“Beep beep.”
Josiah carefully twisted the paintbrush in a final swoop and tucked it into a bag until he could properly finish the design or clean his tools. He looked up finally to discover a petite brunette in her early twenties, gazing eagerly at him with sea-siren eyes, lids covered in a shade of glitter not he’d not seen in his 264 years.
“I like your mural.” Glitter girl reached forward with a wistful hand. “Always loved that cartoon while growing up, even if it was old-fashioned. An escape, whenever he wanted it. I guess that’s what you get from this hobby, huh?”
Her hand, he observed, glowed faintly red at her fingertips, which had nothing to do with her azure-painted nails that — unsurprisingly — also shimmered. The portal tremored, and he swallowed his sharp admonition that she was about to disturb the still-drying paint.
Glitter showed no sign of noticing what happened, nor his sudden friendliness.
“I expect you’d like to travel through yourself,” he interrupted smoothly.
She stared, then stuttered. “Ye-yes, of course. But there’s no secret faeryland beyond the brick. It’s just a cruel dream.”
“Good,” Josiah said, and seized her wrist. “I’ll show you.”
She tugged her arm, pulling back to no avail. “Let me go!”
He smiled, exposing fangs. “But my dear Glitter, you already gave your permission.”
***
Well, I went dark with nother Mike’s prompt this week (and have plans to expand this one to something even darker, yikes!): Painting 3-D tunnels on the sides of buildings was his hobby… and a memorial to Roadrunner cartoons!
My prompt went to Becky Jones: He’d sentenced her to a life of alarm clocks.
Find more, and play along, over at More Odds Than Ends!
