Someone Drawing Novels & Stories

“What are you drawing?” He didn’t answer. Instead, he simply turned the paper toward me. My breath hitched looking at the drawing. It was simple, childlike but what surprised me was what he had drawn. A woman. A little girl beside her. And a small boy holding the woman’s hand. My eyes froze on it. I recognized her instantly. Melania.

“Her charm seems to be limitless; almost all teachers love her.” “I do admit that I also like her. Isn’t it the reason why we are helping her?” “Well…” The person they were talking to was ignorant of what they were discussing. Alek Cider absentmindedly stared at the unwritten whiteboard. Suddenly, she pried open her bag and tore the covers of her notebooks. She put it beside her and got a clean piece of paper. She drew something like a machine, but not really a machine. There were so many rectangular and cylinder shapes. She kept on scribbling like a mad person.

"It's just... yesterday during drawing time, he drew something a little concerning." "Concerning?" She unfolded a sheet of paper and turned it toward me. My breath hitched. It was a doodle. I could clearly make out a stick figure that appeared to be a man lying on the floor, red scribbles flooding around him, and another smaller figure standing nearby. "I asked him about it," she continued carefully, "and he told me the man lying down was Aiden." The name knocked the air out of my lungs. My heart pounded violently against my ribs.

she says, reaching into her backpack. She produces a drawing. The drawing shows four figures in a garden. One is tall in a white coat, two are small—one with spiky hair, one with a rabbit—and a fourth figure stands slightly apart, rendered in careful, dark crayon strokes. The labels are clear: Mama. Maple. Me. And for the fourth: The sad man. "That's our family," Rosy says. The word hits me where I am not protected. I keep my face completely frozen, a skill that costs me more in this moment than it ever has. I look at that fourth figure, standing on the edge of the page.

It was a figure. Not detailed—he doesn't draw people with much detail, preferring the shape of things to their surfaces. But the outline was clear enough. Someone is standing. Somewhere with light that came from the wrong angle, falling up instead of down or sideways, or from a direction that doesn't correspond to any sun I've seen. The figure itself was still, but there was something in the way he'd drawn the posture—the set of the shoulders, the slight tilt of the head—that communicated waiting. Not passive waiting. The active kind, the kind that has been going on long enough that the body has learned to hold it without tension. I stood at the kitchen table and looked at the drawing for a

From the drawing, it's lunch break and students are milling about around me but I'm standing there, looking stuck and feeling exhausted from the healing process. My eyes are a muddy brown but my lips are stretched out in a wide smile. My shoulders are slumped but my nostrils are flared like I'm angry and my fists are clenched so tightly, it's like I'm trying not to go wild. Like I'm trying to rein in my demons. And I don't even remember this. “These drawings are incredible, Jeremy.” “I should know, I made them and they're called outlines.” I slap his chest playfully, “Show a little gratitude.”

the man continued. Lucas thought for a while before replying, “Actually, this is not the only thing I can draw. I can also draw other things.” “Oh?” The man was baffled. He had not expected Lucas to not make way for them; he realized that the young man was not there to scribble a couple of dragons on the ground. “Then, I’d like to know. Besides those dragons and that bead, what else can you draw?” There was a playful look on the man’s face.

“I was just starting to enjoy the silence.” Anyone in this room would think we are having a friendly conversation, little will they know that a war is being fought right in front of them. He smiles again — slow, maddening, like he already knows I’ll have to speak to him again. And I hate that even more than I hate him showing up. --- It's late at night and I watch Leo scribble in his sketchbook on the floor. He has drawn a man. Tall. He has a big smile and two black dots for eyes.

"Miss, I... I drew a picture for you." I stared in shock at the child before me. He could not have been more than six or seven years old. His face was smeared with dirt, but his teeth were incredibly bright and white. He held the drawing out toward me. The strokes were very scribbled, but for a child his age, it was truly beautiful. I looked at the picture. It was a girl leaning against a tree. It was me. "Why did you draw me. Did the man next to you tell you to?"

Lucian Voss I was still holding the paper in my hand long after the door closed behind me. I didn’t even realize it at first, but my fingers had tightened around it like I was afraid of letting it go. It was a child’s drawing, done in crayon, the lines uneven and rough. There were three stick figures. One tall figure was labeled “Mr. Lucian.” The next was a woman with long hair, drawn with wide strokes and labeled “Mama.” Between them stood a small boy with messy curls and a wide smile. He had no label because I didn’t need one.