I decided to throw a short piece into the ring, before I move on to the next longer story. It's not a masterpiece, I know, but I like it anyway and hope you do too.

No money was exchanged... except you count what I have to pay my internet provider for being online, then yes, money was exchanged, but you'll have to sue the provider, not me, cause they have the money.

Murdock sat in the art room, lazily painting a stereotype in water-colours: a green meadow (thick green line on the bottom of the page), a house (yellow rectangle with a red triangle on top of it), flowers (multicoloured dots) blue sky (thick blue line on the top of the page) and a sun (big yellow blotch in the right-hand corner of the page).

He was as of yet undecided whether he should add people, and if yes, who, and how. He was not a good painter, and that was putting it nicely. On some days he thought that he had to be the world's worst painter, because the kindergarten-level drawing he was working on at the moment was pretty much at the top of his abilities.

Really, he should put people in, the page looked so bleak and empty. He could try a tree... The tree didn't make it any better.

Right, so people.

There were only three people Murdock felt inclined to draw: Hannibal, BA and Face.

It was awful. Hannibal's left leg was twice as thick as his right. But to make up for that, his left arm was longer than his right, and his head was about the size of a melon, relatively speaking.

BA would kill him if he ever saw his portrait. First there had been not enough muscle, so Murdock had tried to bulk him up a bit. Now he looked like he was a 600 pound blob of fat.

Face now... Murdock grimaced. The Face in his picture was rather a Grimace. Not to speak of his legs that were, though even in thickness and length, way to short in comparison to the rest. And his hair... looked like he'd stuck his finger into a socket once too often.

No, impossible.

Murdock picked up his page, took it over to the sink, turned on the water and washed off what he'd painted.

"Mr. Murdock, what're you doing?!" Jerry, the art therapist, rushed over to him, trying to stop him.

Murdock turned, but in a way that made it impossible for Jerry to get to his rapidly disappearing picture. "I had a smudge there on my painting. I'm washing it off," he explained innocently, turned off the water and was quite happy with the result. Now everything was a nice, wild pattern of yellow, blue, green and red.

He might ask for a frame to hang it up in his room.

END