Inverted Hedgehog

As always, when she drew, Melissa cried. In one hand, she held a brush, and in the other, a paper tissue that met her nose every six seconds. She hated her job, and every day, it seemed like she hated it more and more until one day it became absolutely unbearable. But the job brought in money, and money brought everything else.

Every time, after finishing a drawing, she would say, “This is the last one!” And after every sale, she would say, “Just one more.” Melissa was not the type of person who stuck to what she said.

She always drew the same things on the canvas —animals. She would maybe do a banal twist on the formula; so in one drawing a bunny hops through a field, in another it scratches its ears with a paw, in a third, it does something… third… and so on. They weren’t always bunnies; sometimes they were kittens or puppies, hedgehogs, and little birds—but mostly they were small, cute animals that reminded her of the stuffed toys she had surrounded herself with her whole life. To make the drawings cuter, she would draw the animals with big eyes, like those in children’s cartoons, and their fur could be pink or maybe purple. Cuteness superseded realism.

Too bad she was the only one who saw what she wanted to draw.

When she was still in elementary school, she drew a little hedgehog with red spikes, a dark blue body, and a yellow nose. The teacher received the drawing with a smile but returned it with a frown. She sent her to the psychologist, and Melissa stayed there until the end of eighth grade.

Everyone considered her weird because of this, especially Irvin, who bullied her until one day in sixth grade he stole her drawing folder and started to pull out one paper after the other, intending to laugh and mock her. The only thing he could actually say was just a trembling “Hey… I’m sorry. Okay?” And he didn’t do anything to her anymore. Ever. He never even looked at her again.

Her first boyfriend was Peter, a nerdy type, barely taller than her, who, by all world’s standards, was pretty short. He told her he loved her round, cute face, her little nose, her big eyes… He said he loved how she decorated her pigtails with plastic flowers and that he loved everything about her, that she was perfect, and that he couldn’t believe that at nineteen years old she had never had a boyfriend before.

After all these aesthetic superlatives, he asked her: “What do you do? In your free time, I mean.”

“I draw,” she answered, happy that he finally asked. “I love to draw. I practically do it all the time.”

“Really?” Peter nodded happily. “Great! I can’t wait to see your work!”

He said it as if he truly meant it, but after seeing her first work—a little fox in a green-blue sweater, in boots and fluffy mittens—Peter vomited on the paper and shouted, “What is wrong with you?!”

“What do you mean?” she asked with tearful eyes.

“Well, this is… This is so messed up! What the hell… I don’t even… Wow. Damn… Why?”

“What do you mean why?” she asked. She couldn’t believe he had just destroyed her favorite drawing. “Well… Because I love animals. I love drawing animals. That’s all I do.”

“If you love animals that much, damn it, you really shouldn’t draw them so mangled. I mean… those eyes… Why would anyone do that? And… the mouth…” Peter vomited again, this time on the floor. “What the hell is wrong with you, Melissa?” he said as soon as his mouth was empty.

Melissa and Peter never spoke again.

To test this obviously wrong perception of her art, she showed her remaining still undamaged drawings to her friend Elizabeth who, thankfully, didn’t vomit but instead offered a devilish smile. “You’re a twisted one, aren’t you? But I like it.”

“But…” Melissa cried, “What do you see?”

“I guess grotesque would be the word. What is your favorite Marquis de Sade book?”

“Marquis the who now? I don’t even know what grotesque means…”

“But you are into torture porn, right?”

Melissa and Elizabeth never spoke again.

She continued to draw because she knew she couldn’t move on without it; it was still her greatest love. But she decided she would never show her drawings to anyone again. Ever! She stuck to this until she found a flyer clammed to a tree in front of her house, calling for drawings for “Morbid Imagery Night.” The sickest, most disgusting, most tormenting drawing gets five hundred dollars.

She sent in her drawing—a teddy bear covered in honey and running away from bees and won five hundred bucks plus an invitation to start her gallery as part of their project. She accepted.

Melissa arrived at the gallery in her pink-dress-pink-shoes combo and hair decorated with pink ribbons. Other people mostly wore black, often around their eyes, lips, and who knows where else.

“You’re a really sick cunt,” said some scruffy guy in a black cloak while giving her a thumbs up. She would have been terrified had he not immediately asked how much her work cost because he had to take at least three.

The critiques were generally good.

“I think every satanic church should have at least one such drawing. Or a normal church, for that matter.”

“I’ve seen fatal car accidents less gruesome than these works.”

“This is so detailed she must be working in a morgue.”

Melissa, of course, was not satisfied with what was said, but she was certainly happy that after just two months of running the gallery, she could move out from her parents and buy an apartment. When a British band Cannibalized Fetus bought ten of her paintings to use as covers for future albums she was pretty much set for life.

Despite the quality of life and wealth, her favorite hobby became her greatest agony. Once she drew with a smile on her face, but now she drew with tears in her eyes. This was not what she wanted, but it turned out to be the only thing she was doing really, really well. Still, no one had ever seen little animals on her canvas. Well, they did, but not un-decapitated ones.

So now, as she draws and cries and wails, she tells the animals on the canvas that she’s sorry, oh so really sorry, oh God, so irredeemably sorry.

And she sincerely hopes that one day, at least once, some dark figure will point a finger at one of her drawings and, with a confused expression on their face, ask, “Okay, what the hell is this rabbit doing here, and why does it look so damn happy?”