An alarm kicked Stanley out of the throes of a sound and arcadian sleep, his eyes pierced by painful spears of sunlight. He clenched his teeth and groggily swatted his hand about the nightstand for the clock. '3:73,' it said. He grinned as he drifted back into peace. Wait, 3:73? That probably wasn't right. He checked once more, this time with increased mental vigilance. It said what he dreaded: '6:30', time to get ready for school, though he demonically whispered 'damn it!' to the clock several times before doing so.
Stanley, in a manner suggesting that he had just been dreaming he was a slug, crawled out of bed and shivered at the temperature of his cruel hell of a room. Just a few more minutes, he begged his unfortunately indifferent fate.
Once he'd made it out of bed, he sat by the edge and half-jokingly caught his breath. Scanning his room as though to make sure he'd awakened into the correct reality, he dispelled his worries by recognizing his many sketches he'd plastered his wall with. Everything from a partially torn and crumpled palimpsest the meaningless doodles on which he could claim only partial authorship to a vibrant and magnificent panorama of an idyllic meadow that took weeks to complete were among the delineations that festooned his room like a paper wall.
Once Stanley identified his surroundings, he began the next leg of his journey. Inching torpidly towards a pile of clothes, he blearily chose some articles at random and danced cadaverously into them. Finally making it to his feet through will alone, he tried for the doorknob a few times, finally catching it like prey and retreating out the door. Lurching by the bathroom, he waved at the entrance much like how one waves away a nuisance.
Once he'd ventured downstairs, both of his parents cheerfully and lucidly bid him a good morning. Stanley responded as best he could considering the grade of morning he'd had so far, ten minutes old or not.
In no humor for food, Stanley appeased his watching sires with a bar of something or other that he found in a corner of the cupboard. He gnawed on the termite-grade bark for a while and checked the time again. As though it matters, his watch said '6:40', and Stanley discreetly disposed of the substance. He bid goodbye to his parents and seized his backpack and coat.
It was bitter cold, perhaps even more so, Stanley thought, than his room had been once he'd emerged from his cocoon. The coat was doing nothing but weighing him down, and he trembled all the way to his bus stop, at which a few of his neighbors had already assembled.
They waited in the arctic for fifteen minutes – passing the time by losing feeling in their extremities – before the bus arrived late. Too grateful to be annoyed, they embarked, and Stanley sat by the window of an arbitrary seat. It would be a long ride, he thought before accidentally returning to the land of the dead.
"Hey, Stanley!" The brutal voice of his friend awakened him again pitilessly from his doze. Eyes partly magnified through thick-rimmed glasses prodded him to respond, and when he could take no more, he submitted with "Hello, Catherine." She was very similar to his parents in that neither she nor they seemed ever to feel the unpleasant grasp of sleep. This annoyed but was envied by Stanley, but he tried to catch some animation from his spirited companion anyway.
"You look like you're dead, Stanley" Catherine noted. "I wish," he said, turning to gaze out of his window. "Oh, and it's Monday, too! Could it get better?" "Sure can," Catherine answered, "Test in first period." "Oh, spiteful God!" Stanley cried theatrically.
Persisting in her anguishing of Stanley, Catherine jammed her finger onto the cold glass of the window and said, "And you can see the school already!" And indeed Stanley could. At this point he was tired of humoring his lively associate and answered only with a sigh.
Minutes later, the human contents of the bus shuffled out into the frozen wastes again, just to be bathed presently in the heated but hated school. For the general student it wasn't much of a trade.
Stanley and Catherine hopped out of the way of the bottlenecked assault of students flooding in through the narrow doors and they made their trek to first period.
"You were kidding about the test, right?" Stanley asked while they walked. "Of course not," Catherine laughed, "This was warned about like, a week ago." "Why does everybody know all these secrets about my classes except for me? I listen!" "Pretty considerably, it seems," Catherine returned. Stanley groaned.
They made it to their first period a few minutes before the bell rang. While their classmates followed in one by one, Catherine pried with some difficulty a psychology textbook from within her backpack in a last effort to shove any last scrap of unimportant information into her nearly visibly bulging head. "Okay Stanley: when does a child learn that an object he cannot see has not necessarily been taken away?" Stanley feigned deep thought. "When peek-a-boo isn't fun anymore." "That's probably what you should put on the test," Catherine suggested.
In came the psychology teacher, prating with a few of his students about this or that. The announcements blared through the intercom throughout the school like a screaming electronic ape. Again with the good morning. That was too much; Stanley buried the bottom of his head into his folded arms and tried hard to get just a few minutes of rest while the remains of the world told him how great it was to be awake.
"For any students who like to draw, paint, or photograph, an art show will be held on May fourth, two months from Saturday." That's all Stanley had to hear to perk him up. "Please have your entries in by the deadline, April fourth," sealed the deal.
"What, was there some coke on the desk or something?" Catherine asked in wonder of Stanley's sudden spark of life. "No, no, I want to enter that contest." He corrected. "Knock yourself out," she said discouragingly, afterwards yawning.
"I just wonder if I should do something new or just send in one I already have," Stanley speculated happily. "Doesn't a contest conflict with your artistic morals or something?" Catherine asked as though she didn't want him to enter. "Gripe all you want, I'm entering. Also it's not a contest, just a show." "They're all contests, in this one you just don't get any prizes if you win."
"Maybe that one with the guy climbing stairs made out of bricks he took from beneath him," Stanley pondered more to himself than to anyone else. "Maybe the one where Stanley fails his psychology test," Catherine reminded him. "Oh, it's all covered," Stanley resumed his daydreaming.
"I have a month, in case I don't want to use one I already made," He continued mindlessly though with a pleasure theretofore never seen by Catherine. "Do me a favor and think, you know, in your head. I'm trying to study," she warned. "Sorry, I'm just excited about this. Who knows where it'll take me?" "You'll probably get a full scholarship to a prestigious liberal arts college and become a full-time artist and be guaranteed an emotionally and spiritually fulfilling life," Catherine predicted. "Now, how about being quiet for a little while?" Before Stanley could respond, the teacher excitedly said, "Test time!" They sighed synchronically.
Catherine, despite Stanley's seemingly best efforts, managed to confidently finish the test, and Stanley managed to daydream through it. Embarrassment from the teacher and a D on the test were little punishment, though, since while he was poking a letter bubble with the tip of his ever-dulling pencil point he was struck with a hammer only a muse could have forged – at least, that's how he felt.
Once they'd left their first period, the two had to part ways for the school day, but they didn't do so before Stanley could tell Catherine, "I have a great idea for my art show entry!" "High five," Catherine lukewarmly suggested. "Go to hell, but first, at least let me tell you what it is!" Stanley begged. To his chagrin, unfortunately, she removed herself into her second period classroom, and he moved on.
Stanley, throughout the rest of the day, drew draft after draft of what he wanted, adding things on one that he just removed on the next and vice versa. Managing to perfect it at around the last class of the day, after a healthy eight copies, Stanley stowed away the collection for reasons not even he ever fully understood.
Stanley's final copy was, and his previous copies were similar to, a circle of linked dancers in all stages of life and death; every phase from an overgrown embryo to cleanly picked skeleton. He would brood over the title for a time, but ultimately decided to let it wait.
School had ended. Usually Catherine and Stanley did something afterwards, but Stanley's vision couldn't wait, and he rushed straight home with his wad of drafts. In his inventory he found one last canvas and presently began his entry upon.
In an hour he'd made only a few strokes on his canvas while frequent intervals for unnecessary breaks ate up his time.
After about three hours, he'd made little more progress and decided to spend the rest of his time allotted to being productive sprawled on his bed. In this position, the phone on his nightstand rung. Catherine was calling him. Just as he'd checked his alarm clock that morning, he felt around carelessly for the telephone, taking no trouble to move his head to find it, and frequent knocking over objects not then identified solely by the sound they made on his rug. "How's your entry coming?" she asked after the compulsory greetings. "I have about eight stroke on the canvas. I can't keep my mind on it, or think of what to do next, so I've just been taking twenty minute breaks every five minutes of making maybe one stroke I don't even think about." Previously spirit-dampening Catherine changed her atmosphere and encouragingly reminded him, "You still have a month. Even at this rate you'll finish it by then." "Well, I gave up for today," Stanley phlegmatically mentioned. "My problem is that I can't figure out what paint next. All I have is the idea and a rough draft of what I eventually want, but the details in my head are just not there." "Sounds serious," Catherine opined. "I'll figure something out," he assured her. They disengaged and Stanley returned to his hibernation.
Artistically, Stanley made no progress following the phone call that day.
"We need jobs," Nicholas admitted after another length of silence. "You can get a job," Anthony said, "but I have an idea that can't miss!" "What's that?" "A lot of hype with little or no product," Anthony planted the seed of what sounded like a con.
"I'll start making lots of advertisements of something really vague," He explained, "Like a 'success guarantee' with lots of fake testimonials. People will pay me if they want, so I don't get murdered." "Or get any money." Nicholas interrupted. "That's a stupid idea," "Way to not get a cut of the profits I was planning on giving you," Anthony responded. "You know what ten percent of zero is, Anthony?" Instead of responding, he said, "I'm not bored anymore, have fun down here," He continued before disappearing up the stairs.
Anthony immediately began typing an advertisement for his product, which ended up looking like this:
Tired of failure? Tire no more! With Anthony Kirsch's new Success Guarantee plan, you can be guaranteed that success will blow a hole in failure's face at fifty paces! For more information on this amazing but limited-time offer, contact Anthony Kirsch for pamphlets with details, starting @ $1.00 or best offer.
"Anthony Kirsch's Success Guarantee changed my life! I can finally find within myself the confidence I need to be guaranteed success." – 'Steam E. Pyle'
"Anyone who doesn't use Anthony Kirsch's Success Guarantee should put their hand in a blender while their mortal enemies give them the finger" – 'Fortune A. Plango'
If that isn't enough real evidence for you to try my product, you're not worth talking to! Again, for only one dollar or whatever you want to hand over, the specifics of this unworldly offer can be all yours!
Below the testimonials, Anthony stuck on some pictures of a couple of smiling idiots he found on the Internet. He began to print out several copies of the sensationalist propaganda when Nicholas returned from the basement. "Decide my idea was awesome after all?" Anthony gloated prematurely. "Actually," Nicholas began his refute, "I wanted to tell you that I have an idea myself." "Ah, yes?" curious Anthony nudged. "You know that art show in May?" Anthony nodded, "My plan is to get people to pay me to help them with their entries and then at the show, get other people to pay to see it, splitting, of course, the profits with my sponsor." "You're slime." Anthony hissed. "But I'm getting money. All you've done is proven that the printer has no mind, or else it certainly wouldn't dare give birth to that flyer." Nicholas returned smugly.
Anthony re-read his flyer and shrugged, unable to discern what the printer would refuse to print. Once eight or nine copies had been created, he thought about how he would successfully keep them on the walls of his school whose policy on posters involved a stamp on each from the school once they'd looked it over and accepted it. Theft of the precious stamps seemed a viable option once Anthony scanned his desk and eyed a pair of scissors next to the monitor. There would be a lot of posters with five corners in the school at the end of tomorrow, he though.
Before school, Anthony, armed with a pair of scissors, had found four poster stamps, and safely stowed them in his pocket.