antigodlin
[an-ti-god-lin]
- lopsided or at an angle; out of alignment.
- diagonal or cater-cornered.
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The noise outside was getting far too distracting. It was enough that Penny finally got up and
closed the window. It did not completely
silence the noise, but it made it quite a bit more bearable. Her task done, she started back towards the
comfort of the couch. She saw something
out of the corner of her eye that gave he pause though.
It was a
piece of abstract art that she and her roommate, Beth, had bought on a
whim. It was a horrid thing, really,
filled with clashing colors and random patterns. Beth said they needed some color though, and
this seemed as unobtrusive as anything.
Penny
looked at the picture and tilted her head, first to one side, then the other. She considered it for a moment before
speaking.
“Hey,
Beth, does this look crooked to you?”
“Hm?”
Beth replied, looking up from her small laptop.
“This
painting. It looks crooked to me.”
Beth slid
out of her chair and started towards the picture. “That can’t be. I just hung it yesterday, and it was straight
then.”
When
Beth joined her roommate, she to tilted her head from side to side.
“Huh. You know what, I think it is a bit tilted.”
The room
fell relatively silent as the two young women regarded the off-kilter painting,
tilting their heads from side to side.
Penny scratched the side of her nose idly. Beth did the same to the top of her
head.
“Should we
fix it?” Penny asked.
“Probably.”
More
silence. This one lasted for nearly a
minute.
“You
know, I think it looks better like this.” Beth said.
“Huh?”
“Yeah. You know, brings it more, I don’t know,
meaning? Impact? Something like that.”
“So,
should we turn it more, do you think?”
Beth
tried it. She tilted the small painting
as much as the cheap hanging wire would allow.
The two of them looked at the new orientation of the piece of artwork.
“Nah. Not like that.” Penny concluded. “Try the other way.”
Beth did
just that, and once again, the painting was looked at in silence.
“I kind
of like it like this.” Beth said.
“Really?”
“Yeah. Gives it another dimension.”
“Eh. Looks the same to me, but tilted.” Penny
replied. “I mean, I don’t really care,
but I’m just saying.”
“You
have to look at it right, I guess. Here,
look at it like this.”
Beth
shifted Penny’s head, so that it was tilted against the painting. Penny held her head like that for a
moment. It just made her confused. She shrugged her shoulders.
“We can
leave it like this, I guess.” Penny said.
The wall
fell away. It simply separated from the
rest of the building, leaving the two women standing there, blinking against
the sudden influx of light and sound. A
man dressed in red, gold and blue spandex flew by, his form a blur. He charged at a large robot that was
positioned a block away, standing in the remains of the wall. People screamed as the robot launched some
kind of beam weapon at the flying man.
Beth and
Penny groaned in unison.
Beth trudged back into the remainder of the apartment, sat
down and took up her laptop.
“I’ll
start looking for a new place.”
Penny
looked at the rubble that used to be their wall. She shrugged.
“Meh. I never liked that painting anyway.”
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Bet you didn't that that one coming, did you? Did you? Please tell me you didn't see it coming. I need this. (Okay, maybe not, but I'd still like to know)
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