(FORTUNE Magazine) – I agree with that old curmudgeon T.S. Eliot. April really does bite, especially when you have to mail the IRS a humongous tax payment. Forking over an unconscionable percentage of my annual salary on a baby-blue check does not convey my true emotional state. A bank draft featuring Edvard Munch's painting The Scream comes a lot closer to the truth. (For how Munch's image is playing in the White House, see Politics & Policy.) Luckily, Michael Zielie, 27, and Paul Donovan, 28, co-founders of Rozencrantz & Guildenstern Banknote, in Milford, New Hampshire, print such a check. Zielie got the idea for the business when managing a pizza parlor at the University of New Hampshire. One day it dawned on him that all the checks he handled were incredibly boring. The company's offerings include one with 27 skulls and another with vultures picking over the carcass of a dead cowboy. The company says the checks, which cost $18 for 200, meet government standards. ''We target monomaniacal people with a sense of humor,'' says Zielie. ''Our customers tend to be more on the fringe than people who like wide-eyed bunnies or fluffy clouds on their checks.'' Bunnyphobic bill payers, take note.