By Judith Huang

Let me tell you how the Blob came to be.

Annie's mother had always wanted to be an artist.

Ever since her husband lost his leg, she poured all her energy into winning a prize in the Perth Royal Show.

We should probably give Annie's mother a name. But, for the purposes of this story you just need to know that Annie's mother is technically talented, but uses her skill to paint the world she prefers rather than the world as it actually is. She paints how she would like the world to feel, so it's nicer than reality. Nobody was ever having a bad day in any of them. They didn't cry, or yell, or even smirk or roll their eyes. Everybody was always having a wonderful time. Kind of like Socialist Realist propaganda, except for her personal life.

And Annie is 15, so you can imagine how she feels about this. Which 15-year-old girl doesn't want to kill her mother at least 33 per cent of the time? Especially when she finds herself picking up the sad little trail of rubbish her disabled dad leaves in his wake to keep the house from looking more and more depressing?

Annie's mother had a painting group comprising solely fellow Korean women who met every month and worshipped Annie's mother, who was by far the most talented. They planted the idea of the Royal Show in Annie's mother's head.

Annie's mother had a corner of the living room as her studio. Nobody was allowed to touch anything in that corner, which she partitioned off with a lacquered screen. Annie's mother didn't spend that much time in her studio, but her latest painting was always sitting on the easel, so Annie could see it if she ducked behind the screen to have a peek. Annie almost always did peek, even though she rarely felt good after doing so.

The painting she was currently working on was of their family picnicking at Lake Monger on a Sunday afternoon. The light was golden and the grass was fresh green – a perfectly beatific, well-adjusted world. Her dad's lower half was strategically covered by Annie and her brother, so you couldn't tell he had lost his leg. The Annie in the painting had a simpering smile painted on her face.

This made Annie seethe with the absolute need to destroy something. She had to restrain herself from actually grabbing a brush and painting the whole thing black. Instead, she flipped the canvas around.

Why did her mother need to make more than one painting? The lake painting was essentially the same as the one of them at Cottesloe. Or the one before that, the painting her mother was proudest of, the one of their Wembley house, with Annie and her older brother planting something in the garden.

Annie wished her family did go to the beach together, but they never did. Nor did they actually picnic in parks, which apparently normal Australians did all the time. And Annie and her brother had never planted anything in the garden. The garden was the ugliest in the neighbourhood, because ever since Annie's dad lost his leg, nobody had weeded it or pruned the vines which were threatening to tear down the house. After Annie's mother decided to hang that painting over their mantelpiece, Annie sulked for two days, and her mother couldn't figure out why. Now, it put Annie in a bad mood every time she was in the living room.

To be fair, Annie knew that other families had photographs of their family looking happy and accomplished on their mantelpieces too. But it wasn't quite as bad as having a painting painted by your mother to depict a non-existent, better, happier version of you. This was a different level of propaganda.

The more Annie's mother painted Annie doing things she wanted her to do, the more Annie avoided doing them. The more Annie's mother painted Perth as beautiful, placid and conflict-free, the more Annie wanted to go outside and trash a bin, or squash a magpie into oblivion.

One night Annie was sitting in the living room, trying to read a book for class after clearing a small corner of the couch so it wasn't littered with her father's Centrelink paperwork. It wasn't a very good book. It was one of those books that are supposed to be good for you because it was about ordinary people having terrible problems which everyone must face in life. Annie approved of such books in theory but in practice her eyes kept slipping off the page as she had to re-read the same sentence again and again, the meaning disappearing like water through cupped hands.

A low hum made her look up. It seemed to emanate from the painting. Just behind Annie and her brother gardening hovered a black blob that she swore hadn't been there before. Annie felt a presence in the room. She shifted a little to the right and then a little to the left, in case the blob was a shadow cast by something. But the blob didn't move. She walked right up to the painting. It was there, alright. But it couldn't be a hole, because then it would just show the back of the frame. Instead, it was very black. Soul-sucking black. Black like the absolute dead centre of the pupil of an intelligent eye.

Shit, thought Annie. Mum mustn't see this. She'll think it was me. Annie's mother hadn't said anything about it, of course, but Annie knew she knew Annie had been the one who flipped her painting.

Annie took out a tube of green acrylic and grabbed the first brush she could find. She tried to paint over the blob so it looked like it was part of the garden. The paint should dry overnight, and with any luck the painting would look normal in the morning.

The next morning, Annie jumped out of bed to check the painting. To her horror, the green that she had plastered over the blob had melted and covered the top of her brother's head, so it looked like his hair had grown into long, winding tentacles that flailed around, emerging from the blob. And the blob itself seemed larger, distended.

Annie moved nervously to the kitchen and hurriedly slapped together breakfast. Would she be able to get out of the house for school before her mother noticed?

"Annie!" yelled her mother from the living room. "Did you paint over my painting?"

Annie froze. Her father was sipping coffee and eating some toast. Although he was jobless, he was used to waking up early every morning.

"No!" said Annie, but even she could tell immediately that she wasn't convincing. Annie's mother's eyes were red when she strode into the kitchen.

"Don't lie to me," said Annie's mother. She grabbed Annie's hand. There was still a faint smear of green paint on her left little finger. Annie wrenched her hand away from her mother.

"What's going on?" asked her brother, whose hair was still wet from the shower.

"Your sister," spat Annie's mother, "destroyed our painting."

Annie's brother looked from his sister to his mother and back again. He walked up to the painting. He examined the green hair on the head of the tiny version of him.

"I kind of like it," he said.

Their mother released a big, wet sob, and went to her bedroom and slammed the door.

"Apologise to your mother," said their father automatically. This was his usual solution any time his wife displayed emotion.

"But I didn't do it!" said Annie, which was not entirely true, but the blob really hadn't been her fault. Or had it? "There was this... thing... on the painting, and I had to..."

"Stop making excuses and just say sorry," said her dad wearily.

Annie bit her lower lip. Her brother rolled his eyes and sighed.

"Sorry, mum!" he yelled, and then they ducked out of the house to catch the bus. It would be pretty senseless to get punished for being late on top of everything else.

Annie stayed out after school that day. When she had wandered around the mall so long that whatever interest the shops had held had waned to nothingness, she reluctantly went home.

She met her brother near their front door. He had stayed out too. And he had dyed his hair green. "It looks better this way," he said. A long lock of bright green hair fell over his face. The stuff in the back was still black.

 "Mum is going to have a fit," said Annie.

"Well, let her. This is not Seoul, alright, this is Australia. Nobody at school cares if I dye my hair green."

"Where did you get the money?" asked Annie. She had always suspected he shared her opinion of that painting, and was touched with this unexpected act of solidarity.

"I have ways and means," he said.

Annie's mother took the painting off the wall and back to her easel. But when she saw her son's hair, she collapsed again and retreated to her room.

Just before she went to bed, Annie looked at the painting on the easel. The blob was bigger. It was almost the size of little Annie's leg now, except it was horizontal. Since she last saw it, the green had dripped past her brother's hair and onto Annie's.

Maybe I'll have to dye my hair green as well, thought Annie. Maybe if she got one of those dye kits from the chemist's. But if she wanted green, she might have to go to that dodgy mall where all the weird kids hung out. What the heck, she thought – my mother makes haunted paintings. I guess I'm a weird kid now.

When both brother and sister turned up the next day with green hair, their mother gave up trying to fix the painting. This was a full-scale rebellion, and now she would have to deal with the painting group ladies giving her side-eye for her children's weird hair colours. They were all on the same page about green hair on teenaged children – a sure sign of delinquency and possible drug use.

So the painting went to the back of Annie's mother's wardrobe.

Annie's mother spent three whole days without saying a word to anyone in her family. Not even to their father. Annie and her brother just pretended like there was nothing strange about this. Their father tried to get his wife to talk to him, but when she broke down in tears again, he gave up.

On day four Annie couldn't bear it anymore. It wasn't like she had willed the blob into existence, but she knew that somehow she had let it go too far.

When her mother was out buying groceries, Annie went into her parents' room. She opened the closet and dug past all the discarded crutches and walking frames her dad had tried and didn't like but hadn't had the energy to donate or throw out. Finally, under it all she found the painting, lodged between an old teddy bear and a suitcase.

Annie took the painting to her room.

"Okay, you sucker," she addressed the blob, which now looked like Italy on a map. "You broke this, you fix it."

She prodded the blob. It seemed to make a faint sound, like a distending balloon. She prodded it again. Again, she felt as though the blob was fixing her with an eyeless stare. Alright, she thought. If that's the way it has to go down. She stared back, directing all her unexpressed fury into the blob like a high intensity laser. She stared at it so long that her vision grew blurred.

Then Annie painted herself a bright pink extra arm, so she was wielding the blob. Now the blob looked like an atavistic weapon. Annie grimaced so the expression on her face resembled a fearsome warrior. The painting version of her morphed to look less calm, more venomous. The Annie in the painting wasn't gardening anymore. She was defending her house from unknown and terrifying forces.

A day or two later, her brother knocked on the door.

"We really have to do something about Mum," he said. "She's been... you know...ever since you sabotaged her painting."

"I didn't sabotage her painting..."

"Oh stop it, Annie. You know what you did." Annie knew he was right. Even if she hadn't physically made the blob, it definitely had something to do with her.

"But what can we do?"

"Well, Mum really wanted to enter the Art Competition at the Royal Show," said her brother. "But she can't paint anything new because now she's depressed, and she can't enter anything she's done already because... well, you know how she is. She never thinks well of paintings after she's finished them. Except for the one you... modified. Where is that thing, anyway?"

They shared a meaningful look.

Annie took the painting out from under her bed. The blob had gotten shinier since she last looked at it. It seemed to gleam with self-satisfaction, like it had found its purpose. The Annie in the painting had sprouted war paint and even more gravity-defying green hair. 

"Woah. It's... that's kind of amazing, Annie."

"Um, thanks," she said. "So what, should we enter it in her name?" It was definitely far more striking now. Numinous, even. Something in Annie told her that it would have a very real chance of winning something. "She'll still hate me, you know, even if we do win something. And you know there's no chance she would ever win anything with her usual stuff..."

"Well she kind of hates-you-loves-you. But I see your point. But I mean, even third prize is two thousand bucks. That'd be worth the trouble, right?"

"What should we call it? A non-prescriptive artistic statement on domestic happiness?"

"Good title," he said, and gave her a hug. She hugged him back. Their greenish heads bumped against each other.

"I would have chosen more of a salad green, though," he said, ruffling her hair with his big palms. She usually hated it when he did that, but this time it felt okay.

A non-prescriptive artistic statement on domestic happiness by Laura and Annie Kim won second prize in the Perth Royal Show Art Competition.

Annie's mother didn't speak when Annie handed her the cheque for five thousand dollars, although she did crack a small smile for the first time in months when her painting group called to say they were arranging a lunch to celebrate. Annie's Dad grunted when she handed him the bionic prosthetics catalogue.

Don't you know, other people's dysfunction is always more entertaining than your own? I guess that's what art is all about.

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