Running With Scissors

Ce N'est Pas Un Titre

An innocuous meta observation about the fact that the painting is but a representation of a pipe. A joke, if anything, just to amuse the observer. Unbeknownst to Magritte, this simple concept evolved in college campuses and coffee shops all around the world, converting it into a pretentious spiel about deeper meanings and object identification. Said spiels will not be repeated here, as we are against wasting anyone's time with pretentious fillers. That would be off-brand.

But still, this iconographic piece of art had been butchered enough to piss Hugo off. This is not even the first cancer-related story to reference it, for example. Hugo had enough, and there was only one thing he could do to rectify this atrocity.

"The Philadelphia Museum of Art is having a special exhibition of Magritte works," he said, "and the pièce de résistance is our target."

"I don't speak baguette," said Peter, who honestly didn't understand what was going on, and didn't care to, thank you very much.

"He means the central piece," added Sarah, who was way more into it than she cared to admit.

"Merci, ma chérie," said Hugo. "The central piece—this abomination to pop culture. We will each be given some industrial-grade correction fluid, and our goal is to infiltrate the exhibit and cover the 'n'est pas' part, so the painting would read 'ceci une pipe' and stop this charade once in for all!"

"It means 'this is a pipe', Mr. Katz," added Sarah.

"I figured that out," said Peter, blatantly lying. He had actually zoomed out of the conversation when he noticed a piece of beef stuck in Hugo's teeth, and thinking how ridiculous he actually looked. Now he was hungry for beef.

"We will be divided into two teams," said Hugo. "Team Alpha will be comprised of me, Mademoiselle McGuffin, and the Gomez twins."

The Gomez twins were a set of brother and sister from Panama that could bend their bodies to fit into different types of furniture, as long as said furniture were from the IKEA wicker basket line. Such a specific set of skills didn't give them many venues to work, outside some really specific fetishists conventions.

"What are we gonna do?" asked a woman with a snake wrapped a bit too hard around her neck.

"The rest will stay with Monsieur Katz and work on a diversion as team Beta," said Hugo, lighting up a cigarette. "The place will be crawling with security guards, not to mention the exhibition will be monitored at all times by undercover museum police. And those guys don't take prisoners."

He took the cigarette from his mouth and put it out by smashing it on top of a map of the museum. A waste of a good cigarette, since he only had a puff, but who are we to judge? "We need to draw the guard's attention away from the exhibition. We are going to need something big, enough to give us time to execute our plan and get out of there. That's where you come in, Monsieur Katz."

"I've been here the whole time," said Peter. He still couldn't quite remove his eyes from that piece of meat. It was taunting him. Why hasn't anyone said something? It was right there!

"The operation will be executed in a week. You have until then to figure out a plan with your team. Do you understand?" asked Hugo.

Peter wanted to say he got it, and that he was gonna make the biggest diversion the world has ever seen, but said "Beef" instead.

Hugo took it as some sort of acknowledgment, and took Sarah and the twins away to plan their strategy, leaving Peter alone with what was at best described as a gaggle of fuckwads.

"Okay, gather up, you fuckwads," said Peter, pulling everyone into a circle. "I don't really care who you are, I just wanna know what you're good for, so here's what we're gonna do: let's take turns saying your skillset and I'll assign a nickname for you, okay?"