The Last Pencil
A couple years ago, I was cleaning out the desk in my bedroom and found a crazy amount of pencils. Some were never sharpened, and others were shorter than half a finger. While doing this cleaning, I started thinking about the movie Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium. I’m not going to spoil the movie right now. If you have seen the movie, hopefully you will see where the movie inspired me for this following short story. Also, I started writing this around last year when I had finished watching Merlin, so you may see a few references to the knights of the round table. Enjoy!
The Last Pencil
When Arthur Dragon was born, he was gifted with a plethora of pencils. Although these were not any regular pencils, these were magical pencils. Whenever Arthur would use any of these magical pencils either he would be transported to the new world or those characters in the stories would come to life in his own world. These characters and worlds varied but included the Wild West, superhero, and outer space. All of these came alive due to his pencils which filled up an entire bedroom. Arthur’s parents had to find a bigger house, so that Arthur could sleep in his own room away from the pencils.
Arthur created his adventure and fantasy stories all throughout his childhood. Therefore, when it came time to choose an occupation that Arthur wanted to become a writer. Arthur believed the best way to accomplish this was by joining the local newspaper, The Camelot Chronicle. This was much different for Arthur. He had to switch my imagined, pencil written stories to computer typed current events. Over time Arthur noticed that his life had become less colorful. Now, he viewed the world as black and white as he typed up the current events.
After few decades after working at the newspaper, Arthur stumbled over a small, dusty box while searching for his computer charger. He opened up the box to find the remaining pencils from his youth. Arthur picked up one of the pencils and found scrap paper to write. Once he wrote down a quick creative story, Arthur began to notice numerous colors everywhere he looked. Additionally, his heart began to beat faster as he returned to his home through new words. From that time on Arthur would still go into his regular job during the day but at night he worked viciously on writing new worlds and characters with the pencils.
Arthur kept this up for many years until one day he went to grab another pencil. Instead of the usual handful that he would grab, his hand grasped one pencil. This baffled Arthur since to him the pencils were of endless supply.
After all of this time, Arthur has worked his way to the last pencil given to him at birth. He had to take a step back and think over how he would use this final pencil. After careful consideration, Arthur decided to devote a weekend while outlining the stories in his mind during the days before. He took his time for letting his mind run rampant through fields of imagination. During the weekend, Arthur devoted every second to writing out these stories. As he wrote with the last pencil parts of his body began to ache starting with his right hand. Arthur wrote until his pencil got to be a tiny stub at which point the physical pain had encompassed his head along with the rest of his body. As he approached the last part of lead in the pencil, Arthur let out his last breath in the middle of a sentence.
