cat dish with a pedestal that held more promise. Jenna rinsed it in the laundry sink, then put it into her rolling cart.
As she folded her towels, she had the feeling of eyes boring into the back of her head. She was alone in the room, but the sensation returned persistently like a pesky mosquito. Finally, she spied the source. In a half-dead fern, there was an ugly little figurine stuck in the soil. It was a strange kind of god or demon, squat and garish, with fleshy, pendulous moobs, and a spiralling ram horns. It had a lascivious tongue flopping out of a cavern of a mouth. The thing didn’t even have eyes. Rather, there were more horns, twisting through sinus and sockets.
It was hideous.
Jenna thought the creature looked a bit like Picasso. She saw a tiny lute growing out of its tongue. Weird! A musician? Did it mean inspiration?
She put him in her pocket. He would make good company for her mishmash of ogres and gnomes. The uncanny thing would be a perfect oddity for the spindly cactus in her front window.
Sundays were days of both relaxation and home maintenance. Typically, Jenna lounged late in fuzzy pajamas with a big pot of black coffee and some Flintstones or Pink Panther reruns, then tackled laundry duty and vacuuming. She made soup with stray vegetables that needed using up, and maybe a lasagna or banana bread if she was in the mood. Then, it was Netflix and chill with her girlfriend, the perfect ending before starting back to the grind on Monday.
But on this day, after putting the sheets away in the linen closet, Jenna had zero desire to cull the contents of the refrigerator into a bubbling cauldron of spices. She had had too much coffee, it seemed. She felt hopped up, with something like rage but more ecstatic, pushing against her ribs from the inside. She paced around the apartment, restless and agitated, waiting for the excess caffeine to dissipate and release her. She fiddled with the radio dial. First, thumping hip hop, then, an opera on the classical station. She felt the intensity of the soprano’s emotions welling up in her body.
Jenna tried to clean the bathroom, scrubbing mildew until the shower stall glistened. But the white walls felt like they were closing in on her. She rummaged in the utility closet and found a bucket of old markers and paints from a half-baked attempt at an online craft course, and pulled it out. She began slashing vivid red stripes on the walls, thick black curlicues. She put her hands directly into the paint and let ferocity and passion drive the gestures.
Jenna’s frenzy lasted through the late afternoon. She covered the closet door in the bedroom, too. Disjointed figures with big, meaty hands and eyes askew. “I’m a fucking genius,” she thought, more than once, as her work sprang to life on the walls.
The mess was epic by the time Katie arrived.
“What’s with the wifebeater?” Katie asked, surveying the madness. Jenna wasn’t sure where the old undershirt had come from. Baggy boxers, too. They were covered in paint splatters.
“I was struck by inspiration,” she said. “I wanted to paint the bullfight. I was listening to Carmen.”
“Opera???” This was a new one for Katie. Their mutual taste in music tended towards First Aid Kit or Iron and Wine. She felt some kind of energy coming off of Jenna. Wondered if she had taken something.
“I just had this idea, or this vision, really, for the place,” Jenna said. “Everything was igniting in my mind. Like a love story, but more violent. The bullfighter. The chaos of it. And all the colours.”
She wondered inwardly how she could possibly show up tomorrow to drive a bus full of second graders to school. She had more important work to do. While she was scrambling to put some of the apartment back together, she’d knocked a box of old hangers over in the closet, and a sculpture began to form in her mind’s eye. She needed the day tomorrow to work on it.
Katie stared blankly. The language that Jenna was speaking was unfamiliar to her. Had she somehow missed this erratic, creative, whirlwind side of her completely? Or could someone be transformed this way overnight?
She opened the fridge. “What’s for dinner?” There was usually something waiting, stuffed peppers or mushroom chili. Nothing.
They decided on takeout. Waiting for the Door Dash, Katie busied herself while Jenna showered. She saw the new addition to the cactus pot just as Jenna sauntered in, fresh and glowing, in a skimpy bathrobe. Katie put her arm around her girlfriend while she picked up the figurine. “So ugly!” she said. “Where did you get this?”
She had seen it before, in a museum, but as a painting. “Salvador Dali made a grisly painting of his god and rival, Picasso. It was both a tribute and a mockery.” Katie could feel a strange thrumming electricity in the little plaster statue. As if it held some kind of power.
Jenna had already forgotten about her morning room find in the community laundry. But now she looked at the curio with revulsion. “That thing is cursed!” she claimed. She didn’t want the nasty creature in her lair.
She opened the window and threw the trinket as far as she was able. The roaring pressure within her began to dissolve immediately. And the walls began to fade to white.
Lorette C. Luzajic reads, writes, publishes, edits, and teaches flash and prose poetry. Her work has appeared in hundreds of journals, two dozen anthologies, and has been translated into Urdu, Arabic, and Spanish. She is the founding editor of The Ekphrastic Review and The Mackinaw.
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