The Artist's Touch

Chapter 2
Picnic Panic

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Chapter Description: Things only get worse for Derek when the pencil finds its way out into the world.

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Chapter 2

Derek didn’t stir from his slumber until nearly ten o’clock, and he was giddy with energy when he did. Derek had slept nine hours nearly undisturbed, a feat that was considered Gennis-worthy to people in his line of work. Like most people who are gifted with an unforeseen day of absence, Derek was content with strolling around his four-room apartment in his pajamas instead of actually accomplishing something. He finally decided to grab a bowl, pour in his favorite cereal, Raisin Brand, and add milk. For the next thirty minutes, there was only eating and channel surfing on Derek’s mind.

“Dora, Dora, Dora the Explor . . .”

“Definitely not.”

“Give me liberty, or give me . . .”

“Boring.”

“Cheese noodles! I thought . . .”

“Who says ?Cheese noodles’?”

“One of these days, Alice, one of these days, bam, pow . . .”

“Way too old school.”

“And in local news, our favorite animation cooperation has suffered a mysterious accident.” Derek, although enjoying bleeding a multitude of shows together into a humorous mess, was compelled by the interesting title that was describing the event at his work.

“I’m standing here with one of the head managers of the Disney Cooperation. Sir, can you tell us what’s been going on?”

“Well, Jerry, after inspecting the scene of the crime, it would appear that someone severed our entire major power grid system by literally cutting apart all of the cords.” Derek nearly spat out his cereal in laughter when he saw that Carol was the “Head Manager of the Disney Cooperation”, but he soon turned a ghostly white when he heard his description.

“So it was an act of sabotage?”

“Most certainly, see these cables?” Carol held up a cord, perfectly slashed horizontally. “They did not just fall apart themselves!”

“I see, now, who do you think could have caused such a blunt disrespect for America, no, the world’s favorite animator?”

“Well, our investigative squad has a few suspects. They’re investigating their prime suspect now.”

Just as Carol finished those words, Derek’s phone rang for the second time today. He casually picked it up and began to say hello, but he was rudely cut off.

“Derek! They’re coming to interrogate you, and I think that they might fire you whether or not you’re innocent. You need to get out of your house pronto to create and alias or something.”

“Heather, what do you mean?”

“Hurry! Go to the park and pretend to be sketching landscapes or something.”

“Alright.” Derek hung up the phone, and with a sense of urgency he ran to his bedroom and switched into one of his rather dusty and unused casual outfits. After selecting a basic, white shirt and a leather jacket; which, although it still looked good, was rather tight on him from being in its prime nearly ten years ago, he finished the look with a pair of faded blue jeans and scoured the room for his sketch pad, forgotten since the glory days of college, and placed it into his leather laptop case. Once again, he looked around feverishly for some sort of writing utensil. After searching everywhere, Derek scratched his head.

“Whoever heard of an artist without a pencil? What?” Derek uttered in surprise as he noticed the hand he was rubbing his head with contained a pencil, the one with the greenish glow from the night before.

“How did you . . ., agh, never mind. I need to go!” Derek pocketed the pencil and ran out of the room.

* * * * *

Derek picked his favorite pond in the park to sit at as he enjoyed the fresh air. He glances around the park, looking for something to draw, and he finally settled on a lamp post. It was worn and rusted down, its black paint had given in to the elements long ago. At first, Derek decided to replicate the lamp, but as he drew he realized that it would look so much better on paper in its glory. Derek’s mind began to imagine exactly what the lamp post might have looked like when it was first erected in the park, smooth and cool with a lovely sheen. Derek’s thoughts drifted away into his creation for quite some time, and to anyone watching, it was rather humorous when he snapped back to reality and glanced around the park as if he was looking for something. With paranoia leaving him, he decided to return to his work.

“What . . . whoa.” Derek was normally a fairly good drawer; after all he worked for Disney. But the picture he looked down at looked like a photograph that even a master would spend weeks on. He marveled in the beauty of his work, until a voice called out to him.

“Hey! Derek! Are you there?”

“Huh; oh, right. I’m right over here Heather.” Heather walked over to the park bench and gracefully sat down next to him. She peered over his shoulder to see what he was working on.

“Oh, hey! That looks great! Do you come here a lot to work on it? It looks like it might have taken a while.”

“Nah, not really. I only started it today.”

“What? That’s not possible. You couldn’t have been here longer then ten minutes.” Heather’s tone implied that she thought Derek was kidding. A little annoyed with her lack of faith in him, Derek pulled out his phone to check the time.

“You’re just late, see it’s already . . .”But Derek’s eyes froze at the time. The time on his phone clicked over to 10:50.

“10:50, which means you couldn’t have been here more then 10 minutes Derek. I called you at 10:25 or so, and you probably took another five minutes to get dressed and another ten to walk here.” She was right, of course. But Derek knew he could never have done something this good in ten minutes. Flustered, he didn’t speak for a few minutes. Sensing this apprehension, Heather decided to change the subject.

“Well, at least you did a good job replicating that pole. Even down to the last shine.”

“Nah, not really. It’s so old and rusted; I decided to make it new like it might have looked.”

“You’re really loosing it, because I see a brand-new street light in front of me.” Again, Derek looked up, and again he was embarrassed to find a brand-new antique-style pole standing in front of him. He quickly began to scribble on the pad.

“What? Don’t get upset. Its just a perfectly common mistake. It still looks really good.”

“I’ve been making those a lot lately.” Derek sighed.

“Well, I’m hungry, wanna go catch some lunch?”

Derek’s stomach rumbled before he could answer.

“Yeah, some lunch sounds good.”

“It’s such a lovely day out, too bad we didn’t think ahead. We could have had a picnic or something.” The pair sighed, that is until their eyes both caught a faint green glow, emanating from Derek’s lap. Looking down, both Heather and Derek saw that the pencil had once again donned a green aura, only this time it was much more vibrant. Both adults gasped as the pencil stood up on the paper by itself and began to gracefully dance across the page like a figure skater, placing the hard lines of a clearly defined picnic basket on the page. As soon as the pencil finished its work, it fell back down where it began with a clunk.

“What was that about?” Heather asked Derek, was fixated ahead. She turned to look too and gasped when sitting next to the light fixture was a picnic basket with a checkered blanket slightly fluttering in the breeze. The pair got up to inspect the basket, and to their surprise it was filled with sandwiches, pickles, chips, soda, watermelon, just about anything worth bringing to eat on a picnic.

“Well, we shouldn’t let a perfectly good picnic go to waste.” Heather smiled as the pair spread the blanket and dug in.

* * * * *

As Heather and Derek enjoyed lunch, Derek was thrilled to know that Heather shared many feelings about their work with him, and she even shared his background story of being kidnapped out of college. More amazingly though, Heather possessed many qualities and traits that he himself had or admired. As he spent more and more time with her on the blanket in the park, he felt a throbbing in his heart, and nervous sweat on his forehead whenever she laughed, and a ping of pride whenever she complimented him. As the afternoon wore on and the picnic basket ran empty, Derek found himself slowly falling in love with Heather. He refused to admit it at first, but he slowly came to this realization after a series of self-questioning while Heather casually conversed with him. He and Heather were never close friends, so why did he feel so happy just to be near her, just to be with in smelling range of her perfume.

However, their conversation was cut short when Heather reached into the picnic basket and flicked on a radio that was sitting inside.

“Authorities have reported a prime suspect in their pursuit against the culprit who slashed the power wires at Disney Headquarters last night. Be on the look out for Derek Walters, who . . .” Heather quickly turned off the radio.

“You cut the power in the Disney building last night?”

“What? No! How could you think I’d do something like that?”

“Well, you were the last one in the building last night.”

“So, the guy could have broken in afterwards.”

“But there was no sign of a struggle!”

“I’m telling you, I hate working but I’d never damage the building.”

“Did you lock the door?” Derek stopped to think.

“What?”

“Did you lock the door when you left last night?”

“I, um . . . I can’t remember.”

“Well, if you left the door open, it was your fault.”

“I suppose, but I might have locked it! Besides,

nothing was stolen. Who would break into Disney Headquarters and take nothing?”

“That doesn’t matter; we need to get you out of here before . . .”

“Freeze! Miami PD! We’ve got you surrounded!” As the cop, badge revealed, yelled out to Derek and Heather several police cars with blue and red lights flaring pulled up behind him.

“The Miami PD? But we’re at least three hours away from . . .” But Derek was cut short as one of the officers pulled out his gun.

“Run!” Heather edged on.

“If I run, the charges get worse.”

“If you don’t you’ll go to jail for something you may or may not have done.”

“You believe me now?”

“I never said I did, I never said I didn’t.” The prospect of Heather’s support gave Derek the strength he needed to run. However, the policemen had more strength then Derek without inspiration, and they immediately began to give chase to Derek. Derek has a good start on them, but he knew that unless he bolted for the forest that sat near the edge of the park he would never escape his pursuers. Pushing his nearly exhausted body to its limits, Derek made it into the woods, but the police were close behind, and Derek knew that he had almost no chance of escaping them.

* * * * *

The police had completely overlooked Heather, so she quickly packed up the picnic basket and, placing Derek’s still open sketchbook on top, left to hide everything in her car.

“What have you gotten into Derek?” Heather asked herself as she loaded the items into her car. Holding his sketchbook for comfort, Heather looked down at it woefully.

“Please, find a way out, to hide so they don’t find you.” Heather’s eyes grew large shortly after her quiet prayer, for as she finished Derek’s pencil began to glow vibrant green and it stood on its end. Professionally, the pencil danced across Derek’s sketchbook with artistic perfection. It was all Heather could do to stay standing at the sight of the phantasmal spectacle she was witnessing. After a few seconds, the pencil was finished and it collapsed back onto the paper with a light thud. Heather looked down at the drawing with a confused look on her face.

* * * * *

As the pencil skidded across Derek’s notebook, he began noticing changes in his physique. It was minor at first, his face tickled a little bit. When he went to wipe whatever had hit him away, instead he was greeted by the lack of facial hair. Although he was confused, he didn’t shave this morning after all, he had no time to display it as a similar sensation was affecting his chest, arms, and crotch. Also accompanying this was a sudden loss of balance, and Derek had to slow down greatly just to stay on foot. Derek looked down at his arms, and let out a gasp as he saw his arm hair recede and his sleeves flap in the slight breeze.

“What the?” Derek began to ask, but he stopped when his vision suddenly cascaded down to nearly half of what it had been only moments before. Derek’s shirt began to swallow him as muscle strength suddenly left his body, being replaced with a bubbly form of sugar energy.

“I can’t hear footsteps anymore! He must be close!” Derek heard one of the officers yell. Now filled with energy, Derek tried to make a run for it, but to his surprise, he went tumbling to the ground, scratching himself up on the pine needles and cones. Derek looked behind him and gasped when he saw that his legs were completely hidden within his jeans; he could even see where his legs ended. In a panic, Derek’s eyes darted back and forth and to his luck he found a small space under a slightly uprooted tree. Derek was positive that he would not fit, but he had no other options. He wriggled free from his over-sized clothes and attempted to tuck himself under the tree, fully believing he would fail.

Much to his surprise, it was quite a comfortable fit under the tree, the soft soil feeling much better on his skin, which was feeling strangely sensitive as well. With relative ease, Derek pulled his legs up close to his naked body, thankful that no draft was wafting under the tree. As the officers crept up closer to the tree, Derek held his breath.

“What the hell? His cloths are piled right here!” One of the officers bent down to pick up Derek’s pants and pulled his wallet out of it.

“Derek Walters, just like we thought.” The officer pocketed Derek’s wallet as he gathered up the rest of Derek’s clothes with a look of mild amusement.

“Interesting way to distract the cops, I guess. But how hard will it be to see a naked guy come out of the park?” The other cops laughed with the first one as the group left back towards their cars. Derek, however, remained for nearly half of an hour, although he had no way of knowing this. His entire body was frozen in fear by adrenaline, and it was only after this period of time that Derek could muster the strength to move out of the tree’s protection.

Derek shivered from the damp forest air touching every inch of his bare body. However, over all of this Derek managed to hear the sound of a stream mumbling not too far away. Steams meant fresh, drinkable water and Derek was in dire need of that after so much running and panting. Derek made his way over to the stream slowly; the pine needles, stones, and other forest debris were extremely rough on his bare feet. However, when he reached the stream, he felt a surge of joy as he rushed over to it and jumped straight in, causing a huge splash. Derek greedily gulped down water and splashed in merriment, but almost as suddenly as he had began, he had stopped; for as he drank the water of the stream, something caught his eye; his reflection.

Derek wasn’t sure what to make of his clothes growing larger, his body hair retreating, or his sudden lack of muscle power. He really hadn’t paid much attention to it, like it was normal. However, looking into the stream, it was bluntly obvious that Derek was not looking back at himself in the glimmering water. It was the reflection of a child.

To Be Continued . . .

 

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