It was a stormy night that day, as the dirty snow rained upon the long dead field, and thunder roared and echoed across the broad, grand foyer of the boarding school. Outside on a dirt path, an obscured, masked man who was fast on his feet hurried down the road through thick tan fog and the plummeting snow. (Most people would say he looked like a cowboy.) Finally he reached the dusty doors of the boarding school, with an old bag over his shoulder. Knocking the door, the mistress only happened to be in the main room at that time, hands behind her back, walking back and forth through the lobby in thought, almost as though she was waiting for him. Opening the tall doors, the short, fat woman looked up at this man with utter disgust. She was obviously too busy at the moment to meet with him in a proper fashion.
"My name is Gordon Gulley, official director of messengers and deliverers for Lint Corp. Industries," he proudly announced in a mysterious, forlorn and proud voice. "I've a deal for you. This secret message is for specifically one person and this child only; do you know a child named Samuel Lawrence?"
To this, the mistress only replied with a muffled grunt, similar to that of a snoring dog. Samuel Lawrence was the worst child in the school by her opinion, who knows why but he is. Young but bright, he was not cared about by not even the most misunderstood student. How pitiful.
Of all things at this miraculous moment, the mistress pushed a vase to the ground, spilling a puddle at Gulley's boots and making a hideous crashing noise. It awakened Samuel Lawrence himself on the second floor, the sound traveling through a vent under his bed. Getting out of his bed and quietly kneeling to look at the steel hole in the wall, it was just big enough for him to crawl through, up and back. He grabbed an old water bottle too just in case. (You never know!) Crawling under the bed and into the vent, he made his way towards the source of the sound, and the people who appeared to be talking about him. He was looking for a way to spy on them.
"Take this," Gordon Gulley offered, holding out something. The mistress snatched it from the cowboy-looking man. It was a paper that looked like it had been drawn and colored by a boy not so much younger than Sam. Staring through the vent in another tight steel corridor in the stretched-high ceiling, he could barely make it out. Now he needed to find a way how to get this somehow special paper!
Crawling through the vent, he made it to the almost straight fall where the fireplace was. It was very narrow, so he had to be careful; and the fire was raging beneath despite the lukewarm conditions, which made the situation more dangerous.
After a moment. Gordon Gulley zoomed away as the mistress received the paper, with a puff of smoke, dashing down the road once more with his pack of products (probably more sketches) over his shoulder.
"Humph-hmm!" the mistress grumbled, not knowing Sam was up the vent. "If it's for that Sam, I hate it. And if it's from Lint Corp., it's sure to be filth. It's all they ever make." And with that, she lumbered across the hallway to happily drop the paper in the fireplace.
Thankfully Sam had the bottle; so he poured it down the shaft to the fire from above, and climbed the shaft to grab the paper and take it upstairs before the mistress noticed. He ascended the chamber and made it back to his room in confusion, as he noticed what this old, wrinkled and ripped paper was all about.
YOU ARE READING
The Sketch: The Voyage of Soal
Fantasy{Book One in the Sketch Trilogy} In a bleak future world, a timid boy named Samuel Lawrence is sent to yet another boarding school, where a strange secret awaits him. When a corporation known as Lint Corp. delivers him a seemingly unimportant cart...
