[Fic] "untitled haunted painting story" -- original
I've been putting together my rather belated end-of-year writing roundup post, and realized I forgot to crosspost this snippet over here. So! Here is the opening of a story about two women and some haunted paintings, written December 11, 2020, in response to a 
getyourwordsout challenge post. [515 words]
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untitled haunted painting story
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"What's with the creepy painting?" Gwen asked as she took her coat off just inside Isabel's front door. "I know we haven't talked art much, but I never figured you for an abstract horror person."
"It came with the apartment," Isabel said. "It's actually written into my lease -- no furnishings, but one painting in each room. They've all got little motion sensors and if I take them down I lose my damage deposit."
Gwen raised her eyebrows. "Really. And you agreed to that?"
Isabel told her the rental rate.
Gwen whistled. "Yeah, I'd put up with some creepy paintings for that kind of deal. But seriously, you can't move them at all? Like, not even turn them around so they're not, like, staring creepily at you every second? That one would put me off dinner on bad days, and if you've got another like it in your bedroom, how do you sleep?"
Isabel shrugged. "I pinned a wall hanging in front of the bedroom one -- honestly, sometimes I even forget it's there. And you can get used to all kinds of crazy things after a while. I heard they did an experiment in Russia once, parked a tank next to an office building, and it only took about a week for everyone to stop noticing it."
Gwen examined the painting again. It was very clearly not a picture of anything specific, and yet the shapeless colors somehow stared down at her with a knowing, hungry leer. "I don't think two hours between now and dinner is enough for me to ignore that. A tank would probably be easier."
"Fair enough. I'll chuck a towel over it or something; it'll be fine." Isabel suited action to words, and soon the wall held nothing more unnerving than a mint green hand towel with slightly frayed decorative stitching at the bottom edge.
Gwen eyed it mistrustfully nonetheless. "I still can't get past how weird that is. What kind of weird control freak sticks creepy art in every room and writes into the lease that you can't take it down, or even move it to a different wall?"
"Beats me, but Mrs. Bligh was very insistent," Isabel said as she returned to the kitchen side of the room and started pulling pots and pans out of a cupboard. "She said something about the house's first owner being an artist, blah blah terms of the will, blah blah historic value. And she looked so worried when I asked about moving them that I figured, whatever, it's just some ugly art. I can humor a sweet old lady."
"I still think it's creepy," Gwen said, but she let the subject drop and by the end of the evening had nearly forgotten about the paintings altogether. They were nothing more than the whim of an old woman with an idiosyncratic fixation on history and art provenance: weird and ugly, but harmless.
When she woke in the middle of the night with the bone-deep conviction that something malevolent was watching her from Isabel's bedroom wall, that rationalization melted down her spine like ice.
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To be continued...?
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Random trivia: When I was apartment hunting back in 2005, one place I toured was a ground floor unit in a subdivided house. It was in good shape and had a recently renovated back deck... but it came fully furnished, complete with somewhat questionable wall art, and the landlord insisted that all items remain exactly as they were set up. Tenants weren't even allowed to change their thermostats, which were locked inside tiny wire cages. The landlord himself lived in another state entirely -- Virginia or Florida or something -- so if you were hypothetically too hot or cold, you had to walk across the street to the house of one of his old friends, hope like hell she was home, and ask her to come unlock the thermostat and adjust the temperature -- and she couldn't even do that without calling the landlord and getting his permission! *headdesk*
So yeah, there are some people out there with serious control issues.
Also, needless to say, I did not rent that apartment. If you want to comment on this post, you can do so over here on Dreamwidth, where there are currently (
comments)
getyourwordsout challenge post. [515 words]
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untitled haunted painting story
---------------------------------------------
"What's with the creepy painting?" Gwen asked as she took her coat off just inside Isabel's front door. "I know we haven't talked art much, but I never figured you for an abstract horror person."
"It came with the apartment," Isabel said. "It's actually written into my lease -- no furnishings, but one painting in each room. They've all got little motion sensors and if I take them down I lose my damage deposit."
Gwen raised her eyebrows. "Really. And you agreed to that?"
Isabel told her the rental rate.
Gwen whistled. "Yeah, I'd put up with some creepy paintings for that kind of deal. But seriously, you can't move them at all? Like, not even turn them around so they're not, like, staring creepily at you every second? That one would put me off dinner on bad days, and if you've got another like it in your bedroom, how do you sleep?"
Isabel shrugged. "I pinned a wall hanging in front of the bedroom one -- honestly, sometimes I even forget it's there. And you can get used to all kinds of crazy things after a while. I heard they did an experiment in Russia once, parked a tank next to an office building, and it only took about a week for everyone to stop noticing it."
Gwen examined the painting again. It was very clearly not a picture of anything specific, and yet the shapeless colors somehow stared down at her with a knowing, hungry leer. "I don't think two hours between now and dinner is enough for me to ignore that. A tank would probably be easier."
"Fair enough. I'll chuck a towel over it or something; it'll be fine." Isabel suited action to words, and soon the wall held nothing more unnerving than a mint green hand towel with slightly frayed decorative stitching at the bottom edge.
Gwen eyed it mistrustfully nonetheless. "I still can't get past how weird that is. What kind of weird control freak sticks creepy art in every room and writes into the lease that you can't take it down, or even move it to a different wall?"
"Beats me, but Mrs. Bligh was very insistent," Isabel said as she returned to the kitchen side of the room and started pulling pots and pans out of a cupboard. "She said something about the house's first owner being an artist, blah blah terms of the will, blah blah historic value. And she looked so worried when I asked about moving them that I figured, whatever, it's just some ugly art. I can humor a sweet old lady."
"I still think it's creepy," Gwen said, but she let the subject drop and by the end of the evening had nearly forgotten about the paintings altogether. They were nothing more than the whim of an old woman with an idiosyncratic fixation on history and art provenance: weird and ugly, but harmless.
When she woke in the middle of the night with the bone-deep conviction that something malevolent was watching her from Isabel's bedroom wall, that rationalization melted down her spine like ice.
---------------------------------------------
To be continued...?
---------------------------------------------
Random trivia: When I was apartment hunting back in 2005, one place I toured was a ground floor unit in a subdivided house. It was in good shape and had a recently renovated back deck... but it came fully furnished, complete with somewhat questionable wall art, and the landlord insisted that all items remain exactly as they were set up. Tenants weren't even allowed to change their thermostats, which were locked inside tiny wire cages. The landlord himself lived in another state entirely -- Virginia or Florida or something -- so if you were hypothetically too hot or cold, you had to walk across the street to the house of one of his old friends, hope like hell she was home, and ask her to come unlock the thermostat and adjust the temperature -- and she couldn't even do that without calling the landlord and getting his permission! *headdesk*
So yeah, there are some people out there with serious control issues.
Also, needless to say, I did not rent that apartment. If you want to comment on this post, you can do so over here on Dreamwidth, where there are currently (
comments)