Borrowing Is for Losers

I stood there perplexed, uncertain of my whereabouts or how I'd gotten here. And all that mattered now was this moment, as he, his exotic features, and the pencil inched closer and closer until the space that had and always would separate us was nonexistent. It was perfect, too perfect just like everything else here.

I never liked taking notes, not since it became part of my job. My mother had always said to me when I was younger and less wrinkled and blemished, "You ought to do what you love." I guess she didn't think about the old adage, "Don't turn something you love into work." Before my job, I used to love to do secretarial type of stuff. My handwriting had never been superb, but it was legible, the slanted cursively type doctors have. I adored letters though, and as a child I even went as far as to learn shorthand and also take a calligraphy class. I was a neat freak with my color coded folders, tabs, and post-it notes. The only thing that was ever out of place was my pens. They were all handcrafted with a woody, earthy feel that soothed me. I didn't own a pencil, because why would anyone write something they didn't mean and I didn't believe in mistakes because I made none.

"Tat, I need a pencil stat," Stan, the lawyer I worked for, said. Paralytic fear festered within me, tying my organs into a mess of intertwining knots.

"Pencil?" I repeated.

"Yes, Tat, a pencil. You know the little wooden cylinder shaped things with graphite inside of them? Get me one of those or you're fired."

No comment. Stan was not the negotiable type, and thus I left the building to run to the nearest store.

It hurt. I had obstructed a pedestrian running down the street, but he smiled at me, a goofy smile that irked me.

"Pencil? Really?" he laughed. WTF? How did he know about that? I didn't have a sign over my head that said "pencil-less secretary in need of one right now or she'll no longer have a job". Maybe I should have been more attentive at that time as a needle pricked me and a sharp searing pain jotted throughout my body.

“I’ll show you a real pencil, Tatiana,” he whispered as I lost my perception of the world.

It was perfection. A perfect yellow hexagonal prism with number two lead at the center and a pink eraser at the top, but it was someone else’s, in the clutches of a blue spindly hand. The hand’s owner winked at me and slide his fingers though his green flower-infested hair.

“I told you I’d show you a real pencil.”

“So can I have it?” I asked, my eyes glued on the prize.

“For a price of course.” He leaned forward to tell me the secret. Impulsively, I snatched that wooden treasure as soon as his lips began to trace my ear and began running.

“Borrowing is for losers!” I yelled. Did I mention that I’m snarky?