Prompt: “She peeled back the old, dry, cracked paper, and he tried to hold back his tears.”

When Lorraine was eight years old, she drew a portrait of Mrs. Hershaw. She drew her with great detail as her small hands gripped the pencil and moved it carefully across the page to create the wiry strands of grey hair, the roundness of her eyes, and width of her broad shoulders. As she drew, the old woman disappeared little by little, and when Lorraine finished the portrait, Mrs. Hershaw had completely vanished from existence.

Lorraine never drew again for eight years.

But eight years could not erase Lorraine’s love of art. She would see other students doodle in their notebooks. Her friends signed up for art class in high school. Her hands itched to create beauty again on paper. And when she was sixteen, she gathered up her courage to start drawing again. She drew a glass of water and it disappeared from the world. She drew her socks and they disappeared too. She started drawing a flower, but just before putting the finishing touches – the details that would make it perfect – she stopped. She did not finish the picture. It was left incomplete. And the flower stayed alive.

Lorraine tried to be careful. She would make sure she never drew a perfect picture. There would always need to be some flaw. She hated it. She tried to be careful but sometimes she wasn’t. So in a year, they found out and they came for her.

They caught her on her way home from school. They took her far away to a city she did not recognize that was driven by crime and corruption. And they made her draw their rivals, their enemies, and anyone who stood in their way. They would have their gun pointed at her head or a needle inches away from her arm. People’s lives ended, but Lorraine stayed alive.

She drew people during the day but at night she worked on drawing the wall in the dust on the ground. And little by little the wall would vanish – not enough for anyone to suspect anything, but always a little bit thinner.

Then one day they caught another teenager.

When they brought Braden in, his hands were bound the same way Lorraine’s were. Lorraine sometimes saw them lead him to the room she usually drew in. Braden would look at Lorraine in a rather horrified way whenever they saw each other.

Lorraine’s wall was very thin now. And then one night, as she finished the details of the bricks, the wall silently disappeared. Lorraine went first to the room where they kept the art supplies. She took as much paper and pencils as she could. She had an idea where they kept Braden.

That night, Lorraine and Braden escaped their captors. They ran through the darkness of the city that reeked of injustice. They ran out of the city and into the suburbs. They ran and ran until they were cold and hungry and lost.

They stopped under a bridge.

“Are you hungry?” asked Braden.

Lorraine didn’t want food from Braden. Lorraine didn’t even know him.

Braden asked for a pencil. Lorraine didn’t want to give it to him but she was hungry, so she did.

Braden took out a small, very old notebook from his pocket and wrote:

“Two scrumptious grilled cheese sandwiches fresh out of the toaster oven oozed cheddar from the golden pieces of toast.”

Two grilled cheese sandwiches appeared before them. They ate the sandwiches.

Braden told Lorraine that everything he wrote came to life, and Lorraine told him that everything she drew disappeared from life.

Lorraine asked to see his notebook. Braden said nobody had ever read his notebook before, but he let her see it. She peeled back the old, dry, cracked paper, and he tried to hold back his tears.

“These things are all real now,” said Lorraine.

Braden nodded.

“There are a lot of evil people and evil things.”

Braden nodded again.

“If I could see them,” said Lorraine. “I’d be able to kill them by drawing them.”

“If I agree to write back to life all the people you drew,” said Braden. “Will you help me kill all the monsters I created?”

Lorraine agreed. They shook hands.

“Let’s start on page one,” she said, pointing to his notebook.

They started on page one. Only Braden knew that the real page one had been ripped out long ago. The real page one was about a girl who killed people by drawing them.

Advertisements