The Artist's Touch

Chapter 1
Problems with Prints

Chapter Description: Derek is a young man who feels like he's hit a premature mid-life crisis until a pencil he finds sends things out of control.

Chapter One

Derek yawned loudly as he slammed his hand down on the snooze button of his alarm clock. It has just recently buzzed to life, both waking him and informing him that it was currently 6 ’O’clock. Although he would have liked nothing better then to stay in bed and sleep for another four hours or so, Derek begrudgingly got out of bed and stretched, listening to his bones crack and his muscles attempt to stretch after being dormant for the night. He walked slowly, in his underclothes, to his bathroom. In a matter of minutes hot, steamy water poured down over his body as he slowly scrubbed down himself down, sighing with each stroke. He then garbed himself in business slacks and a polo shirt with a large Mickey Mouse emblem on the front and walked out of the door to his car.

It took about fifteen minutes for Derek to get to the office building where he worked - and boy did he wish he didn’t. Even on the first day he was hired, he’d always imagine that this building would look different, adorned with countless trademarks and maybe even built to resemble a certain one. But, just like when he first saw the building, it looked identical to the countless rows of office buildings that made this part of the city look exactly like a neglected garden with hideous, mono-structured weeds poking out the ground that begged to be plucked and tossed aside. After staring up at the horrendous building for a few minutes, he sighed and pulled his briefcase out from the small, white Toyota’s trunk and walked up to the building, kicking a small pebble into the building with him. Derek envied the pebble for being able to sit outside; alone, carefree, and never having to enter the building. That is, until Derek kicked it inside.

“Derek, your exactly thirty seconds late, again.” A horrendously obese woman barked at him in a monotone grunt as he walked through the sliding doors. She was boxed into her small desk at the visitor’s center, complete with a small file cabinet if she ever decided to file things, a small notebook in case she decided to keep track of her worker’s days off, and a small computer if she ever decided to get any work done. He had never told anyone this before, but Derek used Mrs. Rozettarodgreedez as a platform for one of his only popular creations, Roz. Luckily for him, no one ever caught on and Derek kept his chuckle to himself for an entire month when Monsters Inc was previewed on television. Derek even found himself chuckling now as the elevator opened, taking him upstairs to his floor.

The door slid open and Derek held his breath as he plunged into the radioactive pile of toxic dump that was his job. Animation. As a senior in High School and all throughout college, Derek adored the art of making pictures dance on paper, on tricking people’s eyes to making them believe inanimate objects were moving, that they had feelings and emotion. And that’s when Derek, a Senior in College, made the biggest blunder of his life. Derek received an offer from Disney to leave school and to become an animator for them. Disney offered huge sums of money to its animators if they did a good job, and Derek was sure he had what it took to make those sums of money. As it turned out, Disney was nothing sort of a slave driver to its animators, demanding long, twelve-hour days, six-day work weeks, and barely any vacation time. Derek’s social life was completely destroyed, his day consisted of sleep, work, eating, then going back to sleep. Sometimes if he was lucky, he may get out for a quick hour on the town, but he always had to leave the city earlier then any of his friends in order to get up for his melancholy job the next day.

“Ok, Derek. Today you have to finish that sketch of our newest animation, in addition to fixing these prints of Ariel, Jasmine, Belle, and Aurora that you made last week.” His manager, Carol, said to him in an obnoxious tone.

“What? Why? Those prints were perfect.” Derek objected. Derek wish he had kept his mouth shut, Carol preceded to tell him the exact measurements on each of the Disney Princesses and exactly how many hundredths of a centimeter his prints were off by. It was all Derek could do to keep himself from hitting the man, after all Disney pulled him out of college before he finished; he could never get another decent job.

“I’ll get right on it.” Derek sighed.

“Yeah, well you better.” Carol triumphantly walked away, looking for his next victim.

“Pretty rough, huh?”

“Same as every day, Heather.” Derek turned to face the woman in the cubicle next to his. While she wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous, Heather had an extremely apparent sense of loveliness that Derek craved like sleep or food. Her features were extremely soft and smooth against her fine skin, and her hair shown in a multitude of colors, as most artists who experiment with their sense of expression do. Derek’s own hair was as black as freshly wafting smoke, having never dyed it. His mother was completely against changing around what God gave you, and she nearly threw him from the house when he was eight when he applied a water-tattoo of Scooby Doo. His features were a strange mix of sharp and sulky due to his constant lack of sleep. When he was fully healthy, he was often mistaken as a much younger man. At twenty-five when he first moved to Florida to start his new job he was asked to join the local High School’s Youth Group.

“I guess you’re going to be here a while again, huh?”

“Looks that way.”

“Well, it could be worse.”

“I’m not sure how, I barely get any sleep as it is.”

“Exactly, you could have to spend the night.”

“And make sure to lock the door when you leave.” Carol trusted the building’s key into Derek’s tired palm. Sure enough, it was Ten ’O’clock, closing time, and Derek had to stay even later. The prints were due tomorrow, and failure to complete them would surely end in the completion of his employment with Disney.

“Sure.”

“Good, I expect those prints to be absolutely perfect tomorrow.” Carol slammed the door behind him as he left for the night.

“Well, at least no one will disturb me tonight.” Derek sat at his desk to begin to sketch his prints. He had only two more to go, in addition to his character design, and he couldn’t afford to waste any time when it took him all day to finish the first four. Just as Derek was getting into the state of mind to complete the sketches, however, his pencil let out a sickening crack as broken lead danced across his paper.

“Awe, shit.” Derek blew the dust away, and was relieved to see his paper remained unscathed, but getting a new pencil when this one was completely shattered would prove to be a problem. Derek ran into the elevator to go to the supply floor in the basement to find a new one. Derek had never been down there before, and he was surprised when he found that the room looked exactly like a supply room, with shelves that reached the room, barely a foot above him. He rummaged around for quite some time, but there wasn’t a blasted pencil in the place. Of course Mrs. Rozettarodgreedez couldn’t be relied on to keep them where they ought to go, the shelf marked pencils was completely bare.

“Great, where am I going to find a pencil now?” And as if it was answering his question, Derek caught a glimpse of something gleaming green in the distance. He walked over to inspect it, and he found that the light emitted from a strange box with an ancient lock on it. The lock crumbled at his touch, and inside Derek found a sight for sore eyes, an honest-to-goodness No.2 Pencil! He quickly pulled it from his case and ran back to the lobby to work on his pictures. Almost instantly, his arm felt like it had a mind of its own. His new pencil started to dance across the page, perfectly capturing the essence of each princess. He hadn’t kept track of how long he worked on these prints, but before long, he held up each one and admired its perfection. They were amazing, so life-like. It was like he was watching each movie right before his eyes. He placed the work on Carol’s desk and walked out of the building.

When Derek got home, he quickly disrobed and got into bed. As he turned off the lights and went to go to sleep, something poked him in the ribs. After turning the light on, Derek realized that he was still holding the pencil. He tossed it onto his nightstand and heard the lead scrape across it.

“I’ll bring it back tomorrow.” Derek promised aloud, “Unless I don’t have work, that would be terrible.” Derek sarcastically said as he turned off the lights one more time and drifted off to sleep. So heavy was his sleep that he didn’t notice when the pencil he had tossed began to glow green once more, the tip forming an atomic pattern. The lead on the night stand seemed to respond to this, and also shone a faint green as well. As soon as it began, it had stopped, and the night drove on with no intrusions.

Once again, a loud buzzing noise infiltrated Derek’s apartment, but when he smacked his alarm clock, he found that it was his phone. Cursing who was on the other end, he begrudgingly noticed that it was at least an hour earlier then he’d normally get up.

“Whatcha want?” Derek asked as he tried to find words to tell his called how annoyed he was.

“Derek, its Heather. According to the Emergency Chain, the building’s lost all power and the generators are shot. Its probably going to be down for at least a week, so no work. Go back to bed, bye.” As soon as he put the phone down, Derek cheered.