One Step at a Time

Jack held the mightiest instrument of creation in his right hand, and a blank world to play God to in his left. His perch was the damp, green earth, and his bare legs soaked in the morning dew. A gentle breeze passed through every brown strand of hair on his head, and the sun gave a warmth and glow like no other. He soon heard the telltale chirps of the little sparrows, rising early as always. Never failing to answer the light of day. “Hold still, birdie,” he whispered soothingly. A new being of graphite entered his world.
“Yo!” Jack almost fell over, even though he was sitting. He felt his heart skip a few beats, but his blurred vision soon made out the figure of a blond girl behind him, about his age, standing with her body arched back and hands held behind her. “What’cha doin’ here, Jack? A teenager shouldn’t be out in the forest all alone, even if it is you,” she said with a joking smile. His neighbor for as long as he could remember, that girl was pretty much the only friend he had in his ironically lonely city.
“Jeez, Erin!” Jack shouted, gaping for breath, “You scared me half to death!” He sat for a moment longer, pencil drenched with sweat from the erratic pumps of adrenaline that comes with a sudden jerk from equilibrium. “How’d you even find me, all the way out here?”, he asked.
“Your mom isn’t the hardest shell to crack, you know,” she said with a giggle. Erin really was a pretty girl, and to Jack, she seemed to be the only person out of his family that felt... special. Her gentle curls unfurled in the wind, and her cerulean eyes shone brightly as ever. She took a seat beside Jack, making sure not to rustle the grass, smiling all the while.
“Anyways... I’m just sketching the little animals, like I always do,” Jack said, regaining composure. “I never get tired of it, and never will; it just makes me happy.” Grinning, he returned his focus to his canvas, and penciled in the sparrow’s miniature beak.
“You just keep trying to best your father as an artist, don’t you?” Erin said with a smile, patting Jack’s head. It was a bit humiliating, but in a good way. Her eyes began to shine with a glassy reminiscence. “He was a great man, for the time I knew him,” she softly spoke. However, the gentle smile was still on her face, and she was speaking with not regret, but admiration.
“Hell to that,” Jack shouted, raising his fist, “I’m gonna be the best artist there ever was and will be!” Even the first time he picked up his pencil, he was filled with glee despite his mediocre fledgling drawings. He stood straight up, rustling the grass, beaming with the sun in his face. “Crap, I scared the bird...”
“Hey, cheer up!” she said enthusiastically, getting up. “Every morning, you get another chance. And every morning, you get a little closer. One step at a time.”

I, the Devil

The unbearable, frosty, yet silent gust entered through my door, as swift as darkness infiltrates light. I felt my lungs being sucked from the inside out, my very own fears choking me. The deafening silence, the lack of audible vibrato which I wanted most, at this moment, to warm my eardrums had forsaken me, leaving my ears a frigid, noiseless tundra. My mind was devoid of all thought but pain, a dagger resonating a sharp, high-pitched shriek which was the only sound I could know and not hear; the need of a gentle sound increased with every passing second. My shell of a body felt emptier than ever, and my blood began to freeze without the warm heart it needed to keep it pulsating. Staggering my feet, muscle by muscle and tendon by tendon, I suddenly felt gravity’s pull five times harder. Unfortunately, the noisy thud of my rigid body falling hadn’t satisfied my ears, my mind, or my heart. It only mocked me, turning up the tundra ten notches higher.

Staring into the ugly, fragmented reflection of myself with my blood-red eyes, I began to wonder if the burning crimson splotches I had came from my own being, or that which was lying beside me, cold, lifeless, and dead. My untainted sclera had joined the rest of my body’s bloodbath. Looking at my the image of my bruised, cut, vermilion hand which had been spliced by the cracks of the mirror, my face contorted into a dumbfounded expression of sheer realization, that of unearthing one’s own guilt. I was the monster that taken my own warmth, never to return. The gentle lullabies and little nothings that were always sweetly whispered, as smooth as silk, had been whisked away by the devil. The devil which went by my own name.

The Lonely Corner

In that little corner no one ever looked at, there lay so many memories of the past. Year after year, the blood, sweat, and tears of each of his students is put to the test. Can their work be so magnificent, so majestic, as to be collected and stored with his care? Unfortunately, it almost seems futile. The nostalgic collection of the hand-crafted displays, as flimsy as they may be, wore the odor of time’s passing like perfume. It’s a sweet smell, in a way. Though laden with glue and multicolored, pulpy construction paper, the bonds were wearing thin and would be blown to pieces in a swift gust. However, there was reason for his hoarding. For him, the child-like pride imbued within the fragile fruits of their labor brought back the memories of students... no, friends, from his “once upon a time”.

Near this little stack of memories lay a red backpack. One could imagine it on the back of a child, but the faint smell of medicine and gauze spoke for itself. Caked with dust, without ever a need to employ its contents - just as it should be. The faded vermilion fabric was hardly frayed, and probably will never unravel within the safety of the stronghold known as his class. Beside all this, lying right against the wall, was a cold, metallic cube stuffed with years, months, weeks, and days past. Its scratched, dented surface showed the hardships endured in his effort-filled sheltering and shifting of the contents within. Piles of color, mostly an arctic white, lay motionless within. The inscriptions within seemed to be from an eternity past, marked by the titans themselves; the few seasons that truly took the toll on these sheets were, in comparison, underwhelming. As the cold gates forever separated these records of time from our generation, they lay within the slowly rusting tower, as the next meal for the hungry children of silverfish. Who knows - perhaps the children will be perpetually fed, by the newest flock of hungry minds which put their ink to the snow-colored fibers.