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2021. Arteza pencils on Comet Arts sketchpad. 14x17.
Based on a photo by Andrew Marden, New Jersey, used with his kind permission.
Taken at the VooDoo Kings open house at The Sketch Pad in the Mt. Healthy suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio.
The Sketch Pad is owned by "Taz" who is a well know hot rodder and pinstriper in the area. He held annual open houses at his place for several years until some crazy had a burn out get out of control and do some damage to a neighbors home. Since then, "Taz" hosts car shows at various public places, but no longer at his home and shop. The shows are some of the best around as they always attract some of the most unusual and wild vehicles.
This particular rod was pulling a small trailer that was a smaller version of the car itself. You can see a little of it in the shot.
Topo designs bag, 15inch macbook pro, sketchpads, eraser, western digital 1tb hard drive Infographics book, lots of pencils and my canon eos m that i was using to take the photo.
I woke up this morning and it was as if somebody had gone mad with a paint brush. Jet contrails criss crossed the sky in every direction.
Autostitch panorama
Pen and fugitive markers & posca paint marker on paper
4 x 4 inches
From life/observation and imagination
Somewhere around March 2020, there was a 'bonus box' of Tombow art supplies inbetween the monthly boxes. This box contained
an HB pencil,
a pigment pen
4 markers that were brush on one end and chisel on the other.
I enjoy using brush markers but these failed the light test in a week, so only use them in sketchpads and the like that will be kept closed and away from light - don't even hang on your wall for a month to look at them, some colors fade away completely. It's the same for the Tombow ones that are brush on one end and fine point on the other.
Anyway, here I used the pen and 4 markers, but not the pencil. The purple and blue are very similar in color and value so it almost seems like three colors. And then I 'cheated' on my conceit of only using what was in the box, and lightened a couple of areas with a white Posca paint marker.
Taken at the Queen City Draggers' Tradition Rod and Custom car show held at Quaker Stake and Lube in the Milford suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio.
The car's body had all of the paint removed down to the bare metal. There is something caught in the left side of the emblem. I can't tell if it is a spider or simply part of an old rag.
2021. Koh-i-Noor Polycolor pencils, Daler-Rowney sketchpad 9x12".
Reference photo by Nick Collins:
www.pexels.com/photo/selective-focus-photography-of-red-a...
I just needed to lay down some bright colors. Probably would be better with pastels or paints.
Skimo's Artistic Side!
She has one of the best stays when it comes to photography. When she sees the camera, she knows its business. (:
She in this picture was drawing a portrait of one of her 'crushes'. Just like me she likes to doodle with mechanical pencils. It's snowing a lot today, should be much fun for my snow dog to frolic in it!
Lighting: Used a desk lamp on the left to light her face up more than just the candlelight.
Taken at the Queen City Draggers' Tradition Rod and Custom car show held at Quaker Stake and Lube in the Milford suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio.
This one looks like a beautiful restoration job rather than a hot rod or custom like most of the others at the show.
Starting a new study of a famous abbey in Yorkshire, based on reference pictures I took in 2019. It continues my recent theme of framing the subject with trees. Drawn with a Staedtler 0.3mm pencil and Tombow Mono zero eraser in an A4 cartridge paper sketchpad.
Because I am busy setting my my bedroom / studio space, complete with a new easel, and installing new sketchpad software for my wacom tablet, I don't plan hanging around on flickr much today.
So, rather than fiddling around with taking new images right now, I am posting this photo that I accidentally came across yesterday, of me eating an orange slice, about 5 years ago...
One of my Christmas gifts this year was an orange..no foolin. Just like the good old days.. when oranges were a precious thing indeed.
Ricoh GRD IV
(Bleach Bypass cold)
a few days ago, i did a first post on the Ricoh GRD IV on my website Sparthphoto, and i thought i was going to develop a bit more on the camera right here.
It's having a lot of advantages, and when it comes to ergonomy as well as the fun factor, i will have a hard time spotting things i am not liking.
However i still have hesitations with some elements in the image quality, or let's rather say, i'm still trying to accept the fact it's a small sensor camera. i was so used to large sensors that the fact of capturing a scene was all about composition, not about "how to avoid highlights". Besides, your RAW would have contained enough informations to obtain the best exposure so you never had to worry. That small sensor is another story, and despite the fact i love shooting with it, it does contain this issue of instantly going from dark to light, as well as skipping a lot of subtle in-between values that we would have considered vital for a decent image quality.
the problem is also coming from the fact it's a camera mostly good at producing B&W shots. i'm not saying the colors are bad, take the bleach bypass mode for example, it's awesome!, but the gritty and harsh aspect of the shots corresponds to an aesthetic that is, in a way, less compatible with color. as i was saying in an earlier post, i was also finding the bleach bypass mode very harsh as soon as light goes down, and once again i'm still undecided if i like it or not. and at the same time, i have that addictive habit of always going back to that mode, letting aside B&W!
Limitations ... The thing is ...... in a way, that's the whole Point of the camera. all these elements are what gives the GRD line that special touch. in other words, they've been able to avoid falling into the traps of limitations, taking as a pure advantage the fact of having a narrow dynamic range, for example, and produce a nervous contrasty look that appeals to many. same for the noise. it does look good. you can play with it, make it yours, if i might say. i am not saying at all that limitations are always a good thing, it all depends of the rendering, and in the case of the GRD IV, it's a plus.
so the whole point here is mostly that you have to accept the specific aesthetic the camera can give you, not fight it or compare it to higher end "noise free" systems. There is a logic to it all.
"the sketchy small sensor B&W look" that's what Wouter Brandsma, who has been having a long experience with the GR line, was writing in a comment yesterday, and i found it best describes the philosophy here. sketch, or "esquisse". describing things in a loose way, like you would with a sketchpad and a pen.
i still have so much to discover about the GRD IV. i'll probably write more thoughts as they come. Is the camera worth it? definitely. just do NOT expect what you can get out of an fuji x100 or the Leica x1. it's not about definition. the small sensor catches only the vital informations, nothing else. exactly like with a pen and paper sketch...
Taken at the Queen City Draggers' Tradition Rod and Custom car show held at Quaker Stake and Lube in the Milford suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio.
The "Paddy Wagon" is a Show Rod designed in 1968 by Tom Daniel, probably the most talented and popular fantasy-car designer of all time.
Tom worked many years for GM and in his spare time he created new “Off the Sketchpad” articles for Rod & Custom magazine. This caught the attention of Monogram’s model shop supervisor, Roger Harney, who got approval to have Daniel create new model designs.
Then, from 1967 through 1975, Tom designed over 75 plastic model kit designs that Monogram manufactured, many of which enjoyed multi-million unit sales.
Among these the "Paddy Wagon" that I recreated via LEGO bricks.
Old-time police wagons were called "Paddy Wagons", probably because most cops in those days were Irish. "Paddy" is slang for "Irish".
Main "Paddy Wagon" features:
- "muscular" chromed blown small-block V-8;
- a "C" cab;
- double windshield (glass for Window 1x6x5);
- chrome gold side horns;
- Good Year drag slicks;
- custom silver stickers;
- older-style drum headlights;
- oval side windows barred;
- a Motometer radiator cap.
This is my second TD's Show Rod, the first I built was the Beer Wagon. Hope you like it!
Thanks for stopping by.
Norton74 | Facebook | Instagram | LEGO Ideas
Koh-I-Noor Triocolor jumbo pencils on Daler-Rowney sketchpad, 9x12".
Since the beginning of the pandemic, I have been logging at least 200 miles a year on this trail.
For several days I haven't picked up a pencil to draw as I have been writing up a summary of a talk I gave to a local vernacular buildings group. It is another sketch view of buildings in Staithes. It is, as usual, a slow start. Hopefully I will be able to focus on this as the written work is finished. Drawn with a Pentel 0.5mm pencil on an A4 cartridge paper sketchpad.
The "Paddy Wagon" is a Show Rod designed in 1968 by Tom Daniel, probably the most talented and popular fantasy-car designer of all time.
Tom worked many years for GM and in his spare time he created new “Off the Sketchpad” articles for Rod & Custom magazine. This caught the attention of Monogram’s model shop supervisor, Roger Harney, who got approval to have Daniel create new model designs.
Then, from 1967 through 1975, Tom designed over 75 plastic model kit designs that Monogram manufactured, many of which enjoyed multi-million unit sales.
Among these the "Paddy Wagon" that I recreated via LEGO bricks.
Old-time police wagons were called "Paddy Wagons", probably because most cops in those days were Irish. "Paddy" is slang for "Irish".
Main "Paddy Wagon" features:
- "muscular" chromed blown small-block V-8;
- a "C" cab;
- double windshield (glass for Window 1x6x5);
- chrome gold side horns;
- Good Year drag slicks;
- custom silver stickers;
- older-style drum headlights;
- oval side windows barred;
- a Motometer radiator cap.
This is my second TD's Show Rod, the first I built was the Beer Wagon. Hope you like it!
Thanks for stopping by.
Norton74 | Facebook | Instagram | LEGO Ideas
This often happens to me......in the middle of the nights......
I can't concentrate on anything.....let alone studies........
even the sound of the shutter doesn't provide me with the peace of mind.......
that's when I take up my sketchpad and a pencil......somehow.....it takes in all my concentration......makes me feel good.....sends me to a trans state......gives me the peace I need.....
Copyright: Aneek Mustafa Anwar
Contact: labouffon@gmail.com
Koh-i-Noor Triocolor jumbo pencils, Daler-Rowney sketchpad 9x12".
Original photography by Nick Collins (via pexels):
Our Daily Challenge ... creative
Thought I'd better say that my creativity lies in photography and editing. I shot the photo of the sketch pad and pastels and inserted the shot of the frangipanis from the day before. I love the look of pastels but I did not use them to sketch the flowers.
Stranger #11 – Angèle
It had been snowing during the night, the streets had been sprayed with salt. It was sunny, cold and rather windy. I was starting to feel cold, I don’t wear gloves when I shoot it just feels cumbersome and awkward to me to operate a camera with gloves and my hands were numb and getting painful. I noticed Angèle sitting on a bench, she wasn’t wearing gloves either. Her legs were folded, she had a sketchpad balanced on her right leg and even though it was literally freezing, she was drawing. I asked her if I could take her picture just the way she was, drawing there. She agreed and resumed drawing, thoroughly absorbed, never appearing self-conscious nor looking at the camera. I made a few exposures, trying to take a picture that would capture the way she was, sitting on that bench, drawing as people were walking by. Some of the shots I took were okay, especially when I managed to time my pressing the shutter release with the wind brushing her hair off her face and showing her eyes, all in all they were passable candid shots. Worse, they felt impersonal and in that moment, there were only a few angles I could try crouching in the road of that semi pedestrian street, the idea I was missing would only occur to me later.
Angèle studies applied arts and design. She doesn’t enjoy enjoy design as much from what I gathered, designing objects is too “square”, she prefers drawing. Angèle has been drawing since she was 3, she even draws during her classes. For a while she’s been having classes once every two weeks, part of the measures taken to try and slow down the epidemic has been to split classes in halves, half the students remain at home for week 1 and do distance learning while the other half attend in person and they switch every other week. Angèle told me it wasn’t always easy to stay upbeat but that she tries not to look at the negative side. I think drawing helps her.
That’s when I knew what I needed to capture, what I needed to have a memory of, it wasn’t for the 100 strangers challenge that I needed that moment it was something I needed to remember for myself, not just seeing Angèle drawing in the cold but that particular moment when I felt a kinship with Angèle, when she stopped being a stranger, when I related to her. I crouched so as to take a picture of her at eye level. I focused on the eye closest to the lens, closing down the aperture to f/3.5 since I was quite close to her in order to get her face in focus and let the background fall off.
I asked if I could jot down some notes because there were things I knew I’d be unable to remember otherwise and she asked me if she could sketch me “that way we’ll be even” as she put it. I was happy to oblige. I was impressed with her sketch, Angèle didn’t seem all that satisfied, telling me her hands were numb with the cold. I asked her if I could take a picture of the sketch she’d made of me, I didn’t think to ask her if she’d be okay with me putting a picture of her sketch as a comment, I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I’m happy with the portrait I took of her, not because of any skill that I displayed but because it’s the memory of a moment I enjoyed. I wish I’d thought to ask her if I could take pictures of her hands as she drew, just fill the frame with her hands and her sketches, I love craftsmanship and hands working their craft (their witchcraft). Then again, considering how cold it was it might have been uncomfortable for her to draw in the cold much longer for the camera. I know just enough about drawing to understand how much invisible work goes into being able to draw the way Angèle does. In her sketches is the watermark of thousands of hours of practice. I’m grateful that I was lucky enough to meet Angèle.
Thank you very much Angèle!
This picture is #11 in my 100 strangers project. Find out more about the project and see pictures taken by other photographers at the 100 Strangers Flickr Group page
This is my 6th submission to the Human Family Group. To view more street portraits and stories visit The Human Family Flickr Group page
Il avait un peu neigé dans le courant de la nuit et en tout début de matinée. Les rues avaient été salées. Il faisait ensoleillé, froid et il y avait du vent. Je commençais à avoir froid, je ne porte pas de gants quand je sors faire des photos, manipuler un appareil photo avec des gants n’est pas assez pratique, j’avais les mains engourdies et légèrement douloureuses. J’ai aperçu Angèle qui était assise sur un banc, elle ne portait pas de gants non plus. Elle avait les jambes croisées et sur sa jambe droite elle avait un carnet dans lequel elle dessinait malgré le froid. Je lui ai demandé si je pouvais la prendre en photo telle qu’elle était, en train de dessiner. Elle a accepté et a repris ses dessins, absorbée par ce qu’elle faisait, sans embarras ni regard vers l’objectif. J’ai pris quelques photos, tentant de capturer ce moment, la façon dont elle observait et dessinait alors que les gens étaient en mouvement autour d’elle. Certaines des photos que j’ai prises d’Angèle étaient acceptables, en particulier celles où j’ai réussi à la prendre en photo alors que le vent écartait ses cheveux de son visage et où l’on pouvait voir ses yeux. Dans l’ensemble, c’étaient des photos candides passables. Pire, c’étaient des photos impersonnelles et sur le moment il n’y avait qu’un certain nombre d’angles par lequel je pouvais aborder ces photos, accroupi sur la route de cette rue semi-piétonne, l’idée qui me manquait ne me viendrait que par la suite.
Angèle étudie les sciences et technologies du design et des arts appliqués. Elle apprécie moins le design et tout ce qui a à voir avec les objets c’est « trop carré », elle préfère le dessin. Angèle dessine depuis qu’elle a 3 ans, y compris en classe. Depuis quelques temps, elle a cours une semaine sur deux. Parmi les mesures prises pour tenter de ralentir l’épidémie, les classes ont été scindées en demi-groupes qui vont en cours une semaine sur deux et sont en distanciel quand ils ne sont pas en cours. Angèle m’a dit que ce n’est pas évident de garder le moral mais qu’elle essaie de ne pas voir le négatif. Je crois que dessiner l’aide.
C’est à ce moment là que j’ai compris ce que je devais capturer, le souvenir que j’avais besoin de garder, moins pour le défi que pour moi, un moment que je devais conserver : pas juste observer Angèle en train de dessiner dans le froid, mais ce moment où j’ai ressenti une affinité avec Angèle, où je me suis identifié à ce qu’elle disait. Je me suis accroupi pour la prendre en photo de façon à être au même niveau que ses yeux. J’ai fait la mise au point sur l’œil qui se trouvait le plus proche par rapport à l’objectif, j’ai légèrement fermé le diaphragme à f/3.5 puisque je me trouvais assez proche d’elle afin d’avoir son visage net et laisser l’arrière plan se dissoudre.
Je lui ai demandé si je pouvais prendre quelques notes, il y avait des choses dont je n’aurais pas pu me souvenir sans noter et elle m’a demandé si elle pouvait me dessiner «comme ça on est quittes» comme elle l’a joliment formulé. J’étais ravi de lui rendre service. J’ai été impressionné par son dessin, elle a un excellent coup de crayon. Angèle ne m’a pas paru aussi satisfaite de son croquis, elle m’a dit que ses mains étaient engourdies par le froid. Je lui ai demandé si je pouvais prendre une photo du dessin qu’elle avait fait de moi, je n’ai pas pensé à lui demander si elle m’autorisait à le mettre en commentaire, je n’avais pas réfléchi jusque là. Je suis content du portrait que j’ai pris d’elle, pas à cause de la moindre compétence dont j’aurais fait preuve mais parce que c’est un souvenir d’un moment que j’ai apprécié. Je regrette de ne pas avoir pensé à lui demander si je pouvais prendre des photos de ses mains quand elle dessinait. J’aurais aimé remplir le cadre avec ses mains et ses dessins, j’adore l’art, l’artisanat, le savoir faire et j’adore voir et photographier des mains en train de travailler leur art (leur magie). Cela dit, compte tenu du froid, il aurait peut être été inconfortable voire douloureux pour Angèle de dessiner le temps que je prenne ses mains en photo. J’en sais juste assez sur le dessin pour comprendre quelle somme de travail invisible se trouve derrière la capacité d’Angèle à dessiner comme elle le fait. Dans ses dessins on peut lire en filigrane les milliers d’heures de pratique pour en arriver là. Je suis reconnaissant d’avoir eu la chance de rencontrer Angèle.
Merci beaucoup Angèle!
Cette photo est la #11 dans mon projet 100 strangers. Apprenez-en plus au sujet du projet et visionnez les photos prises par d’autres photographes sur la page Flickr du groupe 100 Strangers
C’est ma sixième participation au groupe The Human Family. Pour voir plus de portraits de rue et d’histoires, visitez la page Flickr du groupe The Human Family
I can't remember where I saw it but the other week I stumbled across and image of a monster eating someone and I LOVED it - here's my version. Burp!
[blogged]
Vicki experiences, just for a few seconds, a sensation like dozens of comb tines biting at her face and through her clothes. Then she’s rolling down the slanted wall of a musty tunnel. The landing isn’t light, but the slope saves her from meeting the rocky bottom full-force. She coughs out some dust, scanning her surroundings until her eyes rest on the boy… propped against the tunnel on one shoulder blade like a tossed doll. His left boot is still lodged inside the earth.
“Hey. Hey, wake up!” She lugs herself on her elbows over to his location, and nudges his arm.
“GAAH! I’m awake!” he cries out through gritted teeth. “I’m… egh… not moving on account of there being a very real probability that I carried some of the ceiling out inside my arm.” They both study the appendage, already looking rather purple and swollen.
“You… You’re saying…”
“Yes, we’re in the mine. I threw us through the ground.”
“You’re saying I could’ve ended up with rocks inside me too!” Vicki finishes.
He grimaces. “I told you, those weren’t the cops coming, and they certainly weren’t there to save anyone. Leaving you up there wasn’t an option.”
Vicki lets out a confounded laugh. “Who says these people, whoever they are, aren’t going to check the obvious mine entrance next to the war zone you and those creeps left up there?”
“We’re in the collapsed section. You just need to wait it out…” The boy lays his head back, looking exceptionally drained.
“Nick?”
The voice came from the portion of the tunnel behind the pair. Vicki makes out ten or so men and women hesitantly approaching with flashlights. The man at the head of the troop stares intently at the boy… “Nick.”
Vicki is unnerved by his fixation. She snatches up a stone and readies it as a projectile.
“Back off!”
“No,” Nick hacks, trying to reach out to her ankle. “They’re friends. They’re friends.”
The first man and one of the women kneel by Nick and inspect the damage done.
“Ah hell, Nick, you really did it this time,” the woman says, nodding at his inflamed arm.
“That good?” Nick remarks.
“What were you thinking?” the man demands, while determining how to free Nick’s sole from the wall, “Roping a kid into this… This is becoming-“
“She wasn’t supposed to be here,” Nick responds, glaring Vicki’s way. But then his eyes soften. “I slipped up.”
Vicki cuts in. “I trailed him! And what’s this ‘roping a kid in’ business? HE’s a kid! What are you all doing, letting him get chased around by meta-humans that are out for blood?!”
“Miss? I’m sorry you’ve been involved in any way with this,” the man turns back to her sternly. “We need to get you back to your house. We’ll send-”
Nick panics at his words. “Don’t let her go back up there! You have to wait.“ His unrest causes his ankle to twist in its vice, and he clams up again.
“We cannot keep an innocent here Nick!” the man thunders. “Regardless of whether or not she was seen with you… regardless of what she can tell the authorities about us… we are not going to become abductors!”
“Hey!” Vicki quiets the argument and the rest of the company’s murmuring with her shout. “I’m not taking off until someone explains to me why there’s a bunch of people living underground on the outskirts of town, allowing a kid who can defy physics to play ‘chicken’ with supervillains!”
“No. This is as far in as you will get with this insanity. Now… we have our own camouflaged exit at the end of the mine. It’s the only way in and out of this section. Whoever was following you won’t know to search there,” the man makes a point of looking at Nick with his last words, trying to calm him, then motions for another woman in the group to escort Vicki out.
Vicki still has the stone tucked between her palm and waist. She raises it once again. The woman stops.
“So help me…” Vicki warns. “I’ll make sure cops DO show up if you don’t give me a good reason why you have to keep all this a secret.”
“Young lady, that is far easier to live with than becoming kidnappers,” the woman scolds. “It makes no difference if you want answers. Your family will be worried.”
Vicki gulps, betraying her faux stoicism for a moment, but her gaze doesn’t falter. She shifts on her heels. “I’m a latchkey kid.”
The woman continues attempting to reassure her, but Vicki tunes it out and looks back to Nick. The man is holding something out to him, partially wrapped in fabric. Red and mostly boxy, possibly with a cord of some sort. The man speaks in harsh whispers, but Vicki is able to pick out a couple of pieces.
“… -r powers aren’t worth these injuries. I don’t want to forc… change back!”
***
The soggy sketchpad thwacks onto the table.
Cathan blinks. “This doesn’t look like a corpse.”
The hulking man standing before him jabs a finger at it. “It’s how the kid has powers.”
Cathan tilts his head warily, and the man corrects himself. “HAD powers. He used it whenever he attacked, or ran…”
“Slippery, wasn’t he?” Cableman mumbles. “Sort of makes you appreciate how long I was out there, shadowing that son of a-“
Cathan holds up a hand to cut short the grievance when, from across the room, the glass woman, who had also been there to dispatch “Nick,” articulates. “He’s right. We have the pages. He can’t be a threat any longer.”
With intricate hand gestures, she continues delicately mending the fractured bit of her back, inflicted by Vicki. Cathan reins in his frustration at the sight. He picks up the drawings.
“A pen made these, Brent. Where’s the pen? Do we know it’s not the pen, Brent?”
Brent rolls his shoulders. “I don’t. I don’t know.”
“That’s right, we… we don’t know.” Cathan breathes. A few feet behind him, another lieutenant dressed in the same red as their ringleader fidgets, anticipating an order with all but express fervor. Brent looks down.
“No no… don’t take this so personally.” Cathan rises. “I’m sympathetic. You and Kalei… I understand that… when you came to me, you needed me. Dearly.”
Brent tenses at Cathan’s hand landing on the armor shaped around his neck.
“I only expect each of you to do your best, as your… entry fee. And no one’s best is perfect. It’s only that I find it…”
His other hand releases the clasp on Brent’s mask, and lifts it off its wearer.
“… difficult, to put into words, how disappointing it is to hear that the wrench in our operation is just… unseen. Not removed.”
Cathan’s hand doesn’t move. But it’s close enough. Most assuredly, close enough.
The volume of Brent’s acknowledgement is subterranean. “I understand that.”
“Well then. Please also understand my clemency isn’t so limited. I do want to help you both. We’re mates.”
Cathan pats the shoulder pad heartily and actually grins. “You mean what you say, Brent. I can tell. You’re that type of man.”
Brent gives a meek nod and steps back. Cathan’s bodyguard pipes up.
“Even if we risk it with one depowered hero who knows we’re here, how do we know he hasn’t got a bunch of friends too?” the crimson-clad man theorizes.
“Heroes don’t have to hide like us, Ed. They would’ve shown up all together, long ago, in a big, obnoxious performance. It’s just their way. … No. He’s alone. Fairfax, as it were, is alone.”
“There was a third kid.”
Everyone turns to the woman. “There was the boy. The girl with him, she was obviously in the dark, obviously not a meta. But the other girl we saw them both with, in the park. She’s an unknown.”
“A third…” Cathan utters with boiling irritation. “Kaleidoscope… would you be so kind as to tell Ed where he can find said lass? I’ll have some questions for her in the morning. Ed… you can take Mr. Schneider along on this one.”
At his mention, the youngest man present sits up from a pile of planks, eagerly adjusting his gloves. “Consider her caught.”
“With discretion, lads,” Cathan stipulates.
Before Kaleidoscope crosses the room to relay her information, Brent bumps her arm, facing the other way.
“You didn’t need to tell him about the thi-“
“How many lies and letdowns, Brent? Before we see the real Cathan?” Her eyes are intense. “I’m looking out for you for a change.”
She proceeds to the other thugs.
“Welcome aboard, ‘Chain Master’,” Cableman hisses after Brent, wordlessly retreating to another room. He shakes his head at his own teasing, and tinkers with the ham radio in his hand. “That was a close one. Captain was a hair away from finding out your dirty little sec-“
Kaleidoscope moves in front of Cableman. She places a fingertip on the radio, and its soft chatter turns into shrieks of agony. She keeps them low enough so as to not alert Cathan and the others, who were now hatching a plan to corner the final child.
The appearance of the appliance itself, to Cableman, is now that of a human heart, leaking gobs of its contents. He sneers at her. “Subtle.”
“Loose lips sink ships,” Kaleidoscope advises him. The light her body gives off flares of an odious yellow-green.
“I’m not going to squeal to Cathan, toots. But you can count on me being there, when it all hits the fan. Hell, I’ll bring popcorn.”
She withdraws, and the radio is a radio once again.
“Nah, for what it’s worth, Cathan was pretty hard on you two. I mean, just as the price of admission, he expected you to axe a kid? ’s’not like he’s had to do that himself.”
Cableman then mockingly gasps at his words, holding his chin. “… has he?”
He waggles his eyebrows at Kaleidoscope, who simply recedes to find Brent.
***
Either his head was throbbing, or the whole room was. Bryan Smith makes an effort to bend his neck, but it may as well have been fused metal. It’s only after a minute of fruitlessly rearing against his inexplicable paralysis that he is certain he’s on his back, within some sort of shallow crib. The light fixture overhead constantly buzzes, lulling him back into to a state of placidity, as much as his conscience was opposed to the idea. There was also the matter of the woman.
Bryan had never seen pupils so big; dilated, to the point that the iris’ pigment was lost to the black void. She would systematically take the reading of some instrument at the head of his cot and record it in some notes that were set between them on his sheets. Then she would return focus to him. There was nothing to extract from her expression, but she did speak from time to time; Bryan was sure of that, just not precisely what about. It was probably all perfectly procedural.
“-ster Smith, you’ve been here for a week. Your condition appears stable but may be subject to further drastic developments.”
“‘Here’ is… where?”
Bryan realizes this must not have been his first time asking the question, when she fleetingly hangs her head, accompanied by a wearied sigh.
“You’re inside Trojan Labs. You’re being treated here due to the irregular nature-“
“My arms feel heavy. ‘nd I have a headache.”
“… You’re being administered several relaxants, it should subside.”
“Is it… like a really bad headache?”
“Mister Smith, this is very important, I need to ask that you really concentrate and let us know…”
She inches closer. “You don’t remember how you got here, do you?”
Bryan had never seen eyes like that. “No… do I work here?”
She smirks. “We’ll know more in the morning.”
That was a relief to Bryan.
***
“Stop… guys I need to stop.”
Roger skids to a halt and reaches back for Glinda, bracing herself on bent legs. They both shiver in the early morning air of Fairfax, having just now reached the edge of town after a dead sprint away from their harrowing brush with mortality. Roger noticed he was holding his breath and choked for air. The ground didn’t feel like ground beneath him; more like a paddle board out on choppy surf.
Glinda watches Chris, caked with soil and leaves, still jolting towards the neon-lit street just a block away. “Roger I… I don’t think he heard.”
Roger catches up to Chris, grasping his old friend’s shoulders. “We made it out, man. There’s nothing behind us. Ease up.”
The boy remains in a daze. “… ‘kay.”
Glinda watches them trudge back to her spot on the sparkling pavement. She rests her chin on her knees.
“I’m sorry,” Roger warbles. “Dumb idea.”
“You saved us. Until that second… thing showed up,” Glinda reminds him.
“IT saved us,” Chris muses. “We seriously could’ve been…”
Roger disregards them. “I almost got us all axed because I wanted to have fun. It’s not okay. I’m still pretending like Fairfax hasn’t changed, like it’s still my playground… God, I’m never going to grow up.”
“It’s alright Roger, everything turned out fine. If you need to let it out-“ Glinda begins.
“I’m not going to cry in front of a girl. I don’t cry.”
Glinda now presses her mouth to her knees, stunned.
Chris eventually breaks the silence. “My parents are gonna know. That we weren’t just at your house.”
“No, it’ll still work. We can clean ourselves up at my place if we’re quiet,” Roger asserts.
“I mean, they’ll know because of me. They’ll just see I’m lying.”
“If they get it out of you, tell them it was me. All me. It’s not a lie.”
“I agreed to go. I’m not going to rat you out.”
“It’s not ratting me out if I’m telling you, don’t dig the hole deeper. I shouldn’t have done this.”
“What if Vicki was still on her way?” Glinda abruptly comprehends. “Oh, what if she goes back there and those monsters are still waiting…”
Roger waves a hand out from his side. “She would’ve come the same way we ran back, and we didn’t meet up. She just didn’t show. I mean geez, it’s November now. You really think she’d still be-“
“Okay!” Glinda yells, more hurt than the boys were aware of. The outburst rings down the length of the street, and then is devoured by the night. The lampposts and shops stand by respectfully in the quiet as the band of children further digests all they had witnessed.
“Like I said,” Roger reiterates, “this is on me. Don’t… make me out to be some hero. Now c’mon.”
***
Vicki steps forward, still tuning out the adults hoping to convince her to leave the mine. Nick looks barely conscious, enduring the painful position that his allies have failed to free him from. The leading man hides the red device away from her, but she’s already pointed it out.
“So you get power from that thing?” she tries to bring Nick out of his listlessness.
“You’ve seen quite enough, kid. Please, just…” the man grumbles, more tired than angry now.
“No! He saved me from the other metas out there,” Vicki protests, “and I want to know how he’s doing this. WHY he’s doing this. Why you LET him!”
“Because he’s as stubborn as you,” was the man’s response. He stands from crouching over Nick, moving to converse with the other cave-dwellers. “He still thinks he’s in this alone.”
As the man turns his back the kids fully, Vicki is startled by Nick’s hand clamping around her wrist. He has the same petrified look he did back in town, when he had run into her and…
“The others,” Nick says haggardly, “don’t need to know… your friend in the park…”
“Frannie,” Vicki whispers.
“The metas saw us. All three of us. If they aren’t one hundred percent-certain that I’m dead… she’s going to be their only lead on who I am.”
“But she doesn’t kno-!”
“THEY don’t know that,” Nick growls, matching Vicki’s lower tone with great difficulty. He thrusts the wrapped object through the dirt, nearer to Vicki and out of the adults’ line of sight. “You have to take this. It can help you rescue her… if it comes to that.”
“What do you… I’m not cut out for this! Can’t you just-“
Nicks body heaves, still beating back the torture of his trapped limbs. “To use it now, would mean that I… I … can’t be the hero this time. Believe me, if I could help her…”
“Please… get one of them to do it,” Vicki shudders. “I don’t know what’s happening anymore, I can’t do this.”
“I’M the only reason THEY haven’t destroyed it,” Nick insists, still trying to get her to accept the mysterious item. “You’re the only one who knows… who can… TAKE. It.”
Vicki conceals the device behind her unbuttoned jacket, as smoothly as she can, in spite of the involuntary tremors running through her muscles. She realizes now, holding it, that it’s a rotary phone; lighter than expected, even more red than it had seemed at a distance. “What… what do I even do??”
“Run with it. If you find your friend in time, just hide her, somewhere they won’t know to look for her. Don’t use it. Don’t return it here. Lock it away, I don’t care. But if they’re already there…”
Nick pokes the object weakly.
“Dial ‘H’.”
They exchange a strangely knowing look. Then, while Vicki eases away, Nick begins deliberately convulsing, drawing the entire assemblage out of their troubled bickering. The leader calls for more hands to dig the boy out, and Vicki, forgotten in the rabble, slips past them. She pushes through a fern at the tunnel’s end, once again tasting fresh air. There’s just a hint of a new dawn bleeding through the trees around her.
Nick’s friends would notice she was missing in no time at all. She allows herself only a few seconds to compose her nerves and consult her internal compass, before racing uphill; back to where, she hopes, Frannie will be blissfully unaware of the imminent danger, and with any luck, that Vicki could keep her from all of this. More than that, Vicki hopes she’ll wake up. That it would be November 1st; properly, this time. A school day. And that there really were no monsters in Fairfax.
See the world from beyond the eye.
12 x 19 inch all hand drawing, markers, ink and paint on paper.
View large for details.
Let me know what you think, have a good day.
A mandalorian I drew on the 'Bamboo' sketchpad. Still learning, so I tried some new techniques. Please let me know what you think.
2022. Koh-I-Noor Polycolor pencils, Daler-Rowney sketchpad 9x12".
Drawn on location, finalized later.
The background trees are done, time to focus on the middle ground. This part is were a good deal of concentration is needed as there are multiple layers of ruin to try and portray. It's a case of "do a bit, pause and amend". Drawn with a Staedtler 0.3mm pencil and Tombow Mono zero eraser in an A4 cartridge paper sketchpad.
The first district of Vienna is very pretty but not by far my favorite part of Vienna, Loads of ethnic groups like turists and Mozart people and animal roaming the street like horses that shit everywhere still I like some spots in the first district like Jazzland, Bockshorn, Steinzeit (when that was) and I liked going to Frauhuber once in a while to draw in my sketchpads!
Peace and Noise!
/ MushroomBrain
For my friend, WarrenS52
Taken at the Queen City Draggers' Tradition Rod and Custom car show held at Quaker Stake and Lube in the Milford suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio.
Pinstriper and owner of the Sketch Pad, Taz Henschen and the Queen City Draggers always put on great car shows with amazing cars and great bands. This year was no exception.
Fairfax, Maine had celebrated what would become the standardized Halloween holiday since 1925. Back in the day, it had made the wise transition from tolerating youths engaged in vandalism and arson, to promoting wholesome events the the entire town could enjoy. Through all the naysayers that disliked the macabre themes, the costumes and exchange of sweets persisted, and the community overall took pride in the festivities.
For the past five Halloweens, Roger had not known that sensation. Where Christmas or Thanksgiving could be spent indoors with close relatives, Halloween most certainly, intrinsically needed a touch of rebellion, a smidge of boldness.
For the past five Halloweens, no parade. Roger remembered he really liked it when he was younger; probably wouldn’t be the same anymore, but it was nevertheless a missing piece to the season.
For the past five Halloweens, fewer and fewer people felt like decorating their lawns and street corners. There were certainly taller fences around the lawns, though, and every few street corners there was a police officer. Fairfax, still contending with an influx of meta-human crime, would have its Halloween, in some shape or form. Roger stood by that same sentiment. In fact, the envelope, he felt, could be pushed a little more.
He leans off the Kings’ front gate as Chris finally hops out the door, checking his costume.
Roger inspects the ensemble. “From this, I’m getting… medieval C.H.U.D?”
Chris’ head jerks up from his last button. “Frankenstein. Frankenstein’s monster. He’s not medieval, he’s… one of those ‘-ian’ eras.”
“Still, you’re carrying a… sword.”
“The Creature definitely survived the Arctic at the end. And he was definitely smart enough to start using a weapon. He disliked guns, right? So.”
Roger scoffs. “Man, if you could go back and learn that the author said Frankenstein wields a sword in a potential sequel, I’d give you all my candy tonight.”
He glances over his shoulder, also back at the door. “You told your parents you’re staying at whose house?”
Chris winces. “‘Vic’s’.”
Roger does a double-take at his friend. “‘Vic’!?”
“Hey they asked me before I even had a name ready in my head, and it just sorta... Don’t worry Roger, they don’t even know Vicki, and won’t think about it twice.”
“Yeah… okay,” Roger groans. “We’ve got an hour and forty-five to get stocked. Then I get you and the others past ‘security’… Old guy on the end of my street still has a hole in his backyard fence, straight to the park. Then, the farm out to the east-“
“You’re eerily familiar with this,” Chris chuckles.
“Roger!”
The boys, almost onto the sidewalk, spin around at the sound of Mrs. King’s voice.
“Your parents can still make it over tonight? I’ve got more food than I know what to do with.” She smiles.
“Will-do Mrs. K, just as soon as my dad’s off work!”
She nods. “Chris, don’t stay out later than nine, and stay in Vic’s house until the morning.”
Roger sees Chris begin to protest, when Mrs. King adds on, “For your father, please.”
“Yes, Mom.”
She retreats inside and they resume their walk through the quietest streets Fairfax had seen on Halloween to date.
“My folks are really glad yours are back, Chris. I don’t think I knew, when we were little, how it was… that they lost good friends too…”
Chris’ eyes snap out of a glaze. “Mm.”
“How’s Gary? Does he remember any friends from here? You could’ve invited him along too, you know; it’d have gone cool with me.”
“Ha, no,” Chris says dismissively. “That bookworm doesn’t care about sneaking out, or having any adventures. Or candy. Imagine that. Thirteen, and doesn’t like candy.”
Glinda rounds a corner in front of them, and Chris points. “Ah, I get it… ‘cause, Glinda, and she’s a witch…”
“Hey guys! Isn’t this dress smart?” She fluffs some of the hair under the brim of her pointed hat. “I found a matching bag too!”
“That’s… rad,” Roger almost yawns. “Vicki was supposed to be be here with you. She’s your sleepover alibi.”
“Behind schedule,” Glinda hums. “Said she needed more time for an outfit and, I quote, she ‘could track down those two delinquents, and their secret hideout, blindfolded’, so she said go on ahead.”
“You’ll keep up with us? You’re not going to get all antsy?” Roger inquires.
“You’re not scaring me tonight, Roger Dunbar.”
“Sure, sure. But if you do get cold feet, just remember there’s no place like home, and click your heels.”
“That’s the strangest idiom you’ve ever come up with,” Glinda declares, waving her wand at him.
Roger once again becomes flustered. “It’s not an idi-“
“I’d actually just as soon wait for Vicki,” Chris interrupts. “We still have time to stay around her house and trick-or-treat, before we head off. You DID say we’d all stick together.”
Roger flips down the black mask that had been resting in his hair and points a finger at Chris. “‘I am ALtering the dealll.”
Chris fails to hide the growing dimples on his cheeks, and he nods. “Okay, I’ll give you that one.”
Glinda wrinkles her nose. “Why’d you make your voice all deep?”
“You have GOT to watch movies.”
***
“I’m already late, so it’s no big deal if I’m MORE late,” Vicki offers. “You change your mind?”
Frannie Nash keeps fiddling with the straps of her backpack. “Don’t have a costume.”
“The boys can shove their costumes. Just bring you. … they’re not a bad group.”
“I won’t have fun,” Frannie states. Her voice didn’t raise at all. It wasn’t even an argument.
Vicki sighs. “I wouldn’t force you to go. Just don’t want you to think I’m picking favorites.”
Frannie tucked in her neck. “You’re not, I know.”
They were just about to cover the last of the park’s turf and cross the street to Frannie’s house, and before the crosswalk went green, Vicki wanted to be sure things were squared away.
“Then that’s the end of it. I won’t bring that stuff up, okay? I trust you with your own judgements.”
“Thanks Vicki-“
Someone leaps straight through the shrub on Vicki’s right before the pair of girls reach the corner. She and the apparent prankster stumble onto their knees and palms in the sod, with a startled Frannie a split-second away from taking off.
“Why don’t you watch it, you-!“
Vicki sees him face-on just for a moment, as he was already pulling himself up without an apology nor an indication he had succeeded in some deliberate bit of tomfoolery. He was terrified. The boy she saw every recess, walking alone outside of school, had undeniable panic written into his features.
Frannie backs up as he stands and continues his flight by successfully vaulting a bench this time. “I… I have to go Vicki. See you…”
“Frannie…” Vicki starts. She blinks away the spinning in her head from the collision, and brushes off her sleeves as Frannie scurries the last stretch of her way home. Vicki scans for the boy again, inadvertently kicking something with a muddied high-top. His… sketch pad?
She recovers it, and finds herself flipping through heavily-worn pages. The same figure drawn over and over, but in various poses, each running into the next like a meticulous comic. Vicki catches herself.
“Stop being a busybody and go after him. He’s going to miss this.”
She’s stopped again from picking up his trail, but this time, for a very different reason. She can just make out a another face, situated between some trees that Frannie and she had passed before their encounter with the boy. It had the strangest quality to it; Vicki was looking directly at it, but felt as though its attributes were in a distant memory, hazy and indistinguishable. She shook her head and tried again to focus on whoever it was, but the same ambiguity suffocated her perception. Was the face… glowing? Was it attached to a body?
“Definitely time to go home,” Vicki affirmed to herself. “I’ll find the boy tomorrow.”
She dashed off of park property, purposely jaywalking in the hopes of getting one of the officers stationed all over to notice, in case the face was following her. But there was no one to be seen, anywhere. Not even lights in houses, despite the sun being on the horizon. At the top of her lungs Vicki hollered for anyone at all to come out, but to her ears, nothing but a whisper escaped her.
Now she ran without thinking. The two remaining blocks to her house flew by. Sheer fright kept her from devoting energy to anything but her legs. It was only once she was gripping the iron work on her home’s front gate that her thoughts caught up with her. What if the thing stopped chasing her and targeted Frannie instead? Was it even a good idea to go inside? This had to be a dream… except, she could remember the entire day…
Vicki swung open the gate, but the metal hinges didn’t creak like they had for years and years. The latch didn’t even feel right. She hurried past the trees whose branches were being tossed in a wind she failed to feel in her hair or jacket. She felt as though she were on the verge of nausea. Coming to a halt at her stoop, Vicki realized her neighbor’s dog was in its yard. She almost cried at the sight of something not out of place, until it turned its snout down between its forelegs and howled, long and plaintive. She’d never seen a dog do that, not in that way.
Her knuckles were gripped over the banister, bloodless and frigid. The face was off to the side of her yard, wavering, its specific characteristics still not discernible.
“You should find the boy,” it spoke to Vicki.
“What do you want?!” Vicki begged.
“Maybe he can help you,” was all it suggested.
“You’re doing this! Get away or-!”
“Find your friend and this can stop. I do not think you will be safe, otherwise.”
Vicki drew a breath, and dared two steps back towards the gate. The face made no move to intercept her. So she took off once more. She had to find him. Her mind was starved for something, anything normal.
***
Glinda takes a moment and again studies the imposing cornstalks encircling her and her friends. They shift as one and rustle in the breeze. There were no glimmering fangs or gnarled claws to be seen waiting impatiently within the wall of husks. She allows herself another exhale and returns to Roger and Chris, sorting their earnings for the night.
“Another cherry one, Chris. Trade me.”
“It’s your loss, but here,” Chris accepts, chucking a small packet from his own bucket.
“Not a loss at all,” Roger says, catching it. “Cherry ones always taste like the cough syrup.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“You hurt me physically, Chris. But y’know what..?”
Roger passes two unwarranted candy bars towards Chris. The largest ones he had.
“Whoa, how’d I earn these?”
“For not being a square, even with a cop for a dad. Honestly I thought you might not sneak out here tonight.”
Chris rocks back and snorts. “Pshaw! I’ve been WAITING to do this kind of stuff again. It was no fun when we moved to the city. Hey Glinda, you should get one of these too.”
Glinda takes the candy. “Thanks… Roger, why did you think Chris wouldn’t come? Didn’t you say you both did this all the time when you were little?”
“He means specifically here. Because it’s a crim-” Chris begins with a mouthful of licorice, before Roger gives him a wide-eyed look.
“‘Because’..?” Glinda probes. “Because what? Roger…”
She watches the boy expectantly. Chris, between the two, pulls his wig down over his face.
“It’s nothing Glinda; inside-joke we have,” Roger brushes it off.
Glinda is unfazed.
Roger caves in. “It’s uh… may be, in a way, possibly, an off-limits zone? Right now?”
She continues drilling a hole through him with her eyes.
“Because of a shady investigation dealing with radiation?”
“WHAT?”
“That was really smooth, Chris,” Roger moans. “Really smooth.”
“You weren’t going to say anything before you lead me out to a creepy field that might be mutating us into sludge-monsters as we speak? Roger Dunbar I’m…”
“Glinda, chill! Chris’ dad was actually on the scene; he said no one there had any side-effects!”
Chris adds, “They didn’t find any, with the screening processes they used. There’s actual a few ways they didn’t try, Dad said-“
Roger’s face goes red. “Chris, I swear, you’re one syllable away from getting duct-taped… the next time I have some.”
“We should’ve gone back so long ago anyway!” Glinda protests. “I let you ditch Vicki, and then I find out… Oh, I want to leave!”
“If Vicki is still on her way here, then we can’t go now!” Roger reasons.
“Guys, I…” Chris perks up. “That was something out there I just heard…”
“Don’t you start!” Glinda sniffs. “You think it’s so funny, trying to razz me with dumb-“
“No, I’m REALLY serious. There shouldn’t be any caretakers out here.”
“… Would they have kept investigators out this late?” Roger asks, now in a hushed tone.
Glinda backs into to the adjacent barrier of corn. “I want to go now.”
Roger scoops up his helmet. “Yeah. Forget the candy.”
The three kids inch away, eyes locked on the thicket whence the noises are carrying. Glinda whips out a Polaroid camera from her robes as Roger and Chris come up alongside her.
“What are you doing with that?” Roger hisses.
“Maybe we can blind whoever it is, long enough for us to escape. I… I thought I would take pictures, mostly if Vicki got here, to show off…”
“You can’t share where we were at school, Glinda! If you brag about this, who knows which of your friends would blab-“
“I won’t NOW!” Glinda seethes, nearly giving away their position. “Why’d I have to choose you two to spend Halloween with? Of all the pea-brained…”
She trails off, and Chris lets out an unintentional squeak. Something bipedal, bullet-shaped and dripping lurches out of the greenery. It gives a caw like that of a sickly crow, and clumsily scoots one of the discarded containers of candy around with the entirety of its bulky upper-half.
“We… say… nothing,” Roger murmurs.
“Yep.”
“Mhm.”
The new arrival seems preoccupied with an Almond Joy; enough, to not to notice the trio, even when Roger’s lightsaber prop slips from his belt loop and lands noisily in a puddle. Glinda’s heart almost stops. Chris motions fervently.
“Maybe it can’t hear, c’mon…”
Just as the kids are mere feet from circling around to another row of crops, the clouds part slightly to reveal an ominous full moon. Glinda’s sequined clothes are illuminated a vivid sapphire, contrasting the murky landscape. What must have been the monster’s head wobbles upright, wrappers lodged in its lumpy skin. A string of slick globes lines its underbelly. At the top, two more are side by side; these ones luminescent and, without a doubt, lidded. The thing produces an unearthly trill, and hurls itself bodily after the reflection.
The kids scream at the charging abomination. Chris pushes Glinda and Roger ahead of him into the leaves, then sidesteps a rubbery appendage lashing through the vegetation. Glinda sees him cowering as the attacker rips away more of their means of cover. She tries to make herself pivot, but her knees lock.
“I can’t. I have to. I can’t. He’s going to get-“
The flailing beast slams the ground, settling Glinda’s dilemma for her as she is flung backward in a wave of wet earth. It spots her again, with the unobstructed moon still transforming her into a beacon. Glinda lays frozen in the muck, with the hideous shape tramping ever closer. A hundred thoughts try to enter her mind, only to be extinguished to making way for a hundred more. She didn’t remember what she last said to Vicki. The last thing she HAD said to her parents had been a lie. Did Roger know…
Roger was yards away, dust in his vision. Their eyes meet. Glinda’s internal shouts pounded in her head like the tide.
“He can’t leave. Please don’t. Please.”
But from her lips, different words sprung: “RUN! JUST RUN!”
Roger looks to Chris now, but his friend is sprawled out, breathing hoarsely with his arms tangled over his face. Glinda watches, dumbstruck, as Roger snags a shredded portion of Chris’ cape and flings it over the monster’s peaked scalp, then tries weighing down one of its squirming tentacles with his entire bodyweight, hanging from it like it were a jungle gym. All the while Roger yells like a madman, perhaps more astonished by his initiative than Glinda herself.
He only holds on for so long. The greenish brute hurls Roger up and into some yet-undisturbed stalks, which luckily cushion him enough to save him from landing directly on his neck. Before it can also remove its crude blindfold, one of the growths on its torso bursts. It squawks hellishly, turning too late to counter a limber figure’s flying kick in its side. Rescuer and beast impact the ground so hard that Glinda bounces back to her feet only due in part to her own power. The kids’ defender stands up, slapping away a tentacle and driving a knee into his foe. Glinda and Roger race to Chris’ side, trying to keep track of the fight at the same time.
Their relief is quickly dispelled. The man who intervened observes the kids through the hollow eyes of an angular mask. One hand tightens into a fist. The other points beyond the valley, back towards Fairfax’s residential area. An electronic roar reverberates from his slitted mouthpiece.
“Oorrrrrr elllssee… yooouuuu neexttt”
Glinda and Roger made the decision nonverbally. Even Chris, barely conscious, was able to find his bearings. They ran.
***
Vicki could feel her pulse in her ears. She had scoured the park, the outlying properties of Fairfax and was well into the “wilderness” by now. No indications of the boy having come this way, nor had there been anyone to help her. Whatever was following her, it had to be… concealing everyone from her, and vice versa. It could have been messing with the time too; Vicki felt she could have been searching for half a day, easily, except the sun had been setting all the while. She pauses. Immediately, she could tell the being with an indefinite form was upon her.
“You need to find him.”
“HOW,” Vicki said between gasps, “can I, if you’re changing everything? He could’ve been-“
“I am not altering your perceptions now; we are away from… distractors. Please, continue.”
Vicki remembers Glinda and the others. They would be out this way, if she was right in thinking that Roger was daring them to visit that laboratory… something about an incident had been on the news, days ago. If there were any chance of running into them on this path, Vicki knew she had to divert. As much as she wanted to see them again, not be alone… she couldn’t drag them into this.
“There’s nothing out this way. Not any place he could be hiding,” she lies.
“There must be,” it retorts. Vicki hears emotion this time. It’s growing irritated. “It”… sounded female.
Vicki could hardly stand it anymore. “If you know Fairfax why can’t YOU find him yourself?!”
“You. Will not. Be safe,” the voice reminds her.
“There’s… there’s an abandoned mine to the south!” Vicki recollects in a moment of clarity.
“Show me.”
The trek ensues. Now, Vicki does not feel as though she is in limbo; her exertions are actually tiring, and the air finally begins to cool. She nears the mine, ready to collapse, trying to ignore her blistering soles. She had thought for years that she might be the single person in Fairfax to know of this location, but if the boy had proven to be so elusive, it stood to reason he had also found such a place. If he wasn’t here… Vicki was prepared to challenge her captor to do their worst; her stamina was all but gone.
“Check the the left passage,” Vicki rasped, flopping an arm at the overgrown wooden frames nestled in a shallow hill. “The other one is caved in just a few yards in. … hey… Hey, are you there?”
There is not but a symphony of crickets to answer her. The world, for the first time in what may have been an eternity only to her, seemed tangible. No less sinister, however.
She is given no chance to call again. A wrist and a shoulder hoist her from under the arms straight up into a tree. Her stomach is further upset, her queasiness making her question what she sees: Athletic-looking boots with a sheen from accumulated dew, pounding up the trunk, are the means by which she is being whisked away. She and the gravity-defier tip onto a sturdy branch just at the apex of their jump. They steady one another on the small beam. It’s the boy.
“What in the NAME of-“
“How did you get here?” the boy demands sharply.
“You THREW me up here!” Vicki wails shakily.
“I did no such- I mean ‘here,’ as in, the mine!”
She reveals the boy’s dropped book and thrusts it at him. “Take this thing, and get me down! I don’t want anything else to do with you… you meta-maniacs!”
“You didn’t… you led someone else here?” He grabs her shoulder and looks over his own. The forest is… quiet. Expect for a soft, rhythmic whooshing, maybe of an owl. Also a metallic clatter of equal pitch.
The boy plunges off the vantage point instantly, covering Vicki’s mouth. The tree fragments like kindling above them. The boy lands light as a feather despite their velocity, and deposits Vicki in a dry gulley.
“Do NOT come out until I lose them again, or they get me and have left.”
“What?!”
He takes out his returned sketchpad and effortlessly outlines more figures in an action sequence. Vicki watches his hand become imperceptible as it flies over the page. Then he pockets it and front-flips back to the regular forest floor. Vicki clambers a short ways up the embankment only to duck again as clods of dirt, from another violent impact, rain down. The boy has confronted a giant of a man, who is reeling in a ball and chain from a newly-formed crater. The links each had the circumference of a football, and the weighted end, not much smaller than a disco ball. The villain hefts them back to him as if they were paper mâché.
“Enough dodgeball, kid. You didn’t make bail,” he rumbles through a latticed visor. The ends of the chain jostle at his heels.
Then “she” materializes between Vicki’s hiding spot and the boy. The face from before now belongs to a body, sinewy and swirling with the entire color spectrum. Her white hair behaves almost like the rays shooting off her skin. The boy doesn’t wait for them to get any closer; he dives at a medium-sized tree, and propels himself a second time off its bough, aiming for the man with the chain. The trunk snaps off from his kick and begins to fall on the shining woman, but she flicks two fingers at it, and it dissipates into a swarm of bats.
The boy has evaded yet another flailing chain, nimbly taking a few steps on it as its length rockets beneath him. He executes a roundhouse kick for the man’s head, but to Vicki’s shock, the villain doesn’t budge, and boy’s ankle twists. He flops unto a grass patch and screams; the blades have become real blades, courtesy of the woman. Vicki’s seen enough.
“Go to hell!” she bellows, pitching a rock from the ditch with her might. It cracks the woman on the spine, and at once she slumps to one knee. Vicki realizes that a piece of the woman has actually chipped off. The shard lay there, losing its multitude of hues.
“Glass…”
The large man scrambles to his accomplice’s side. Vicki equips another rock, when sirens can suddenly be discerned. She thought she might have even heard dogs. The man lifts up Vicki’s tormentor and starts to flee, which she resists.
“The boy has to be dealt with. And her, too” Vicki overhears her wheeze.
“He IS dealt with, and the girl’s left with the mess. We’re done here.”
He turns to Vicki briefly as he exits, repeating himself with a snarl. “We’re DONE here. I’m warning you now: Don’t get caught up in this.”
Vicki flips him off as he barrels away with the woman. She then crouches at the boy’s side. He’s clutching in vain at countless puncture wounds in his belly and ribs.
“Lie still. There’s a patrol coming, and they can help you.” In truth, Vicki didn’t know that. She had no idea how serious his injuries were.
The boy seems to only now be aware of the sirens, as well as blue and red flashes breaking through the leaves. He sits up and pitifully hugs her shoulder.
“It’s okay,” she reassures.
“I can’t afford to bet that they’re really police. And neither c-augh, can you,” he coughs.
“What?” She feels on her shoulder that he’s holding one torn-out sheet from his book. In the darkness she can just see there are two distinct figures drawn on it, not the same one over and over like before. They were falling.
“I haven’t done this before, so I’ll understand you wanting to kill me after.”
“What are you-“
He throws himself a short distance upward, then pulls Vicki with him straight through the ground.
Another often neglected arm of service during the Battle of Britain, the volunteers of the observer corps were critical to the reporting of enemy aircraft after they crossed the coast and were no longer tracked by radar. They were often sited in inhospitable locations. A pencil study using a Staedtler 0.3mm pencil on an A4 cartridge paper sketchpad.