Work Text:
Opening his email before another skin-crawling day at Dead End Soul-Sucking Job #3 was not Mordecai’s best idea.
But five minutes before his shift, as he sat in his car and pep-talked himself into facing the loathsome eight hours ahead, he received a notification that jolted his heart. Don’t get too excited, he sharply reprimanded himself.
Inhaling, he opened the email.
Dear Mordecai,
The Committee at the Canvas Corner regrets to inform you that your submitted painting will not be accepted into our spring exhibition.
Because of our severely limited gallery space, we must select our exhibition pieces with careful consideration. While your work did not particularly stand out amongst our breadth of submissions, your technical prowess is apparent and we hope you find success with another gallery.
The Committee thanks you for your submission and interest in our spring exhibition.
Warm regards,
The Canvas Corner Committee
The side window cracked when he chucked his phone across the car.
He exhaled, reaching for it and assessing the damage: just a hairline crack in the window. He didn’t even bother examining his spiderwebbed phone screen.
Every artist receives rejection. His favorite art professor’s words rang in his ears. An artist’s response to failure is what determines their success.
Mordecai slammed his car door and plodded inside. The gray double doors of the insurance agency leered at him like prison bars. Glaring fluorescent overheads replaced the cozy sunlight. Frigid air conditioning blasted him, and he shivered. The stuffy small talk of his coworkers battled the noise of ringing phones and stuttering printers. He sighed and took his place at the front desk.
Rigby had choked on a hot wing after Mordecai told him he was accepting a receptionist job for an insurance company. “What? Why? Dude, places like that are where art goes to die.”
What would you know about it? Mordecai wanted to bite back. The only art you’ve mastered is the art of slacking off. But despite his harsh thoughts, he knew Rigby was right. He hadn’t graduated from a prestigious art college and racked up thousands in student debt to work a job any old slacker could do in their sleep.
It’s temporary, he kept telling himself. The word became a mantra, emblazoned behind his eyelids even while he slept. Temporary. Until my art takes off, until galleries start accepting my work. Then I can forget this place and the stuck up customers and the precisely timed lunch breaks and the agonizing eight hour days. I can forget all of it.
While he answered phone calls, giving terse, vague responses about topics he’d barely been trained in, he couldn’t stop thinking about his future self’s advice: “I climbed the evil corporate ladder. I had an evil six-figure salary, and even bought an evil condo in Maui, right on the beach. And for what?”
Upon hearing the warring anguish and regret in his voice, Mordecai shivered. That “evil” future didn’t just suck the joy out of life, it also led to his future self gunning down Rigby in some petty space war. The less he had to do with that alternate universe, the better.
He’d staunchly believed in the white-collar, corporate life for years. While working at the park, even experiencing thrilling, euphoric moments with friends that strung together to create a great life, a permanent twinge of uneasiness lived in his chest. I’m not where I’m supposed to be. I’m working a dead-end job. I’m a college dropout. I’m failing.
That harrowing talk with his future self knocked the air out of his lungs, forced him to switch gears. If he did what he was supposed to do, instead of what he wanted to do, he’d be miserable. So for the first time in years, under the cover of night, Mordecai fought to uncover his actual desires, excavating them from a pile of pre-written societal expectations. That night, he discovered two things he desperately wanted: to hang out with his friends and forge new, meaningful connections. And to make art.
“Excuse me.” His boss’s cold, clipped voice, so different from Benson’s passionate seething, cut through Mordecai’s thoughts.
He blinked, chasing away the past. “Yes, sir?”
His boss pointed. “Your shirt’s eggshell. Not white. It needs to be pure, unmistakable white.”
Briefly, Mordecai considered launching his pen like a dart directly in between the boss’s eyes and fleeing this hellscape, but he refrained. “Sorry about that, sir,” he mumbled instead. “It won’t happen again.”
The day crawled by, each customer he greeted blending together into a sludge of faceless drones. On his lunch break, he added his latest email to the ever-blossoming folder: art rejections. He’d started this folder cheerfully after graduating two years prior, wanting to keep track of his failures for when he eventually succeeded. Then he could look through the rejections and laugh, knowing he came out the other side a stronger person and artist. Now, though, the folder, now full of no’s from galleries, magazines, journal publications, and art competitions, taunted him with a red number: 30. He’d reached thirty rejections.
He violently wished for the day to end. But corporate American life was a mechanical, living entity that didn’t bend for anyone.
Once he finally clocked out at 5pm on the dot, he drove home in silence. One of his sketchbooks sat in the passenger seat, the blue cover bleached from hours in the sun. He winced. Were his drawings ruined? Not that it mattered. Not that anything mattered.
When he trudged up the stairs of his dingy apartment, a bright red sign plastered on his door greeted him.
EVICTION NOTICE.
Of course.
Last night, he would’ve kicked the door in, chipping the paint and breaking the lock, partially out of anger, partially to make trouble for the succubus landlord who had raised rent a whopping eight percent last month.
Now, though, he merely unlocked the door and plodded inside, eyes never leaving the cheap hardwood floor. He didn’t have that fight in him anymore.
Mordecai crammed all of his things into his beat-up gray minivan: a humiliating car, but a greatly appreciated gift from his mother. She’d driven it for years, carting around her bingo friends and taking spontaneous road trips.
Parked illegally on the street, the winter air making his breath like smoke as he shivered without the car on, he allowed the day’s defeat to trounce him.
He couldn’t sleep that night. For short bursts, he let the engine run so he wouldn’t freeze (wouldn’t that be a cruel cliche, a struggling artist found dead and homeless in a hand-me-down car), but the chill grasped his bones and didn’t let go.
His art wasn’t bad. He knew that for a fact. Sure, his pieces were a bit simple and abstract, not the hyperrealism many galleries slobbered over, but as his professors claimed, that only made his work stand out. Much more important than the marketability, though, was the passion coursing from his fingertips and through the paintbrush until it exploded onto the canvas. He loved his art. He loved making it.
Unfortunately, though, no matter how much anti-capitalist rhetoric he and his art school friends preached, separating art and marketability was impossible. Especially if you wanted to make art for a living. Sell yourself! You’re the product! Art? No, this is content! Content placed as an offering before the dominating, heartless algorithm that has a 0.00001% chance of ever choosing you! Keep creating, though! If you stop creating for even three days, your chances of exposure will fall. Your skills will deteriorate. Keep going! Keep going!
He drove around, looking for free overnight parking. His sketchbook laughed at him from the passenger seat. Somewhere in the back of the overstuffed van, his stupid array of paints and canvases and pencils joined in the teasing, all pointing fingers at the hopeless loser before them.
As he parked in a store lot, someone shuffled past with an unopened trampoline in their shopping cart. Mordecai thought of Rigby and furiously wiped his eyes.
What would the park gang be doing now? If Mordecai stepped into the past, he’d probably see himself and Rigby bantering over a stupid video game, their eyes bloodshot from hours of staring into the blue screen. Or they’d be gathered around the kitchen table, Muscle Man, Fives, and Pops with them as they chugged milk or something equally stupid. Benson would holler from his office upstairs for them to keep it down, in a voice that was meant to sound authoritative but had a playful edge. Skips would be meditating in his garage, always on hand in case some horrific, supernatural event took place.
He ran his fingers over his fissured phone screen. He wanted to call Rigby. His friend would give him a hard time, but then he’d let the bravado drop and extend both a literal and figurative hand. Mordecai didn’t doubt that Rigby and Eileen would let him crash on their couch until he got his shit together. But why subject himself to such humiliation? Rigby and Eileen had their lives perfectly intact, in a way Mordecai vehemently envied. They had stable jobs, a town home, a loving relationship…
Besides, his interactions with Rigby were growing more and more infrequent. Between both of their jobs and living semi-far from each other, they rarely hung out these days. Their paths no longer crossed, not just physically. They had different life plans, different circumstances, different dreams. Is that all it took to smother a nearly three-decade-long friendship? Apparently.
He scrubbed his eyes again, swearing under his breath. Temporary. The word embossed in his brain now seemed like a dripping red warning rather than a relief. Everything is fucking temporary. Maybe that wasn’t the reassuring mantra he’d held onto for the last two years.
His core principles and perspective shaken, he melted into a pile of mush. With his forehead touching the steering wheel, he sat for hours with his eyes peeled open. Everything is temporary. Except for my lack of success. That shit is permanent.
He must’ve fallen asleep at some point, for he jolted awake to his own tremors. Hurriedly, he fumbled to turn on the car. Why did he have to get evicted in the middle of January?
It was Saturday. Mordecai held onto that tiny fragment of luck. He’d get his shit together before Monday.
Except he had absolutely zero motivation or mental capacity to do that.
As he drove to the gas station, he could still feel his sketchbook’s mockery. You only have the skills and interest in absolutely worthless fields. And you can’t even break into those. Aren’t you lucky?
He snatched the book and leapt out of the car. Without a second thought, he crammed it into the overflowing trash can outside the gas station. Then he left.
After that, something inside him cracked in half. Day bled into night, again and again until he lost track of time completely. He slept on and off, crammed in between trash bags of all his belongings in the backseat. He always struggled awake, more tired than when he’d fallen asleep.
Night after night, he searched for a new place to park so no one would ticket him. He barely even looked at the lots, just ensured they were empty enough so he wouldn’t be an embarrassing attraction, then let unconsciousness claim him once again.
Something rapped against his window. He startled awake, hissing at the daylight pouring through the windshield.
“Open up!”
Mordecai whipped around to tell them to shut up, then froze.
Benson stared at him through the glass.
Hotness overtook his chilled skin. He squirmed under his former boss’s gaze, suddenly very aware of his scruffy appearance and his dirt-splashed minivan. He lowered the window. “What are you doing here?”
“I work here,” Benson retorted. “I should be asking you.”
Upon looking out the windshield for the first time, Mordecai recognized a blue house with white front steps. When did I get here?
Had he come here on purpose to reminisce? Or had he driven on exhausted, apathetic autopilot to a place he could get to in his sleep?
“Sorry.” Mordecai moved to put the car in drive. “I didn’t…this was a mistake.”
“Hey, relax. I’m not kicking you out.”
Benson sounded much more mellow than the last time they’d spoken, about four years ago. His face looked different, too. Less sharp and furrowed. Looking into his eyes felt like opening a time capsule.
“The morning meeting doesn’t start for another hour. Come on. Let’s go for coffee. Old time’s sake and all that.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?” Benson sized him up. “It’s not like you have work.”
Mordecai’s face flushed. Was his trainwreck of a life that obvious? “I can’t talk.” Shame crept over him. Benson had seen too much already. He didn’t need to know the full truth.
Benson shook his head. “Can’t or won’t?”
“Both?”
He flinched when Benson walked to the passenger door and opened it, sliding in next to Mordecai. His narrowed eyes made Mordecai shrink, like he was a slacker being reprimanded for stupid bullshit yet again.
“Start driving,” he commanded, his voice lowering, “and tell me everything.”
Conscious of the heaping trash bags crowding the backseat and the slices of half-eaten pizza littering the dashboard, Mordecai drove. “Classic Benson,” he said, a hint of familiar teasing slipping into his voice. “Still bossing everyone around.”
“Hey, you’re on my turf,” he grumbled. “Don’t you forget it.”
“Never thought I’d see you blowing off work.” He revived their age-old banter with ease.
“Don’t change the subject, smart guy.” Benson glanced at the mess in the backseat. “I take it you need a place to crash?”
Mordecai swerved. He hadn’t even wanted to ask for Rigby’s help. Much less Benson’s. “No, it’s all good,” he said. “I’m just in between places right now.” And jobs. Thanks to his tendency to wallow in doom and gloom for days on end, he’d probably been fired by now. He couldn’t muster the energy to care.
“Here, let me drive.”
Mordecai opened his mouth to protest, but before he could, he found himself parked on the shoulder. When had he started listening to Benson? His younger self would roll his eyes. But something about the gruff softness (oxymorons that somehow suited him perfectly) in Benson’s tone made him relinquish control. It’s not like his life could get any worse.
“What’s really going on?” Benson asked once he was in the driver’s seat, pulling back onto the road.
When Mordecai shrugged, Benson raised his eyebrows. “Don’t make me turn this car around.”
Mordecai chuckled. “Do you really wanna hear about some loser slacking off in his thirties?” Despite his light tone, his face still burned. How embarrassing to see Benson again, only for his former boss to realize he hadn’t changed at all. He was still the bumbling slacker he’d been ten years ago.
“Don’t say it like that.”
The sudden gravity in Benson’s words made Mordecai blink. “What?”
“Slackers don’t graduate from art school.” He put on his turn signal a mile from the exit, an action so perfectly Benson that Mordecai smiled. “And slackers sure as hell don’t make the type of art you do.”
“You’ve seen my art?” Should he feel self-conscious? Panicked?
Benson rolled his eyes. “Rigby wouldn’t shut up about it. Trust me, I’ve seen your entire portfolio.”
“Really?” He hadn’t shown Rigby much of his art, mostly because a lot of it included him. No matter how much you tried to conceal, you always left an uncomfortable amount of yourself on the canvas. Brushstrokes were like exposed nerve endings. That type of vulnerability didn’t work in his and Rigby’s relationship.
But now Rigby had seen some of his art? He must’ve found Mordecai’s website or commissions page and kept tabs on him. Mordecai shook his head. Ever since they were kids, in between all of the whining and cruelty, Rigby would choose the most random, fleeting moments to do something sweet. Those moments had grown more frequent over the years, but they never stopped blindsiding Mordecai completely.
Maybe he should call Rigby soon.
“Rigby doesn’t know the first thing about art,” Benson said. “But I do. And I liked what I saw.”
He tapped his fingers against the steering wheel to the beat of the old-school rock number flooding through the speakers. The dawn sunrays painted wistful stripes across his face.
“How do you do it?” Mordecai asked quietly.
“What?”
“Work a thankless job as a park manager while your dreams die inside you.”
Benson reached for the radio dial. Mordecai expected him to lower the volume and shut down the conversation entirely. But instead, he turned it up, letting the electric guitars and thrashing drums fill the car. “I don’t see any dead things.” He smiled. “Do you?”
Before Mordecai could form a self-deprecating retort, Benson held up his hand. “If you would’ve asked me that several years ago, I’d have a different answer. And yeah, I could be living a completely different life right now. Touring the world, making some good rock n’ roll…” His smile faltered for a moment. “I can’t say I don’t wonder about it.”
“But?”
“But wonder and regret are two different things. I don’t regret anything.” He briefly closed his eyes, relishing the song’s drum solo. “I didn’t really lose my dreams. I mean, the band burned them to the ground when they replaced me with that drum machine. But there’s that saying about scorched earth, right? Sometimes things need to die so something else can grow.”
Mordecai watched the city blur outside the window. He couldn’t imagine finding even a scrap of joy in a monotonous, unforgiving life like Benson’s. Noticing the wedding ring gleaming on Benson’s finger, though, he had to gruffly concede. Benson wouldn’t have married Pam unless his relationship with Audrey broke off. Mordecai had burned down every single one of his own romantic relationships. Every single area of his life was a charred mess; would anything new ever blossom? He couldn’t dare to believe.
“I know it sounds like bullshit.” Benson kept his eyes on the road, hands rigid around the wheel. “Trust me, I thought I was doomed to be miserable.” He shot Mordecai a quick look, one that held a teasing exasperation. “But then you guys sprang up. Suddenly I was bowling with the Park Strikers and going out for wings with my employees and, I don’t know. One day I woke up and things weren’t so bad.”
The city disappeared behind them as they drove into farmland. The words of his future self popped into Mordecai’s head yet again. He’d achieved everything he was “supposed” to. And yet? I’d trade it all for an afternoon of video games with my bro. If Mordecai’s art career took off tomorrow, would that be enough? He recalled his two goals: to make art and hang out with friends. He couldn’t keep neglecting the latter.
But that was easy enough to say. Being an artist was a full-time job (on top of a “real” full-time job), and it required constant overtime with little to no reward. Constantly working on new pieces. Refining techniques. Submitting to galleries. Networking.
And he wasn’t Benson. He couldn’t just let go of his artistic dreams. He still wanted this. Needed it. Even if the thought of ever picking up a paintbrush again made him gag.
“Did you mean it?” Mordecai raised his eyebrows. “You liked my work?”
“You think I would lie to you?” Benson lowered the radio’s volume. “Listen, I know I may not look it, but I’m a man of taste. I respect the simple, contemporary stuff.”
“If only anybody else did.” At some point during the last few days, he’d turned off his email notifications. He couldn’t stand seeing any more letdowns first thing in the morning.
“Well, you like your stuff. I hope. Maybe that’s enough.”
“Don’t say that,” Mordecai snapped. “People always say that, but it’s not true. If I like my work but everyone else hates it, I can’t live off of that. Besides,” he glanced out the window, “I don’t like it. I don’t like it and I don’t like to make it, and honestly, I don’t remember why I chose this stupid field in the first place.”
Just two years ago, he’d been ecstatic about graduating art school. He constantly dreamed about vending at fairs, renting out a spacious studio, and dedicating his life fully to painting. But none of that sounded appealing now. Bitterly, he thought of his unhappy future self yet again. Am I always destined to make the wrong choice?
“You’re burnt out,” Benson said flatly. “But I think I know someone who can help with that.” He pulled into the long, winding dirt driveway of a quaint home. As Mordecai pressed his face to the glass, horror spread through him.
“Are we…at your house?”
“I said you can stay here and I meant it.” Benson slammed the car door, motioning for him to follow. “I’m a man of my word.”
“I can’t-”
“Pretend I’m still your boss.” Benson rolled his eyes. “Get your stuff and come with me or you’re fired!”
Mordecai wanted to keep arguing, but the fight had left him long ago. Swearing under his breath, he followed Benson into the house.
For the next week, he crashed in the guest bedroom. He barely had time to be embarrassed, since Benson and Pam were always out at work or having date nights. When they were gone, he tried to help out where he could. He fed their six cats and cleaned their litterboxes, and took their pet pig Applesauce on quiet walks around the rural neighborhood. Apparently, Benson no longer thought he was a slacker. Mordecai wanted to keep it that way.
He searched for new jobs, but even opening his computer filled him with cold dread. He didn’t want to do anything. He wanted the world to freeze so he could exist in limbo. Then he could sleep for an indefinite amount of time with the hope that when he woke up, he wouldn’t be so exhausted.
At night, he heard Benson and Pam laughing through the thin walls, their voices mingling in perfect harmony. Four years ago, after they’d witnessed Pops fly into the sun and returned shakily to a planet that had kept spinning without them, Mordecai had been doubtful any of them would ever laugh again. But here they were. Scorched earth, right?
On Saturday, while Benson was out of town and Mordecai was trying to stop Applesauce from antagonizing one of the cats, Pam walked into the living room and stood beside him. “Hey.”
“Hey.” Mordecai hoped his awkwardness wasn’t too visible. He’d never known Pam super well outside of sporadic interactions, most of them years ago. “What’s up?”
“Benson told me you’re a painter.”
“I…yeah. I mean, sort of.” What else had Benson said? That he was a loser with a useless art degree?
Pam beamed. “Great!” She shoved the sofa to the corner of the room. Like everything else in their home, it was cozy and offbeat, with bright patches mending the brown leather.
“Uh, what are you doing?”
“We’ve been talking about repainting this wall for years.” She gestured to the large white wall in front of her. “A mural would look perfect in here, but neither Benson nor I possess the artistic chops to do it justice. You, on the other hand…” She grinned at him, a wild twinkle in her eye.
“What? No.” Alarm flooded through him. “Absolutely not. I can’t.”
She elbowed him. “Of course you can! You’ve got that fancy degree and everything, so why not?”
“I…wouldn’t wanna mess up your home.”
“Nonsense.” She shrugged. “Have you seen this place? You can’t do any worse damage than six cats and a pig.”
“I’m out of practice.” Mordecai grabbed every excuse his brain could conjure. “I’ve never done a mural before. Plus, I don’t have any supplies.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that.” She disappeared into a closet, then reappeared with several stacked quarts of paint. “We bought these ages ago, when we were delusional enough to think we could do it ourselves.” She laughed. “Art and science may be intertwined, but I’m gonna stick to the beaker and lab coat for now.”
“What do you want to be in it? And what colors?”
“Doesn’t matter.” She waved her hand. “I trust you to come up with something good.”
This answer terrified Mordecai to the bone.
They’d shown him immense kindness by letting him stay. Since he couldn’t contribute financially, maybe he had to do this.
Later that day, he stood in front of the wall, paintbrush in hand. Cats weaved in between his legs, tipping over sealed paint quarts. The wall stretched ahead of him, a massive blank canvas. One wrong brushstroke could ruin it.
He’d experienced the same petrified paralysis when repainting Benson’s portrait. Everything he painted looked wrong. Ugly. Malformed. But this time, he didn’t have Benny Harris’s ghost to soothe his insecurities.
Plus, this was different. Back then, rejection and misery hadn’t yet beaten him into a bloody pulp. Pam was probably too nice to spew hateful insults if she didn’t like it, but that was almost worse. He imagined her pleasant face, carefully masking disappointment. And Benson believed in his art now, but would he once Mordecai slapped a monstrosity onto his wall? Mordecai couldn’t handle that.
Minutes turned into hours. On Sunday morning, he resumed his place in front of the wall, frozen. Would a landscape work? Maybe, but what type? His trees tended to look like broccoli, and his snow looked like dandruff. Okay, what about something abstract? That opened a whole new can of problems: should he go with sharp or rounded lines? Muted colors or bright ones? He couldn’t decide. He couldn’t make a single brushstroke if his life depended on it.
With every second that passed, he felt conscious of Pam and Benson moving throughout the house, probably questioning why he hadn’t done anything yet. Just make something, you idiot. But he couldn’t.
At around noon, something touched his arm. He leapt, startled out of his swirling, self-deprecating stream of consciousness.
“We’re going for a walk,” Pam said. Behind her, Benson tightened Applesauce’s leash. “Do you wanna come? Maybe it’ll give you some inspiration.”
I wouldn’t hold my breath. Despite his doubts, Mordecai knew he would drive himself insane if he stared at the blank wall for much longer. “Sure,” he accepted begrudgingly.
They wandered along the dirt road, Benson grumbling as Applesauce dragged him along. Mordecai glanced at the trees brushing the cerulean skyline, as if divine inspiration would strike him like lightning. No such luck.
“She’s right, you know,” Benson said while Pam hurried into the field to look for flowers to press in her scrapbook. “You can paint anything. We don’t care.”
“You know my art’s been rejected thirty times, right?”
“So what?” Benson shot back. “Hair to the Throne’s first two albums completely flopped. Critics called us ‘unlistenable garbage.’ But then what happened? We ruled the world.”
“Not every artist gets to wear the crown. Some have to stay at the bottom.”
“Then don’t do it for the crown.”
Mordecai huffed. “I already told you, I can’t…”
“...I know you have to make a living and market yourself and things like that. But you’re thinking of quitting, right?”
“I guess?”
Benson looked at him pointedly. “So take the pressure off.”
“What?”
“If you’re looking for a day job and taking a break from the galleries, why worry about what they want? You can still paint. Not to prove anything to anyone, but because art is fun. Why do you think I agreed to perform that drum solo again?”
“You were just trying to prove yourself, though.”
“Yeah, sort of.” He grinned. “But I also did it for the love of the game. I got to do it on my terms. When you get to be my age, Mordecai,” he continued, “you realize you can’t control much, but you can control your art. Algorithms and sales and corporate theatrics don’t decide what you put into the world. You do.”
The midday sun peered out from behind the clouds, casting rays onto the dirt ahead. Stippled sunlight set Benson’s smile on fire, and for a second, he looked like he had while performing that drum solo, his skeleton ablaze as he pounded on the drums with intense passion.
In art school, that same fiery fervor gripped Mordecai’s bones as he slashed his brush across canvases. Images and stories built up inside him until he had to expel them, transforming his feelings into something tangible. That same pressure had been forming in his ribcage ever since he finished his last painting, threatening to explode.
For a fraction of a second, passion fluttered in front of him like a fallen petal.
“Hey!” Pam raced back to join them, yellow flowers cupped in her hands. “I found some good ones!”
“Awesome!” Benson said. “You can never have too many of your favorites.”
Mordecai tipped his head. “Dandelions are your favorite flowers?”
Pam ran her finger over the smiling yellow faces. “Uh, yeah! You wanna know why?”
“Why?”
“Because,” she smirked, “dandelions grow where they aren’t supposed to.”
There was that petal again, floating on the wind.
Mordecai snatched it.
When they returned to the house, Mordecai bolted for the living room. He cracked open the paint and for the first time in ages, wet his brush. Scribbling in furious strokes, he allowed himself to alter the pristine white canvas before him.
Doubt lived at the edges of his mind, but when it crept in for an occasional visit, Mordecai kept working. Just like with Benson’s portrait, he squashed his insecurities with layers of paint. Time blurred. At one point, while shading with a tiny detail brush, he became aware of the adrenaline pulsating through him. Was he having fun?
The wall darkened as the sun slipped beneath the horizon. Finally, after approximately twelve hours of work, Mordecai wiped his forehead and stepped back. He braced himself.
Several imperfections jumped out. But when he took another step away, he realized there was a hell of a lot he liked. Nothing perfect, but nothing horrible, either. Benny Harris’s words floated back to him. “You made something. That’s more than most people can say.”
Footsteps sounded behind him. He whirled around, excuses and apologies ready on his tongue.
But Benson and Pam stared at the mural, collectively holding their breath. Pam spoke first. “Wow.”
In the coming weeks, at Benson’s request, Mordecai would spruce up buildings around the park with more imperfect murals. He’d receive a few commissions from people in town, and while it wasn’t near enough to live on, it was a start. Pam would plant the crazy yet alluring career option of “art professor” in his head and help him search for grad schools. He would call Rigby. He’d slowly feel life bloom over a place deep inside, where tiredness and burnout once existed.
But for now, as Benson and Pam admired the mural depicting a familiar blue house and a smattering of abstract yet vivacious dandelions, Mordecai felt the first seed begin to sprout.