The Mongol Objective

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The pencil, wielded like a wooden stake gripped in his little fist, speeds over the page, creating details here, shading in areas there, stabbing at the heart of his horrific vision. And as the drawing takes form, emerging from the sharply detailed chrysalis of his young mind, sweat beads down the boy’s face. He shakes his head to clear a thick lock of matted red hair from his eyes, awash in robin’s-egg blue innocence, as they lose focus, crack, then tremble with inescapable dread.

The pencil point breaks and he absently reaches into a box of sharpened pencils on the rug beside him. He ignores the sounds from the babysitter, the fifty-year-old neighbor with her fingers to her lips, watching over him in astonishment that slowly turns to horror as the lines on his page darken and the images take clarity.

Finally, the boy sets down the pencil, blinks and looks up at the sitter with tears spilling from his eyes, cascading down his puffy red cheeks. He lifts the page, tears it from the pad and holds it up for her to see.

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