Oil, 30" x 20", May, 2001.
In the first chapter of my novel Frek and the Elixir, the young hero Frek discovers a UFO under his bed with an alien cuttlefish as passenger. (Actually that’s my hand in the picture, not Frek’s.) I got the glowing look of the saucer door from an oven door in Hieronymus Bosch’s The Last Judgment in Vienna. The cuttlefish’s name is Professor Bumby. Here’s the passage where Frek sees the UFO—which he calls “The Anvil”:
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“Another chirp came, followed by a hiss. Yellow light spread across Frek’s floor. Light from underneath his bed. Frek leaned over and, yes, the purple thing he’d seen that morning was visible again. He knew now that it was the Anvil.
“The Anvil was spherical and purple. A bright triangle of yellow-orange light glowed in its side. The triangle was a door with a thing coming out: a tiny form dark against the light, growing bigger, moving forward, its shape coming clear as it came. It was a flattish lump with a cluster of arms or legs sticking out the front end. It had two shining eyes.—a cuttlefish.
“The cuttlefish gazed up at Frek with large, kind, wise eyes. The eyes were a pleasant shade of gold, with dark, wiggly pupils. The cuttlefish’s flesh was shaded in tints of green. ‘You’re the one,’ said the cuttlefish in a low voice. ‘You’ll save the world.’ The voice sounded human, manly, comforting. The cuttlefish stretched out one of his short sucker-arms and twined it around Frek’s hand, just like Frek had been teaching his toon to do. The creature’s touch was smooth and warm and—tingly.”