Lisa

Leo embraced Josie warmly, pretending to still have forgiven her.

“Have you got a minute?” Said Josie pleadingly.

“Not especially, no.” Replied Leo triumphantly yet with a hint of not being truthful, he had vast amounts of time.

Josie and Leo exchanged the pleasantries of departure, and Leo returned furiously to his Croissant, which he had bought earlier from an unbranded market stall.

Washing down the stale taste of an under-baked (is that a word?) croissant with a glass of red wine (it was past 10 am), he carelessly read the keypad which would grant him entry to the cellar where his work is kept, under isometric controls.

Just as Leo, a man with little hair and glasses, and a permanent paint mark under the corner of his left eye (he never washed), proceeded calmly into the cellar, he heard his front door open, and the footsteps of what was perhaps two, maybe even four brutish scum-like men.

“Shit!” Leo muttered, petrified in a tone that he thought would not be heard by his intruders.

Running ferociously down the stone steps of the Victorian-style house (though not actually Victorian) into the eerie cellar, Leo hid in the corner of the darkened room, expecting the men to find nothing of value and leave, as he heard their voices in his main living area.

In a sudden burst of pain in his stomach which he expected was ‘just age’, Leo squealed out, hoping the locked door would mute his screams.

“Down There!” One of the men said.

Leo realized his first mistake around a minute after his second bout of panicked and violent vomiting, as he heard the door, which he had forgotten to lock in the panic of his home intrusion, swing open, to allow the intruders to enter the cellar. He then realized that his decision to purchase a croissant from an unnamed, and probably unauthorized market stall, a mistake which was now impairing him from putting up even a mild fight against his burglars, wasn’t his finest hour.

Leo cried out in pain again, this time knocked to the floor by a scarred man with a red nose and polished silver hair, as he floated in and out of consciousness, not seeing the majority of his works being taken, all but one.

The victorious and unfinished smile of the only woman in his life presided over him triumphant and indignant, all from canvas. He smiled back.