The Tiff Singularity (A Collection of Lake Wonder Fiction)

This Godless Endeavor #2: A Little Truth-Telling

There's a part of her that wants to ruin the moment.

Tiff and her aunt stand at the edge of a campsite by an old, dilapidated cabin that nobody has lived in for well over a century. It has crashed in on itself. More than that, it is covered in paint.

The moment is electric. The possibilities are endless. In one hand, a set of paints. In the other, brushes. In her aunt's, cans.

But it's weighing on her. She loves committing acts of petty vandalism, but she has to ask herself if this is wise. If this is worth it. If it's just going to be covered up by someone else's additions. If anything is worth it anymore.

It's the same issue with the sign on the way into town. Someone always paints over the small portrait of Bigfoot. What's the point, if she's just going to get drowned out or caught?

She's a god now. She has been for two weeks. Minor deification has done nothing for her except make her love for science more fervent. It has not stopped the way that her heart twists and churns in her chest when she thinks about breaking rules like this or when she tries to figure out what the point of anything could possibly be.

It's easier when she has someone like Drake with her-- someone who makes morality a little easier by letting it rest in the gentle gray. Who cares if you're technically committing a crime? You're making art and you're having fun. Without someone like that around, all that she has is a swirling hurricane of this is wrong and you know it where her brain should be.

For a moment, though, it doesn't matter. Her aunt is close enough-- a former teen delinquent herself, or so Tiff has heard. The kind of woman who was once a girl who rolled her uniform skirts to make them shorter, who quit smoking (arguably cooler than smoking at all), who fought some unseen, unspoken demon and came out on top. Esther's coolness goes deeper than where she works and what she wears. There's something about her, the same way there was something about Drake-- a mixture of sorrow and peace, maybe, or a deep and unstated kinship between them. They don't need to name it. It's just a quality that is there.

"Alright, Grapenut." Her aunt nods, regards the broken building in front of the two of them. "This was partially your idea. What happens next is up to you. What's the plan here?"

Tiff considers it. This isn't a situation where her plan will immediately be thwarted by shadow creatures, buttrock spiders, or the United States government. The worst that could happen here is that some night hikers stumble on them and, even then, it isn't like anybody cares enough about this place to report on people painting on it. Everybody does it. They would probably join in.

"Is there any way we could get inside?" Tiff asks. "It isn't so broken that we couldn't get in, right?"

"I suppose not."

"Then I'm going in." Tiff nods, sure. "I'm going in."

When it's all over-- when she has smeared the inside of the cabin with something abstract and monstrous, with far too many teeth in its mouth and thorns growing from its body, corpulent flesh glowing gently green-- she snaps a quick picture of her work and goes to rejoin her aunt by shimmying her way out of the broken wood. It isn't the kind of art that matters to her anyway; it's meant to be temporary, like sidewalk chalk or sketches on the backs of receipts: bound by temporality and to the instant in which it is made and observed.

The one big addition to the exterior of the house is a pair of large wings, sloppy and regal all at once. They're outlined with gold and yellow. The culprit crouches on the barren ground, fingers tracing words carved into the wood with the cans of paint stationary and tipped at her feet. A wistful smile twists Esther's lips and flares her nostrils.