Paint A Picture of Pain

"This is a joke you are joking with me?" Val had come by my office with a gift, well he said gift but I wasn't feeling the gift part. He claimed he felt bad I was injured, but I sensed this was some kind of gloat session to point out I hurt myself yet again.

"Only you could look at a gift and ask if it was a joke." He had brought me an easel and paint set, despite me not being a painter, nor having any interest in painting, and the fact that standing up for long periods of time hurt me. It was like he decided the most dickish gift he could find would be the perfect gift. Which I'll admit is brilliant, I really needed to use this technique later on myself.

"You realize it hurts me to stand up for any period of time I broke my hip Val I'm not sick and just laying in bed out of feeling sorry for myself." Well not mostly sorry for myself, the pain was a factor.

"This will encourage you to rehab that hip, if you lay around all day you'll lose your strength and make the injury worse." I scowled at him but he seemed earnest which was all the worse because than I felt like an asshole for being mad he was actually thoughtful.

"Well then I apologize I hadn't thought of it like that."

"Of course you hadn't because you're an idiot." And then Val was back to being an asshole. Like he at most can only exist a few minutes before reverting to his natural assholish self.

"Well thanks I guess, I don't know what you expect me to paint."

"I'd say you could hire models but you're cheap, so I'd imagine you can just look out your window and paint that stuff." I wanted to raise an objection to being cheap, but I did always tip Val poorly (out of my distaste for him as a person).

"Well thanks for giving me a reason to look out my new window." I had a new window installed a couple days after Xanthi had murdered the shifters, it wasn't a huge story just some workmen showed up charged me way too much and fixed the window. There now you know the whole story.

"You're welcome, if you need food or something just give me a call I promise I won't overcharge you for the delivery." He did in fact over charge me for the delivery... But I'll give him one thing, the paint set was nice and it did distract me from what was going on. By of course putting me in the land of madness. How did that happen from a paint set? Well... I'll get into that obviously!