The Hunt for the Real Annie Morrison or Boring with a gun

Chapter 1 finds Van Gag attending the very first Pygmalion Festival of the Arts.There he tries to hunt down the Real Annie Morrison.Also,The Grey presents itself as the threat to Creativity it is!

The smell of alcohol brought Van Gag back to reality, from which he had exited in a vivid vision which had placed him on a beach. On said beach were thousands of bare mattresses and frames, which each sung to him to lie down. Van Gag knew if he laid down on any of these beds he would never wake. ‘Sleeping Beauty through the spit stained lens of an LSD trip’, he would later muse to himself. Perhaps he was learning to fly-

            A woman bumped into Van Gag and muttered an embarrassed apology. She was tall and thin, but not in a natural, healthy way. He saw in her lonely days spent in her loft as if it was some deserted island a la Lord of the Flies, drinking weight loss smoothies through a straw as unnaturally skinny as she was. In her lied ambitions gagged by bad self image and fear of rejection by the world. This was not a new sight to Van Gag, as he glimpsed these very things, or variations, daily in thousands of people. Perhaps the doctor to cure cancer or the artist to eclipse the talents of Michelangelo screamed against the self imposed gags brought on by doubt and fear. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so damn depressing.

            Van Gag scanned the room with immense satisfaction. All of the art hung gracefully on the walls called out to him the way art should. Each sung a song that could never be objectively analyzed. All of them were immensely beautiful in one way or another (except the watercolor of the housefly mating with a horse covered in advertising like a Nascar car; no matter how hard Van Gag tried, he could discover no meaning or beauty in it whatsoever). A hummingbird in place of the serpent in the Ouroboros; a surreal painting that depicted the Labyrinth of Daedalus as the human brain in which the figures of Theseus and the Minotaur blindly stumbled through; Prometheus huddled by a “campfire”, looking at the moon in fear Artemis could spot him; a collage of images of the Holocaust mixed with happy images such as personal friend photos and ice cream, all in the name of showing the contrast of life through art. This art festival, despite the few portly men who would walk around and stare at even the simplest art with incomprehension, was one of the best Van Gag had ever attended.

            Tap tap echoed the microphone as a chubby finger tapped it lightly, as a test. Slowly the crowd grew more and more silent with each tap, as they realized it was time to start.

            “Good evening, and welcome to the first ever Pygmalion Festival of the Arts!” said the portly man in the pig mask heartily, who stood at the center of the stage with the microphone nearly in his mouth. “Artists from all over the world have come to show off their art and to enjoy the art of others! Top talents such as Rodrigo Valentez-

            As he heard his name, Rodrigo took off his paint splattered white top hat and curtsied, which garnered him a number of chuckles.

            “Juliek Drummer-

            Juliek awoke from his daydream and, giving a small grin, bowed slightly.

            “Annie Morrison-

            A big boned woman wearing a magnificent dress covered in teal colored lyrics of The Beatles music waved excitedly. She was, in Van Gag’s opinion, the most innovative top name talent in the art world today.

            “-and many, many more! Among these top name talents are dozens of indie artists waiting to break into the public lifestyle we know as art!”

            Cheers from the crowd at this. Funny thing was that the majority of the audience, while they could see and appreciate art for what it was, couldn’t draw more than a stick figure. Of course there were the top name and indie artists among the crowd, as well as talented observers, but if a ratio were drawn up the actual percentage of those who could actually create art versus those who could only appreciate it, the former would be only slightly out of the twenty percent range.

            “Now I suspect that a lot of you have already partaken in the alcoholic beverages available on the premises, but don’t drink too much, especially you sculptors, or you may fall madly in love with your artwork!”

            No one laughed but Van Gag, who could easily tell that the man in the pig mask had great pride in that joke, which he had probably practiced and anticipated the use of with great glee. Van Gag’s politeness earned him a number of confused looks, but a few people who had caught on slipped him a smile of thanks for doing what they could not.

            “Any-who, enjoy yourselves and don’t drink too much, for there are more festivities to come later this night!” laughed the pig mask man as he turned back towards a woman dressed up as a statue. When he kissed her neck and tickled her side, Van Gag finally caught on that she was his wife. Even his wife didn’t laugh at her husbands joke….talk about depressing.

            Van Gag gulped down the last of the wine he had never taken and set out for a painting he had glimpsed but had never taken a good look at. It depicted Lyndon B Johnson and Nixon having an orgy with piles of money, napalm, and mutilated corpses. This disturbing orgy took place in Vietnam, if the background was accurate, and made perfect sense when combined with the images. Perhaps it was slightly off color, but nonetheless as true as anything depicting an orgy with animate and inanimate objects alike had any ability to be. “The most truthful orgy in existence…” mumbled Van Gag to himself with a touch of humor. “If only pornography could be this enlightening. Maybe if they were people would actually learn things while they wank.”

            “Money means nothing; art is our God.” Van Gag almost silently said to himself as he walked into the throng of people. Despite the beautiful art, there were more important things to be done.

 

2

 

            One of the most boring men in all of (un)known existence took a bite of his apple without even a crunch sound to make it interesting. This man aspired to be even more boring than listening to Ben Stein reading Atlas Shrugged as slowly as possible, and he was easily succeeding. Every breath he took, every step he took, was purposefully as boring as watching grass grow. In a world without imagination there could exist objectivity unachievable otherwise. He believed subjectivity was the downfall of all. Until he had completely purified himself of subjectivity, he was to practice being mundane to the extreme. Most of The Grey found the purification process enormously difficult, but Alexander Wagner found shedding subjectivity, individuality, all that stood in the way of total objectivity, to be mostly an easy process. It was easy to walk the new walk, but to talk the new talk was always hard. Avoiding figurative language in speaking was enormously difficult, as it is for the naturally creatively wired. Alexander would never accept this fact, even more the fact that he was naturally creatively wired. Even what he was about to do was uncreative by normal standards. At least, as normal as brandishing a gun to get what you want would ever be.

 

3

 

                        The real Annie Morrison was enormously difficult to find among such a crowd. Fake Annie Morrison, the one who had waved excitedly, was very easy to find. Her artistic energy was nearly impossible to ignore, as was her infectious personality which screamed “ex-LSD addict who is only “ex” to strangers”. The real Annie Morrison was somehow hiding the radiation of her artistic energy as easily as a small child hides a toy or the government hides the truth from the people. Goddamn if it wasn’t annoying in a traditional sense, but it was simultaneously a blessing: he couldn’t just simply track her and haul her back to the realm of Dada; he had to actually work for success. Plus, he was excited to merely have the chance to stay here longer and observe the art. What wonderful-

            “That’s what the freakin picture meant!” shouted Van Gag so loudly and suddenly everyone in a three yard radius turned from what they were doing and stared at him in utter annoyance. “That horse was an a*s, a donkey, a fool, covered in advertisements, avarice! The housefly Beelzebub, devil of decay! Together they symbolize moral decay as a result of avarice!” Silence from those who stared swept like a tidal wave.

            “Or it just could be kinda pervy but who I am to judge?” Van Gag mumbled to himself thoughtfully.

            At this those who at first had fallen silent now roared back to life with conversation. It was like watching bears come out of hibernation, or small robots come out of cryo-synthetic sleep. Like waking up from some kind of dream where one had been completely naked while attempting to juggle slippery objects and everyone was so dumbstruck by the immense oddity of the situation that nobody could even produce the nerve to laugh. All they could do was stare like a******s (or rubberneckers, as Holden Caulfield would say) and think to themselves that the moron probably had too much to drink. By Cthulhu those rubbernecking judgmental artist wannabes were gonna wake up lusting for barnyard animals-

            “Excuse me” said a beautiful voice from behind, which caused Van Gag to realize he had had far too much to drink. He never was truly impared because of being drunk but he did become uncharacteristically angry and short tempered. He never forced people to develop feelings, emotional as well as sexual in nature, for barnyard animals unless they were truly terrible people along the lines of child molesters, Nazi’s, torturers, etc. ‘I must have been lost in thought and grabbed a couple dozen glasses of wine or vodka’ thought Van Gag to himself with regret. He was supposed to be finding this blasted woman and he was gonna be angry and unfocused for the next two/sixths of a minute-

            “Excuse me, sir, I saw you earlier and you seem like the kind of man who actually knows what he is talking about.” said the same beautiful voice from behind. Van Gag wheeled around, surprised, to see a small beautiful woman who he knew he wanted to talk to, but couldn’t quite grasp why in his very short period of angry drunkenness.

            “Damn straight I am. Rich socialite pricks that couldn’t draw more than a stick figure if their family was held at gunpoint by an Ogre!”

            “Hey” said the woman with faux anger “Don’t discriminate against Ogre’s buddy! My stepmom is an Ogre and I can tell you she is a total b***h. But hey she makes great curry!”

            They both burst out into awkward laughter which for some reason was in perfect unison. Every laugh was exactly the same length and volume for the both of them, and that caused them to laugh harder. When they stopped the beautiful woman extended her hand and asked:”What is your name mister?”

            “Van Gag” said Van Gag through chuckles, gripping her hand, “and who might you be young miss?”

            Right before she said it, Van Gag’s drunkenness wore off and he realized precisely whom he was speaking to.

            “My name is Annie Morrison.”

            “Well m’dear” said Van Gag cheerfully, “It seems you are on the run from somebody. I believe I can help.”

            “How do you-?” gasped Annie before realizing whom she was speaking to. One syllable summarized how she felt then and there: “S**t.”

            “Glad to know I am such warmly regarded person to you.” smirked Van Gag with more humor than anyone should posses in one instant.

            “I already told you guys I am not being part of your little club.”

            “Name a club that’s as old as odd itself and is comprised mainly of god-like beings.”

            “Wait….what?”

            “Well what a twist. No I am not part of Mr.Marchinni and his band of rolling boy toys, nor am I part or Owl Athena’s gang of Greek wannabes. Unlike them, I do not want you to have sex with me nor do I want you dead for whatever reason it is Owl is out for you.”

            “Then what the hell do you want?” said Annie nervously as the man in the pig mask begin speaking again. Artist blocks, artists c***s, artists chalks, Van Gag couldn’t really hear him nor did he really care to. The guy in the pig mask, for all his taste in classical mythology, just liked to hear himself talk and rarely said anything meaningful. This was a fact that he knew from the second he had heard the guy talk. No matter how much of a poet Pygmalion guy thought he was, plain fact was that he really wasn’t. He wasn’t Ben Stein but he had a bit of an ego to him that corrupted whatever poetry his mind could muster out his lips.

            A gunshot reverberated across the room like a cartoon cheetah on speed; however, the gunshot, for all the poetic description of its volume, was amazingly boring. Pig mask guy groped at the blood which spread like the flu across his chest. He muttered something that was either “I love you” to his wife or a Portuguese profanity at the gunman behind him. Turns out he tried to say both and sloppily as well as accidently mixed them together into an incomprehensible mess.

            “I am here for the slave of the Dada” said Alexander Wagner in a slow voice that would have bored grass to death. Ordinarily he would be so boring he would turn everybody off to anything he said, but with his gun and a dead body as a result of it in plain view, everyone was as attentive as possible.  “If no one gets in my way, no one will die. I promise you.”

To possibly be continued

Author's Note

Give me ANY feedback you can about EVERYTHING please!!!

Reviews

[Zutaki]

I really enjoyed the language you used in this. I also enjoyed your vivid descriptions and interesting use of similes (such as "A gunshot reverberated across the room like a cartoon cheetah on speed"). Your greatest strength is also somewhat a weakness as you have a tendency to go on a bit with them, which isn't terrible, but it does lead to certain moments where I had to go back and reread the event (though this may just be me). Overall I definitely want to see more of this!

[Schadenfreude]

I really enjoyed this! The one thing I don't like... Are you separating the above into chapters or sections? because if it the latter, I suggest not using numbers. It's a bit confusing.