Saturday's Storyteller: "The last thing I had expected was for the drawing I had completed to wink at me."

by Belinda Roddie

The last thing I had expected was for the drawing I had completed to wink at me. I had made her simple, straightforward - black lines, minimal shading. Her body hunched over that single lump of stone I had rubbed into existence on the thick paper of the sketchbook. Her fingers dipped in the inky blackness of what would have been a pond if I had been keen enough to use blue. She was flat, colorless, and oddly shaped. But she had eyes. And she could wink with them.

I closed the sketchbook in one simple snap, and for a minute, I thought I heard sniffling. Like someone was crying. But it was simply the snoring of my chubby tabby cat from his cushioned tower in the corner, and I was able to proceed with my day as normal.

I'm not an artist by any stretch of the imagination. I sketch, yes. I use pen and pencil. But I've never had that creative touch to me. Doodling has been something I've done for years, mostly to pass the time and steer off boredom. My teachers were always amused by my little cartoons on my homework assignments. One of my English mentors even raised my grade because of one particularly odd portrait of the current president. But I digress.

In the end, I was too curious not to check the drawing again - I mean, who wouldn't be? And there she was, that sloppily drawn girl, staring back at me, winking. And she was smiling now, too. I hadn't drawn her smiling. Her mouth had been a straight line. A quick swish of the pen. Emotionless. Contemplating.

She couldn't speak to me, and she couldn't hear me when I spoke. But I could write. And when I fetched my pen, I wrote, "Hello."

At this, she waved. Her hand - a blob of a hand - actually moved. And she kept smiling. And she kept winking.

And then she made a heart with whatever fingers she had.

So either I was now ready to be committed - or this drawing was falling in love with me.

This week's prompt was provided by Jocelyn Morton.