'##::::'##:::'#####:::'########: VIVA LA REVOLUCION! CERDO DEL CAPITALISTA!!
  ##:::: ##::'##.. ##:: ##.....:: ===========================================
  ##:::: ##:'##:::: ##: ##::::::: THE HELOTS OF ECSTASY PRESS RELEASE #466 !!
  #########: ##:::: ##: ######::: ZIEGO VUANTAR SHALL BE MUCH VICTORIOUS!  !!
  ##.... ##: ##:::: ##: ##...:::: ===========================================
  ##:::: ##:. ##:: ##:: ##::::::: "Modern Art"                             !!
  ##:::: ##::. #####::: ########: by -> PezMonkey                          !!
 ..:::::..::::.....::::........:: 1/27/99                                  !!
 !!========================================================================!!

        Emily walked to the window of her apartment, looked out,
 disappointed, and waited patiently for Sim to follow.  He jumped to the
 floor; only four steps to get to her.  She scratched his ears, and he
 licked her fingers.  She raised them to her mouth and licked the drool
 off.  "Mmm, slobber," she muttered, then gave him another quick scratch
 before returning to the wall.  The car she had heard was not the one she
 was expecting.

        Emily dipped her hand in the paint again, this time red, and
 smeared it over the yellow already there.  Both were covering a world of
 words she had been writing for almost two years.  A poetry of anger being
 masked by slashes and drips of confusion.  Emily was pleased with herself.
 The words had all come out so brilliantly, and now they were hers alone:

                Whipping the profusion
                        of my pain
                A dog is a dog
                        but I am a girl again
                Do you like my mother?
                        would you like some tea?
                I'm going to ask Peter, Paul and Mary
                        to marry me.

        She looked at the buckets of paint on the floor, picking a third
 color.  It couldn't all be primary, she knew.

        Sim rolled over in the single ray of sunlight coming through the
 window.  It was time to warm his belly.  Emily pressed play with her
 paint covered hand.  She smiled sadly, and asked Sim to dance.  He
 refused, but politely, and so she sang to him instead.  Loudly.  She made
 up her own words; she never knew the right ones.

        As she sang, she slowly pressed her finger prints into the wall
 with the remnents of the paint, a dull brown color now, so many mixed
 together.

        The knock on the door surprised her.  She had decided ten minutes
 ago that he wasn't coming, since he was already over twenty minutes late.
 She didn't bother wiping off her hand; she opened the door leaving a
 brown hand print on the knob.

	"You," she said.

        He smiled.  "I see you're indecisive as always.  Couldn't even
 pick one color for the walls."

	"I've decided that I'm tired," Emily replied.  "Isn't that enough?"

	"I suppose."

        Then she hugged him, running her paint stained hands through his
 hair and across his neck, leaving a bloody, sunny, smushy-snail trail of
 paint all over him.  It looked pretty gross.  She kissed shoulder, knowing
 that was what he wanted, then walked to the counter and handed him the
 leash.  "Walk Sim," she demanded.

	"Heh.  Same.  No difference."

	"Is there ever?"

        Because, of course, there never is.  Even in paint-stained worlds
 where there is never enough caffiene to wake up from the slow, loveless
 stupor, and never enough acrylic to hide what lies beneath.

        Tad fit her needs, because he loved her, even though she didn't
 love him.  That was, after all, the same as every relationship she had
 ever had, from her mother to her step-fathers to that last tall lover,
 the one with the long brown hair.  Emily plopped down on a large felt
 breast, and rested her feet on the matching seat.  Tad would even walk
 Sim.

        Emily had been bored of Tad six months before; everything always
 the same.  She had even begun to time the sex, always the same.  "Leave,"
 she had told him.  "You may call me in six months if you would like."
 She had meant it, and he had.

        And then, six months later, he returned, and they made sloppy,
 paint-stained love.

        It was pretty cool.

 !!========================================================================!!
 !! (c) !LA HOE REVOLUCION PRESS!    #466, WRITTEN BY: PEZMONKEY - 1/27/99 !!