The pencil was picked up and placed on the paper. It hummed happily to itself as it danced, forming squiggles and lines, jumping enthusiastically on the dots. An enormous hand was guiding it and the pencil was careless as a butterfly, light as a superb chocolate mousse --- but then it noticed what it was writing.
The enormous hand, so full of wisdom, so magnificent, so kind, gently gripping the pencil, was killing off the main character of an equally enormous, equally magnificent, book. The pencil was horrified. It was aiding and helping to murder someone! The hand, still lovingly tracing out the words, reveling in their beauty, "he smiled, blood pouring out of his wound, a tear forming on his eyelashes," when it, too, noticed that something was wrong.
It was a battle of wills; the pencil's against the hand's. The hand had intended to write, "as he took one last breath," but what came out was, "when he burst out with booming laughter." The pencil was slowly but surely winning! After all, it had good on its side. "He was alive," the pencil wrote on, "and intended to stay that way." With a last heroic effort, the pencil broke off its own lead, to stop the hand from crossing out the improved ending.
A face of unimaginable size emerged from the shadows, and the sky took with the sound of a chuckle.
Afterword:
John Smith, famous for his 400-page book, was born in 2045. He was one of the last authors to use pencils for the drafts of his books. He thought that a pencil added more personality to the writer's hand, editing and helping the writing. He was often heard saying, "Oh, that little blighter. He knew what he was doing. Couldn't have finished it better," and although there is no document explaining this repeated quote, it is believed that it has something to do with the pencil he always kept in a book-shaped box. John Smith died in 2112, after catching a cold, but refusing to stop writing.
The enormous hand, so full of wisdom, so magnificent, so kind, gently gripping the pencil, was killing off the main character of an equally enormous, equally magnificent, book. The pencil was horrified. It was aiding and helping to murder someone! The hand, still lovingly tracing out the words, reveling in their beauty, "he smiled, blood pouring out of his wound, a tear forming on his eyelashes," when it, too, noticed that something was wrong.
It was a battle of wills; the pencil's against the hand's. The hand had intended to write, "as he took one last breath," but what came out was, "when he burst out with booming laughter." The pencil was slowly but surely winning! After all, it had good on its side. "He was alive," the pencil wrote on, "and intended to stay that way." With a last heroic effort, the pencil broke off its own lead, to stop the hand from crossing out the improved ending.
A face of unimaginable size emerged from the shadows, and the sky took with the sound of a chuckle.
Afterword:
John Smith, famous for his 400-page book, was born in 2045. He was one of the last authors to use pencils for the drafts of his books. He thought that a pencil added more personality to the writer's hand, editing and helping the writing. He was often heard saying, "Oh, that little blighter. He knew what he was doing. Couldn't have finished it better," and although there is no document explaining this repeated quote, it is believed that it has something to do with the pencil he always kept in a book-shaped box. John Smith died in 2112, after catching a cold, but refusing to stop writing.
