Found This Terrifying Painting for my Guest Room.

The other day a rare thing happened, and I got an hour to myself to hang out with one of my very good friends. We got coffee and chatted about his daughter getting married, my vampire novel in the works and how it might have an offensive amount of my real life in it, and the difficulty of raising a precocious and ever active tot. My friend visits from Seattle every year, so it’s been a solid year since he’s seen my Little. “I mean, I have a kid, so when I read your stuff, I’d be like, she’s exaggerating, it’s not that exhausting. But like no, your Little is so cute and great but also like a wind-up toy without an off switch.” I laughed. It’s true. I thoroughly love my days with my super curious and fun-loving tot, but by the time bed comes around, I feel like I might, I don’t know, die. Some kids are super chill; some kids need to understand how a hydraulic system works and will refuse to get back into their bike seat until you explain it to them in detail while you silently bawl in frustration.

After sucking down a giant coffee (my life fuel these days) and chatting, we wandered over to my favorite vintage store for house stuff. My friend bought 9,000 glasses because I guess as a bachelor who lives alone, you can never have too many forest green goblets (really, you can’t, because they’re amazing). I found a terrifying painting of two children trapped in said painting by an evil lord who forces them to play instruments for hours and hours on end. “I should buy it to haunt the guest room,” I said. My friend laughed and said, yes, do it. Then he advised me to make sure it’s the only terrifying thing in the room to make it extra off-putting. I wholeheartedly agreed.

“Oh man, Francesco is going to hate it,” I said, thinking of my dramatic Italian husband and the various ways he’ll sigh and shake his head in protest while I hide the prison painting above our guest bed. “But-a WHY!?” He’ll lament while I tap, tap, tap the nail in the wall, securing the room inside a room.

Behold! I feel like I really need this. What do you think?