Vent Drawings Novels & Stories

Noah was on the floor with the drawing unrolled in front of him. He had added something in the lower right corner. Small. Specific. We crouched down to look. It was a house. Not Captain Fossil's house. A house. With a pitched roof and four windows and a garden. And three figures at the right side. A tall one. A medium one. A small one with a fossil in his hand. But different from the drawing on the kitchen table. In this version the three figures were inside the house. Not at the right side.

His gaze was eagle-like and piercing. “Tell us now, where are the drawings?” Dale, frantic, grabbed Kimmy’s arm. “You must know where they are! We need them to start production and salvage this! Do you want to sink the entire company?” Kimmy stammered. She was unable to form a coherent sentence. “The drawings… They’re…” She knew that among the documents she had so triumphantly defaced in front of me a day earlier were the critical drawings. However, at that moment, she had been too busy savoring my humiliation to bother looking at what she was holding.

With a flick of his hand, Ezra tossed the sketchbook onto Scarlett's hand. Scarlett gazed at the sketches in the sketchbook, drawn with colored pencils. In the drawings, there were curtains with small flowers, round tables and chairs, and a playroom filled with many toys! Each room also had sunflowers, and the vases holding the sunflowers were large with plump bodies... Additionally, in each room, there were wind chimes with bells hanging, as if with every gust of wind, the sound of the bells could be heard... How... how could this be! Scarlett's eyes widened in astonishment as she looked at page after page of the drawings.

Skye Emerson sits at a wooden table in the Stonebridge High library, her sketchpad open to a half-finished design for the Valentine’s Day fundraiser. One she’s drawing as a sample for those who would be partaking in the drawing competition. She’s focused as her pencil scratches across the page, outlining a real looking living heart entwined with vines, but suddenly, her focus drifts away as it keeps slipping, her head occupied with some thoughts.

But that wasn’t what he was drawing today. There was a picture of two girls—rendered crudely in crayon, but still identifiable as girls. One of them had short blond hair and the other had long brown braids. Their hands were on their faces and their mouths open in screams. David had drawn these as big black circles. A huge black shadow hovered before them, a shapeless body with red eyes and clearly defined hands. The hands looked like long silver knives. There were many drawings before this one. Lauren wondered how long David had been at it.

One stands out to me. The heading reads: ICE DAGGERS. In the first drawing, a woman has her hands outstretched, fingers crooked in a come hither motion. The second sketch features her arms going up, at the third, her palms turn over. Then the fourth sees her draw it back and before her, jagged icicles fromed from water hover. I replay the maneuver in my head, cataloguing it.

The one she had held while a transport confirmation loaded on Marcus's screen. The drawings that had come after — Eli's documentation of the life as it had been building. The facility from various angles. The courtyard in different seasons. Gerald in his habitat with accompanying observational notation. And now this one. Five figures and Gerald Junior and an arrow pointing toward everything that came after. She set it in the drawer with the others. She looked at the collection.

Adrian would throw a tantrum if he saw me in this position, so I stood and leaned against the door. He nodded enthusiastically. “This one has more details.” I took the drawing from him, my chest tightening in the softest way. It was another image of us again. Four figures this time. Adrian, me, Ollie… and a slightly bigger circle where the baby was. There were tiny lines now, little attempts at arms and legs. “It’s growing,” he explained seriously, pointing at the paper in my grip. “So I made it bigger.” “That’s very accurate,” I say, my voice gentler than I expect.

I asked, half-hoping he'd just simmer down. "Like it? Anne, this is— Look here, you got the curve of the visor just right and the mouth guard detail is perfect. Do you know how much incorrect fan art I've seen?" I blinked at him. "Just how much fan art have you seen?" "A lot. Your dad's is my favorite, but he might have some competition now," Victor said eagerly. "What else can you draw?" "I don't know. Whatever." I shrugged, trying to stay casual even as my face started to heat up. "You want me to draw a Zord or something?"