The next morning Sam woke up extra early, hours before normal. He wanted time to examine his strange paper.
On its crinkled tan surface, it displayed the heads of four cartoonish characters. The first was a pointy brown dinosaur that was smiling. The second was a yellow and green turtle who appeared to have a pig-like snout. The third was a seagull with a bloated head, small eyes and an over-sized yellow beak. However, the main focus in the center was what appeared to be a brown bird with large eyes and a long, banana-shaped beak.
Why would Sam, an eleven year old orphan of all people, get this paper from an extremely important corporation that seemed to do nothing? Aha! This sketch has to do something, and that must be what makes it special. Turning to the back, there was nothing there. But Sam tried everything he could. He hit it with a rock, which seemed to create a funny effect on the paper. Blue and red circles appeared and grew from the rock's touching point. He picked it up with sticks. He shook it. He blew on it. A few of the characters on the page faded, and then they reappeared. This is a very, very strange paper indeed. It's more like a touch screen than a piece of paper. Why is this so important? Why is Gordon Gulley delivering all of these unimportant sketches to unimportant people? Is this some sort of experiment?
In his small pack of things he owned through his life, he remembered a pen that had a flashlight on the end. That flashlight could detect the invisible ink that the pen wrote with. Aha again! Turning on the flashlight, he examined the paper with it, but nothing was there. To the back side. Words! Clear cursive. It read:
1: DRAW CIRCLE AROUND CHARACTER.
2: HOLD PAPER ABOVE HEAD, DIRECTLY.
3: BLOW ON CIRCLED CHARACTER (WITH FORCE).
4: TOUCH HEAD TO PAPER.
Gordon Gulley
Quite strange instructions indeed, Sam thought. I knew this was used for something! But how could circling a drawing and blowing on it possibly be useful?
Sam followed the given instructions and circled the large brown bird in the center with a pencil. Then doing the rest, Sam touched his head to the paper. Nothing happened! But after a few moments, he began to feel an intensely hot sensation, as though his entire body were drowning in fresh summer magma. It was unbearable. His vision became white, and he became unconscious as he shrank into nothing and the Sketch swallowed him. Falling to the floor like an autumn tree's leaf, neither the paper or Sam left any trace of his vanishing. But in the paper, things began to happen as it magically hovered away back to a small desk drawer and locked it. When studies began that day, no one noticed Sam's absence.
But Gulley, still running on the road delivering similar sketches, he felt a vibration. Opening his pack, he finds a copy of the same Sketch, trots to a narrow vacant alley in the misty town, and follows his own instructions. He disappears as well, waiting for Sam in the place where he was to meet with him.
Meanwhile, Sam wakes up. But he's not in his bed.
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...
