The Life of an Inanimate Object: Part IV: To Become Acquainted

Post date: Feb 24, 2017 3:51:33 PM

By: Megan Cichon, Entertainment Editor

Posted February 24th, 2017

Part IV: To Become Acquainted

“We’ve been purchased by a psychopath,” the pencil next to me remarked as we were stuffed into a plastic bag, “He’s probably going to use us to start fires or something stupid like that.”

“You shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover,” I pointed out, “That’s not nice--”

“His hood was pulled over his head!” Another pencil screamed, “What if he’s a monster of some sort?!”

“Stop your babbling!” I demanded, annoyed with their unrealistic stereotypes, “This kid could be the greatest person you’ve ever seen, and you won’t stop judging him!”

“How do we know it’s a him?” One whispered.

I groaned inwardly and waited patiently to be free from this box too small to comfortably hold all of these other pencils. I didn’t have long to wait.

“Hi, sweetheart!” A chirpy voice called, “You got a new hole puncher!”

“I did,” the boy holding us replied, “Hopefully this one doesn’t break.”

“Don’t stuff so many papers in it at once,” the woman suggested.

“See?” The pencil next to me hissed, “He kills office supplies.”

“Maybe it just died of old age,” I suggested, trying to be positive.

The destruction of all the office supplies did however seem rather suspicious. What if my new friends and I had been purchased by a klutz who made a hobby of destroying their school supplies?

I didn’t have long to dwell on these thoughts. We were slammed down onto a hard surface, and I saw his hand reach in the bag. It brushed the notebook, and then our box. He tightened his grip on the box and pulled it from the bag. He held it up to observe it, and for the first time, we got a good look at his face.

“As much as I hate to admit this,” one pencil muttered, “He’s quite handsome.”

Handsome was overdoing it by a lot. He had brown eyes, that looked a shade between bark on trees and mud after a rainstorm. His hair was a dark shade of blonde, like dead grass in the heat of summer. He had several blemishes scattered around his face, and out of control eyebrows. Handsome? I thought, Handsome isn’t the word I would use.

And then he opened the box.

“We’re gonna die!” A pencil next to me screamed.

I groaned in annoyance.

“We are not gonna die!” I shouted back, “Now would you shut up?!”

Our owner turned the box upside down, and instead of hitting the cardboard, we slid out. More pencils screamed as we fell through the air for half a second, and then landed on a hard desk made of a really dark wood that I couldn’t identify. It looked worn out, and there were papers scattered everywhere.

“I bet this is where he plans how he murders people,” a pencil muttered.

I rolled over and buried my face in the desk.

“Just look at all these papers,” another pencil muttered, “Some of these writings are too abstract for a sane person to be writing.”

I rolled back over and saw the writing on the paper. I looked around me and noticed every paper on the desk was covered with writing...very neat and organized handwriting.