The Drawing

It was very late, nightime already, perhaps a friday night or a saturday... it's too blurred in my head for me to remember insignificant details like the day everything happened.

I managed to get rid of the obsessing object which practically ate me all this time, but I got to write my story down if I don't want to sink into insanity again. Memories are all that's left to me.

So, that friday or saturday night, whatever, I was once again walking alone in the dark, empty streets, trying to get all the problems of the day on the sleepy side of my brain, where I would only find them back the next day when I'd wake up. I am an artist. I mostly draw rather than paint or sculpt, and when I do so, I always choose an odd subject - at least odd for those who don't know my work - like severed animals, often birds and rats that I find easily in town. Sometimes I draw bodies. Corpses actually. Don't be scared, I'm not killing people; I have a friend who works at the mortuary, he allows me to go there occasionally to draw my "morbid sketches" as he says.

Many people don't see the point of me drawing dead people or animals, but once you've given a good look at my drawings, you can see that I don't only draw the subject, actually I'm catching it's soul on the paper, and when I finally give the last line, It's like the paper receives a kind of life, having absorbed the soul of the subject.

Anyway, as I was saying, I was walking down the main street of my town, hoping for some inspiration to come with the heavy breath of the wind, whiping my face with an incredible strength, when I saw it. The dead body of an unknown creature, right before my left foot, waiting for me to pick it up. And I did pick it, examining it slowly and carefully, before putting it into my jacket's pocket and bringing it home.

When I got into my house, I took the mysterious creature out of my pocket and put it on my desk; then I just threw my jacket on the floor and rushed to the seat in front of the drawing table. And I drew. For hours. I didn't even ate as I was too absorbed by my work, my eyes travelling through each detail of the little body.

It was a weird mix between a crowd, a fish and an owl. It's back was covered with scales, and it went on the sides, reaching what looked like little ears, but more like an owl's ears, really tiny. Its thin "paws" were perhaps the strangest thing on this creature, for they had what looked like feathers which were made of a material I would qualify as a kind of very smooth metal. The head however, was perhaps the most difficult part to draw, because of it's wide, green eyes, which were litterally staring at me all the time in a disturbing way, with an expression -if there's no other word- that would stay in my brain all my life, even now I can still feel its strong, cold looking piercing my chest just like the wind was passing through my jacket when I found the... thing.

I stood there, bending over the paper, a pencil in my hand, for about twenty-six hours. I couldn't have stand more anyway, as my eyes were starting to burn, and I had not ate at all during the time I worked on the drawing. What I feared the most, was the final part. The one where the soul of the subject gets a new life, prisonner of the paper. "That thing may be dangerous", I thought to myself. And I couldn't resolve to finish it. I let it rot in my room for three days, until the smell became unbearable. Then, I simply took the creature away, and binned it. After that, I decided that, after all, no harm could be done by the soul of a three-days rotten monster, perhaps I wouldn't even be able to catch it's soul, I had waited so long...

I finally managed to finish the drawing, but I couldn't say if the soul was there or not. So I decided just to put it apart, with the unfinished and failed drawings.

A few days later, I began to feel really sick, I had constant headaches, vomited almost every night, and I couldn't draw anymore, for it made my eyes burn only after one hour of work, sometimes two. I began to think that this drawing might be somehow cursed, and a month after I had put it away from sight, I fetched it, to destroy it.

I think I was simply hoping that my life would be normal again, that I would be able to draw again. So I brought it back to the light of my bedroom, and sat before the sheet, watching the wide, green eyes of what I was now calling "the beast". Watching it didn't really help though, and I soon felt that, even if destroying my failed work was something I never found the strength to do, I had to make this drawing disappear, before it finally drived me insane. I tried everything. Erase it. Burn it. Cut it. Shoot it. Nothing worked, the odd smile of the beast was still there, in a way it was smiling at me in a scoffer, mean smile, almost as if the drawing was proud of itself, because it coudn't be destroyed.

One day, after trying once again everything I could do to make that freaking smile desappear, I got sick of trying, and simply stabbed that awful creature, right in the middle of it's green eye... and I heard a creak. A terrible creak, like breaking bones, and then I saw the blood. It was flowing from the little hole I had made, and covering the smile of the beast, which was, I could swear it, not so cheerful as it was a second earlier. The victory was there, I only had to finish it, to kill my drawing. I stabbed the beast a second time, right through what I assumed to be the heart, and there I heard a most horrible creak, then the sound of a struggle, just as if something was trying to get out of the drawing, and then... nothing. It was gone. The soul, the beast, it was all gone. Only the blood still stained the white page, as a proof that this had not been a bad nightmare, and that the creature had actually existed.

Now, I must tell you something about that beast. I don't think that I killed it, actually I think that... it's still around and that it will be coming for me soon, because this morning, on my nightstand, I found a little enveloppe. What was in it brought my stomach to my feet: it was a bunch of metallic feathers, and a note that made my blood stop running through my veins. I'm quite sure this was from the beast, the feathers were the same unforgettable metallic ones. I must go now, run from this place, as far as I can go. I hope that someone will read this, if anyone ever opens this diary at least my story will be known.

''The police found the dead body of a man in the streets yesterday, these pages, surely ripped of a diary, were found in the right pocket of his jacket. In the left one, was a simple note which said :''

"My heart was to the right, too bad ."