Yes! The beginning of my nano! I hate exclamation marks! Shut up!
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Every bit of the ground was eaten by blue paint. There were handprints on the walls and footprints on the ceiling and smiley faces under the table where no one would look. That’s where it’s good to put the truth; where no one will look.
I used to put teeth on the walls--sharp teeth or stupid teeth or mean, angry teeth. But people started thinking it was a joke, and I didn’t want them to know. Of course it was a joke, but it ruined it if I wasn’t the only one who could laugh.
“Why is there blue paint all over everything?” they would ask.
“Because everything is the only place that wasn’t already covered in blood,” I could answer. But I won’t answer, and the blue paint wasn’t there because red paint was elsewhere. It was just there because I put it. It was there because people might slip before they realize the world got tipped to the sky.
The sky was always blue. Even at night when it was black, it was really blue.
“Frankie likes to make handprints,” I sang, rubbing the paint on my jeans, and enjoying talking to myself.
A door slammed nearby and I held up my hands; the police don’t like the paint. I looked around and decided that the furniture wasn’t nearly blue enough, so I picked up another pail of paint and threw it at the wall as hard as I could, letting it explode and help everyone get acquainted.
Frankie.
The sun was dripping into the sky and stars were beginning to fade. I forced my eyes open, trying to see the clock, but fell out of my bed in the process. The curtains were hanging crooked and the floor was littered with absolutely nothing. I couldn’t leave any real thing out where someone could see it. That’s why sometimes I couldn’t be real.
I pulled myself up off the floor and stretched, grabbing a sweatshirt and yanking it over my head. Glancing in the mirror, I found that I was still wearing my white jeans that were mostly blue, and that my hair looked at least four times as blue as usual. No, it wasn’t blue. But I wished it was, so I drew with blue marker on my mirror until I hit the right spot to ensure that whenever I stood in a certain place, the mirror would tell of blue hair.
Before I could reach the doorknob, I heard the clanging sound of all my pots of pans being thrown out of their cupboards simultaneously. It wasn’t an attractive sound, and I was frightened enough to stay still until it ended.
I suppose I surprise easily. Dragons and such are always what I think of first. And so a dragon must have vandalized my house. The doorknob turned in my hand before I could decide to turn it, and I was disappointed; I hated it when someone beat me to the punch.
“Hello, Frankenstein. Hello,” said the door as it opened slowly. I backed up and sat down on the bed, waiting in half excited, half terrified suspense.
“His name isn’t Frankenstein, dummy, it’s Frank,” said a second voice.
“Frankie, actually. Frankenstein is closer, though,” I muttered, annoyed that the door still wasn’t opened enough to see them.
“The little blue paint man with the orange hair,” said the man in blue uniform and hat.
The door opened for me to see, finally, and I quickly decided that this wasn’t the place to be at the moment. One of the men was drippy; his eyes dripped and his fingers seemed to drip from his hands. I found him frightening. The other man, the one who called me ‘little blue paint man’, was less insubstantial; his eyes sat comfortably in his head and his fingers seemed firmly attached to his hands. But his uniform was a little too big, and that irritated me.
“I don’t have orange hair, though. And what about blue paint? I’ve never even heard of it,” I said quickly. hoping these were the kind of policeman who accused everyone of everything until they made everyone feel guilty enough to confess something that no one had done.
“You’re right, it’s not all that orange. I disagree that you’ve never heard of blue paint. It’s everywhere.”
I glanced around me; my room was a torpid green and not blue at all.
“I’m just not seeing the blue paint, that’s all,” I muttered, watching the drippy man as his hands twitched.
“Cuff him. Little blue bastard, that’s what you are.”
For a moment I wasn’t sure if I should attack them, jump out the window, or just let them cuff me and get them back for it later. It was a truly difficult decision to make. But I made it quickly, and the window shattered, sending me sprawling on the grass.
Scrambling speedily to my feet, I began to run. The neighborhood was circular, and right as I heard a siren on my heels, I realized I was right back to where I started.
Sitting down on the grass sullenly, I look around at the incongruent houses in the sliding light. They had dowdy little porches and useless rocking chairs that people sometimes never sat in. Things usually hung out of the windows, but sometimes they didn’t. Before the police car came to a skidding halt behind me, I caught the eye of a girl staring at me from an open window.
“What did you do?” she shouted.
“Exactly!” I shouted back, making an ugly face. She shook her head and vanished. I wanted to tell her to come save me, but I assumed that’s what she was doing, so I said nothing. I felt something collide with my back and realized someone had kicked me. Swearing reverently, I scrambled to my feet, finding the more firmly attached policeman standing over me. And he was standing over me because I was quite a bit smaller than he. The drippy man waved at me from the car.
“You’re arresting me for being a blue bastard.”
“That sounds about right,” answered the nice policeman as he gripped my arm, beginning to drag me toward the car. I hummed something about injustice; he shoved me against the car, knocking the breath out of me. The hand cuffs felt familiar on my wrists, and I didn’t protest until I got my breath back and started humming again.
“That’s the stupidest song I’ve ever heard,” muttered the policeman, practically throwing me into the back seat. But I continued to hum.
Now I’m sitting in a comfortable holding cell with one other crazy person who is sleeping soundly on a pile of dead rats. No, he’s the only crazy person; I’m not crazy at all.
“Wake up, rat man,” I said loudly. “I told you to wake up.” My cuffs were gone and so I picked up a rag and threw it at rat man. He didn’t respond.
Feeling that I needed to tell someone why I was in jail, I glanced around. There was a middle-aged woman in stripy tights sitting to the left at a dirty desk, but she looked disinterested, so I didn’t bother her. Sitting, slightly folded up, in front of her was the drippy man. He looked like he was melting, and I realized he was much younger than I had originally thought. Perhaps about a year older than myself.
“Hey, drippy man, do you want to hear a story?” I asked politely.
“What did you just call me?”
“That’s not your name? Never mind.” I looked around quickly, catching the eye of a pretty girl in overalls talking to what was probably a commissioner of some sort.
“No, that is definitely not my name, you little--”
“Okay, I get that I’m little. I get it. I said nevermind.” I practically yelled the last part and the girl seemed distracted by what the commissioner was telling her. “Hey, commissioner! This is illegal, you can’t keep me here!” I jumped to my feet and grabbed the bars, staring through them complacently.
The commissioner turned around and looked at me with a healthy amount of disdain.
“Is that the kid that you’re looking for, my dear?” he asked the pretty girl.
“Oh no, sir! I’m looking for--”
“Make him shut up, Danler--with a gun if it can be provided.”
“But sir, I know that man! He comes to the grocery store and buys blue paint all the time,” said the girl forcefully.
“What man? Danler and I are the only men here, and if you are accusing either of us being someone who buys blue--”
“No, no, not at all, sir. I was referring to the man in the holding cell. The one who was yelling.”
I felt satisfied that someone realized I was not a little blue bastard, but my satisfaction was quickly quenched.
“Oh no, my dear, that isn’t a man. That’s a vandal,” said the commissioner assuredly. “The very one who soaked your brother’s apartment in blue paint and stole your niece.”
What? I stole a pretty girl’s niece? How preposterous. People-stealing isn’t even in the least bit exciting or funny.
“He’s lying, he’s lying! I would never steal anyone, I swear! I never would!” She started laughing and Danler stood and jabbed me in the ribs with the butt of his gun, causing me to stumble back and shut up.
“Oh, how awful!” cried the girl, beginning to rush past the commissioner to rescue me. But he caught her arm, restraining her.
“Now, my dear, remember that a vandal is no company for a lady. Please, go no closer,” he added, pulling her back.
“But, but--what’s going to happen to him?”
“Well, if you speak the truth when you say he buys blue paint from your grocery store, that is probably enough to get him buried alive. In a manner of speaking. We don’t actually do barbaric things like that.”
Danler began to rasp in a laughing sort of way, and I got my breath back enough to whisper something unintelligible about daring rescues and rewards.
“No, I don’t think it was--I mean, it must have been someone else. Now that I see him closer he looks nothing like the paint man. I promise you, sir, it was someone else. It was him, the man on the floor, he’s the paint man, not the other one.” The girl was being stupid, so I sighed; she would probably only aggravate the already painful situation.
“I’m afraid that can’t be so. Rat-man has been in that cell for over a year, and another house was plastered in blue paint only last night. I’m afraid it simply cannot be him.”
“He must have escaped!” squeaked the girl, staring at me with an odd devotion. I finally had my breath back, so I smiled at her and blew her a kiss. Danler’s face darkened, and his drippy fingers turned white on his cruel gun.
“That’s enough, dear,” said the nasty commissioner. “We promise to do our best to find your missing niece, but I fear there is nothing further we can do for you at the moment.”
The girl glared, turning up her nose at both him and Danler. “I won’t leave until you let the poor, innocent thing out of the jail.”
I wrinkled my nose. How pathetic did I look?
“I’m sorry, but we simply can’t allow that,” responded Mr. Commissioner, taking her lightly by the arm and beginning to lead her out of the station. But she tensed, and then kicked him in shin as hard as she could, running towards the cell.
“I’ll get you out, I promise!” she whispered. I just smiled.
Danler grabbed her arm, she spun around and tore an ugly picture off the wall, hitting him squarely in the eye with its ugly corner. He swore as she looked around wildly, trying to locate the keys. When she caught sight of them, she realized that they were much too high up for her to reach, and her face fell.
“Danler, you imbecile, restrain her!” shouted the commissioner, jumping up and down on his one good leg. Danler rubbed his eyes angrily and then, very calmly, took the keys from the wall, unlocked the cell, and tossed the girl right into my arms, locking it soundly behind us.
The girl pushed me away and stood very straight, watching Danler in an extremely haughty way. “We’ll get out! You just watch. You dirty little reptile, you.” Danler ignored her and sat down at his desk, shuffling some papers and looking important.
“Thanks for saving me,” I said quietly, sitting down on the cold floor and crossing my legs.
“Yes,” she answered, still not looking at me and keeping her eyes fixed firmly on the drippy man. I felt that she probably hadn’t heard me.
The commissioner had finally regained the use of his left leg, and he employed it in a way that positioned him as near to us as he could get without joining us.
“You have made a grave mistake, young lady. I hope you regret it,” he said angrily.
“I haven’t and I don’t,” she said firmly, not looking at him.
“You will.”
“I won’t.”
“You will!” he yelled, kicking the bars in a furious and manly way.
“I don’t think she will, sir,” said I, “because she has me, you see. And I’m the best of them.”
The commissioner turned his attention to me very slowly, putting a pompous mask over his aging face. “The best of who? You might want to clarify. I could misunderstand and assume you mean the best vandal, which you surely are not since we’ve caught you.”
“I’m the best of the caught vandals,” I said quickly, sure that I shouldn’t have admitted I was a vandal.
“And he admits it! Ah, what a day!” proclaimed the commissioner, putting on a fierce smile and then walking speedily away, vanishing around a corner. There was an airy silence where I sighed to make it go away. The girl, probably because of my meaningful sigh, finally concluded her ‘stare at the dirty reptile’ vigil, and sat down a few feet away from me.
“You sure got the better of him,” she muttered, not looking at me.
“Do you ever look at people when you’re talking? And I thought you liked me, or wanted to save me. and now you’re acting all--”
“Yes, yes I wanted to save you. But now I’m stuck in this boring cell with a crazy rat-man who never wakes up and an even crazier--”
“--blue bastard--”
“--yes, who only knows how to get other people caught and has no idea how to--”
“What do you mean ‘I can only get other people caught’? I got myself caught, didn’t I? I did it well, I’m sure!” I was beginning to grow irritated at her dwindling devotion that had seemed so fierce and helpful only minutes before.
“Then how do we get out? That’s what I thought, you have no idea.”
“You didn’t let me answer.”
“If you had an answer we wouldn’t be sitting here staring at the floor.”
“We might be staring at another floor without an answer. I get away without answers, you know. Lots of people do,” I stated importantly. She groaned and threw up her hands, obviously not convinced by my wisdom.
The rat-man was snoring loudly to fill the silence, and Danler was still shuffling paper without rhyme or reason. As far as I could see, the entire scene had not effected the stripy middle-aged woman in the least, and I found this entirely unsatisfactory. It had been so exciting that there was no way she could have stayed so immoveable and calm. I supposed that she was deaf, and moved my attention to the glass doors that showed a very blue day with very white hand-prints in the sky.
As I grew more transfixed by whatever vandal had imitated me in the sky, I completely forgot that I should have been formulating an escape plan that would help me meet this vandal and perhaps learn some of his tricks. I also forgot that there was now a girl locked up with me who didn’t like me anymore now that she couldn’t be heroic and rescue me.
But I‘ve been here enough times to have learned something about how to escape. I should remember how I got out last time, but I feel like it had nothing whatever to do with me. Probably my brother just showed up dressed as Santa Claus and lured all the policeman to the North Pole while someone else unlocked the stupid cage and dragged me home.
It wasn’t until Danler fell out of his chair in his sleep that I awoke from my useless reverie. When I glanced over, I found Danler on the floor, his mouth dripping and his eyes tight shut. Apparently the fall hadn’t awoken him.
I also found that the girl had decided to take a nap in the only shaft of sunlight, and was glowing dustily a few feet away. The only helpful thing I could find in this situation was that Danler’s gun had slid with a foot of one of the bars--I would easily be able to reach it. The stripy woman was gone when I glanced over, so I decided that it really made no difference.
“Hey, what’s that?” said a broken voice in my ear. I jumped with fright, hiding the gun behind my back. Cheers, the rat-man was very much awake.
It makes me want to read at least to the end of the paragraph to see what you are talking about.