I Found A Leather-Bound Case In A Tree And I Really Wish I Had Never Found It

Finally there came a day where I couldn’t stand it. I had been working half the period on a sketch of wildlife scene and it was turning out dreadfully. I could feel the ire of the art teacher as she strutted around the room, criticising our work silently. I had to use one of the pencils. I wanted to salvage not just this drawing, but my reputation. For the entire semester I had turned out work that wasn’t just below her standards, it was below my own. Or rather, below the standards of the pencils. I reached into my pack and felt for the case, sitting in its resting place at the bottom of the bag. When I first felt it, my hand recoiled slightly. It felt cold, and almost damp. I began to question my decision, and started to draw my hand out of the bag, but then caught myself. I was being silly, there was no reason to be afraid of these pencils. I repeated these reassurances to myself as I reached back in and pulled the pencil case out.

Moments later, I had one of the pencils in my hand and I was flying. Within a few minutes my shabby scene had become a respectable sketch. I worked furiously, correcting mistakes and filling in detail with a gusto that surprised even me. I was so focused on my drawing that I didn’t notice at first that the room had gotten quiet. I looked up, suddenly aware of the absence of sound. The teacher was gone. This was not unusual; she often came and went from the classroom without announcement. What was unusual was that all the other students were watching me draw. I began to feel clammy as I looked around the room to find all eyes staring back at me. But no, I realized, it wasn’t me they were staring at, it was the pencil.

Slowly I opened the pencil case, intending to put the pencil away, but the student closest to me, a boy named Michael that I was somewhat acquainted with, jumped up and came over to me. He looked odd. Everyone in the room looked odd. A few years later I would see the Lord of the Rings movies and the first time I saw Gollum screen I almost screamed because it reminded me of the look I saw on the faces of my classmates that day. Michael was saying something to me. At first his words sounded like water rushing past me; I couldn’t make out any of it. Slowly his request became audible:

“Can I borrow your pencil?”

An innocent request one might hear a dozen times or more in a day. Only in that moment it didn’t feel innocent. I realized that he wasn’t the only one talking. Other kids in the room were murmuring about how good the drawing was, and how great my technique was. It would have sounded like typical art class banter, except for that weird, dreamy haze that seemed to hold the room, making every syllable sound strangely mechanical. I didn’t know what to do. My heart was beating in my chest like a drum and Michael continued to repeat his request, over, and over, and over. Numbly, not knowing what I was doing or why I was doing it, but too scared to refuse, I handed over the pencil. Suddenly the room changed, all eyes were on him now. It came as a sort of relief and I took what felt like my first breath in several minutes. I even closed my eyes for a second, trying to convince myself that perhaps I had fallen asleep in class without the teacher noticing somehow and that when I opened my eyes it would all be back to normal. I opened my eyes. It wasn’t normal. Michael was sitting back down at his seat in a slow, methodical way, all eyes still on him (no not on him, on the pencil, always on the pencil). I watched as he brought the pencil down onto his paper, and began to draw.