Clive stared at the blank canvas like it owed him money. His plan? A masterpiece titled *Urban Jungle*—a collage of bottle caps, old circuit boards, and 37 tubes of acrylic paint. He’d rented a power washer for the weekend. Things were *official*.
Then the storm hit.
Rain hammered the garage roof like a toddler with a sledgehammer. The lights flickered. Clive yanked a candle from his supply stash—$12.99 for a ‘premium soy blend’—and lit it. The flame guttered. A draft sneezed through the eaves.
‘Not today, Satan,’ Clive muttered, shoving the candle into a jar of glue. It sputtered, melted, and pooled at the bottom like a sad astronaut.
His neighbor, Margo, appeared in the doorway. She’d come to return his lawnmower. Instead, she found Clive knee-deep in a puddle of wax, surrounded by art supplies that smelled like burnt popcorn.
‘You’re using *candles*?’ Margo asked, eyeing a squirrel-shaped blob of paint on the floor.
‘It’s avant-garde!’ Clive said, dodging a dripping candle. ‘This is *authentic*! No electricity, no filters—just me and my… uh… *creative chaos*!’
Margo crossed her arms. ‘That’s a squirrel. In a puddle. Of wax.’
Clive paused. Then, with the precision of a man who’d once tried to build a kayak from soup cans, he grabbed a paintbrush and dipped it in melted wax. He smeared it across the canvas, creating a swirling vortex of orange and black.
‘Behold!’ he declared. ‘*Chaos Reclaimed*! A tribute to… uh… environmentalism!’
Margo stared. Then she snorted. ‘You’re a disaster.’
‘I’m a *visionary*,’ Clive said, as a candle fell and set his hair on fire.
They ended up painting the squirrel into a superhero costume, using glitter from a $200 jar he’d forgotten about. The final piece hung in the garage, crooked and smelly, but technically *art*.
Margo left. Clive fell asleep on the floor, surrounded by wax, paint, and the faint smell of victory.
