A man’s life’s work can go unnoticed, and Cuchulainn was learning this the hard way. He had painted his tiger face on 27 buildings and under 4 bridges along the railroad. He was losing sleep most nights of the week to sneak out and do his work. He was proud. He walked around town and revisited his pieces every day and admired his own genius, yes, but also as a kind of guardian for what he considered his children. He saw in each of them part of his complex, beautiful, human soul. He saw meaning and he saw his purpose. He was an artist.
Sadly, no one loved his art as much as him. No one mentioned it or seemed to be looking as they passed by. Obviously they were all handicapped philistines, but would it kill them to pay respect? They were getting all of this for free, after all. He wished to remain anonymous, so networking became difficult. He wore hoods and sunglasses into the shops and made conversation.
“Good morrow!” he would say. “I say, do you notice the tiger faces around?”
“What?” people would answer.
“I said, ‘I say, do you notice the tiger faces around?’ It seems we have our own Banksy in the community.”
“There’s a Banksy?”
“You misunderstand me,” Cuchulainn would explain. “They are like Banksy.”
“What’s like Banksy?”
“The tiger faces!”
“Oh!” said one girl. “You mean Scratch!”
“What is ‘Scratch’?” said Cuchulainn.
It turned out Cuchulainn’s work was, in fact, a local spectacle, but he missed that each piece had been signed SCRATCH by another artist.
“Oh, Scratch is like Banksy,” said the girl.
“No!” cried Cuchulainn, removing his disguise. “It is me!”
“You’re Scratch?”
“I am not Scratch! The devil with Scratch!”
Cuchulainn had a fantasy about a bonafide nemesis. Now that it was coming true, he regretted his romantic notions. He did not want to feel this hatred in his heart, but there it was, seconds old, yet rotten as death itself. He wondered, would he draw the rest of his tiger faces in a prison cell, sharing bunks with another mad killer? But his fate mattered little now, as long as his new enemy’s was spent in the cold, dark, bowels of the lake. He would find this Scratch and make him pay.
“Ok,” said the girl, “but I’ll have to make you pay for that vanilla latte first.”