Killing someone requires more than a feeling of hate for them. It requires intelligence, commitment, and hard work, and, apart from that, a devious mind, a lot of planning, and an ability to hide all evidence and roam free in broad daylight without anyone suspecting anything. Killing, as most killers who are not discovered would know, is an art; and the killer the artist.

Laura Sanders was an artist who painted many pictures, but sold few. She had always loved painting – it had been her sole passion since childhood. But somehow, the people to whom she tried selling her pictures never liked them. They thought them too bright sometimes; too dark at other times. Some never understood what they expressed; others were afraid they did. There were times when she upheld noble ideals; there were times when she extolled the base and the depraved.

She painted in a small room in the house that opened out into the street. Every day she would place her paintings outside on the sidewalk for passersby to look at, and, if they liked them, to buy. Few ever bought them, for her paintings reminded them of things they wished to forget - and those who looked as if they had nothing to hide usually hid the darkest secrets. The rain usually swept the paintings away, into some gutter in a dark alley, where they rotted away without ever being seen.

This did not bother Laura, since she had never felt satisfied with any of her paintings. The paintings were failed attempts at capturing the Transcendental - the immortal vision that visited her in her dreams and mockingly receded when she approached it, like a will-'o-wisp. Those paintings were of no use to her. She didn't care what the world did with them.

As a result of her apathy to the world, she had few friends, and the few she had weren't close to her. There was a Mrs. Franklin who visited her every Christmas, since her husband had died years ago, her children didn't live with her, and she couldn't cook. She often asked Laura why she insisted on continuing in such an unprolific profession, but did not notice Laura's reticence, since she didn't care about her answer in the first place. There was a bodybuilder who visited her house from time to time, and winked at Laura suggestively, but forgot about all else when he sat down with her husband for a drink. A nun from the local church occasionally paid her a visit, and cast her eyes around the room dramatically, before saying a prayer under her breath - but really, she was only interested in where Laura kept her jewelry.

They did not pay Laura much attention - but for as long as they stayed, Laura stared at them fixedly, watching their every movement - every derisive frown, every uncomfortable flick of the wrist - studying their speech and manner with her gray eyes. She spent hours painting them in the night. She drew them as grotesque, deformed trolls, their shifty, bloodshot eyes taking over where their greedy little brains left off. The ugliest troll was invariably her husband Derek.

"Get me a can of beer," her husband Derek would shout at her when he returned from work in a bad mood, as he did every day. "Drop those damn brushes and get me my beer!" Laura would silently oblige, but not before making the green wart on Derek the Troll's nose even bigger and uglier than before.

"Look, Laura," Derek said to her one day, being deliberately patient with her. He brought his disheveled face close to hers, and stared pointedly into her gray eyes. She stared back coldly, defiantly. "Why do you waste your time painting? We need the money, and your paintings never fetch us anything. I have to work harder every day to earn the money that you should have earned by doing something that paid more. Why do you waste your time painting all that ugly, abominable rubbish?"

"Because I see the world as it truly is, and no one who is not blind can be content with wearing a blindfold," said Laura.

Derek swore.

"You bitch," he said. "I'll wring your puny neck if I ever see another one of your ugly drawings in my house again."

He collapsed on the couch and began snoring loudly.

And Laura painted quietly, persistently, her mouth a firm line of determination against the ghostly paleness of her face. She drew a fat, ugly hermit whose depravity and ignorance made him believe that the rotten barrel of rum he was seated atop was a throne of gold.

"What can I say?" Mr. Meyer was an art dealer and a friend of Laura's. "This is a very ugly picture you've drawn. Very ugly." He shuffled his feet uncomfortably. "Something like this could never sell."

"That's all right," said Laura, her face betraying no disappointment, her tone as flat as ever. She knew Mr. Meyer saw himself in the hermit. "I never planned on selling it."

"What you need to paint is something about fashion. Everybody likes fashion, and I know you've got the knack for it."

"Fashion is only a tool used to delude people into believing they are what they are not, and to hide their faults from the eyes of the world."

Mr. Meyer never visited her again.

Derek came home earlier than usual one evening, his hair messier, and the expression on his face more menacing than usual. Soil rolled off his clothes and fell on the floor. The cuts and bruises on his face indicated that he had got into a fight with someone - presumably with his boss over the latter's wife.

"Bring me a can of beer – no, make that two cans," he demanded, striding into the living room, kicking his shoes off on the way, and slumping onto the sagging couch. "You heard me – get me my beer!"

Laura hadn't started on her painting yet. She glanced at the blank paper before her, and down at the paintbrush with which she was about to smear color onto it. The green at the end of the brush suddenly did not look very appealing to her. She put the brush down and went silently into the kitchen, her steps strangely lighter than before.

She mixed a powerful sleeping drug into the beer, and served it to her husband.

"It's about time," he said, snatching the can away from her, and downing it in a single gulp. He collapsed within the minute.

Laura swiftly pulled out a knife from her pocket and stabbed Derek in the chest. She did it so adroitly that Derek didn't even twitch. She ran the knife down his chest until blood started flowing out. She quickly fetched a paintbrush, and, dipping it in the blood, began to paint.

There was a wild look in her eyes – wild with the elation of one who is about to reveal to the world just how depraved it was. "Behold!" her brushstrokes shouted, "This is what you gentle humans really are!" Her hands were shaking with ecstasy. Drops of blood fell on her clothes, and on the floor, but she was oblivious of everything except the painting that was materializing before her eyes. This was the culmination of her art - the reason she had been born into the world.

The wild look remained in her eyes even when the police arrested her, and dragged her out of the house.

An old widow with gray hair, who had been out on a walk and had decided to see what the excitement was all about, held the painting up in her feeble hands, and stared at it intently. The tired old eyes behind the glasses scanned every brushstroke carefully and with amusement - as if she were remembering something she had long forgotten.

"How much will you take for it?" she asked Laura as the police dragged her out of the house.

Laura named her price.

Surreptitiously, the woman slipped the money into Laura's pocket.

"I killed my husband, too," she said conspiratorially.