Lauren sat in front of her easel, glaring at the mess of color she had spread on the canvas. Behind her, a voice came over the speakerphone.
"--so at the climax of the movie, the two finally reconcile their differences and you can totally tell that they were doing it."
"Sure, May," said Lauren, idly stirring her paintbrush in a cup of dirty water. May was normally fine enough to deal with, but the latest comic book movies had awoken a talkative beast in her that Lauren didn't know how to deal with. "Look, can we talk about something else? I haven't been in a real movie mood for the past few days."
"Okay. Um." May hummed in contemplation. "What do you wanna talk about?"
Lauren pinched the bridge of her nose. "I don't know, May. How about we bitch about people we hate?"
"Oh! Right!" The gears turning in May's head could nearly be heard over the phone. "Well, you know Cassidy, Layla's big sister? Well, she's back from her term in America, and I hate to say it, but she's looking hot. Have you seen her? She's hot now, right?"
"Oh sure, May, I'm the person to go to for this. I'm bi as fuck. Totally love the ladies." Lauren thought about it. She had seen her. Cassidy's post-travel body had awoken feelings in Laura that she'd prefer not say out loud. Warm feelings with a side of rope on a bed of black leather. "Besides, that's not bitching, now is it? That stuck-up idiot getting thick from cheeseburgers isn't really a bad thing, is it?"
"I mean, what do you want me to say, Lauren? I haven't been going out as much anymore. Have you?"
"No," admitted Lauren. "Just me and your weird cousin's weird commission."
"Hey! Cousin Julia isn't weird, she's just...okay, she's weird. And she's been asking about that painting."
Lauren took a look at the canvas. What should have been a landscape featuring a giant woman's hand extending from the sky towards a clifftop village was a mess of reds and blues. She had told Julia that she'd have it done a week from today. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, looking for a convenient lie.
"'The Coming of the Destroyer'? I've got it nearly done, but I still need to see if I'm happy with it. I still have another month before she wanted it, right?"
"Well, yes but--" began May. Lauren didn't hear the rest of the sentence, as she had opened her eyes and looked back up at the canvas. What was once a pale monument to creative blockage was now a full fledged painting.
As Lauren took a closer look at the creation, it became evident that the "painting" was a verb as well as a noun. Off the coast beneath the cliffs, a behemoth alabaster calf extended to the sky, framed perfectly by perfectly-manicured fingers. Shocks of red fingernails came into existence, as though painted by an invisible brush.
It wasn't a full-fledged masterpiece, but it was, well, almost done.
Lauren had read enough horror to know what this situation implied. Now all that was left to narrow things down. Ghostly pal or a wish-granting demon? Only one way to find out.
"Hey, May? Can you ask me a question?"
"Um, what's the meaning of life?" asked May.
"Not that sort of question, May!" Lauren tried to calm herself. "Something I can answer. Something about me."
"I um," said May, "How tall are you?"
"1.85 meters," said Lauren. (Just over 6 foot)
"I, um."
Lauren felt a series of cracks in her joints and a stretching in her skin as she marveled at herself. The floor was getting further away, and her limbs were growing longer. Her clothes were growing along with her, a fact that Lauren's last two rational neurons appreciated. She looked around and saw the doorway to her room.
"I think that's right, Jade?" asked May. Lauren strode over to the doorway and shivered as she saw how close the top of its frame was to her head. She reached out and grabbed it, resisting the urge to squeal. She'd have needed to jump to reach that height before, but now it barely took any effort.
Lauren-Jade looked back at the phone, her breath growing shallow. "I'm gonna hang up now, May. We'll talk soon, alright?"
"Oh, okay! Talk to you la--" *click*
Lauren tucked the phone into a pocket of her black cargo shorts, then reached out above her and touched the ceiling, giggling softly.
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