The Mad Pencil

• Maggie Le
• Short Story
• 2017

The hailstones were like sharp shooting bullets of ice. Abandoned and agitated, they plummeted towards the bedroom window, to crash as a swirling whirlpool pattern on the desk. Now and again, they glared inside at the desk. Near this, muttered the pencil stump with a destroyed lead, a destroyed shaft and a destroyed life. Fuming, he remembered the last time they were together.

The stationeries had met at the back of the desk in a gang of bullying, boasting and bickering: the ruler, the correction pen, the sharpener, the highlighter - and on the outside, the little pencil. The atmosphere was full of anxiety.
"I'm easy to hold, he'll choose me"
"But I have an invisible ink, of course it'll be me"
Over and over...again and again...and, as expected, the most useful stationeries were stuffed into the boy's bag ready for school the next day - all apart for the little pencil. He was short; he was too short. Angrily, he sighted the backpack translucent into thin air. Madness decreased. Recognition madness