Stickman

She’s drawing on the corner of an envelope. You can hear the tinny hold music squeezing out from between her cheek and the receiver. Apart from that it’s quiet.

Look at that. She’s flexing the pen, tensing it up and down, the tiny muscles in her fingers contracting and relaxing, pausing and resuming, until, just like that, with one final stroke of the page, new life has tumbled out.

It’s a stickman.

He plops damply onto the paper and lies there for a moment. She’s not sure what to do with him just yet, so he just sits. He’s looking up at her. She’s looking back. She’s quite pleased with him, really. She’s also wondering why he is unequivocally a stickman and not otherwise. He is a basic outline and yet somehow exudes maleness. She could have taken more effort in his creation and made him deliberately into a stick woman. But that would somehow appear more of a statement. And a statement is not what she wants to make. She’s barely even concentrating. She’s occupying her hands.

Her progeny is still waiting patiently, but alas her attention has been diverted. Someone is speaking to her. Now she’s speaking back. She’s drumming her fingers, too. Not a thought for him.

He’s reproachful.

Spidery.

But now she’s had enough. With one heavy, very deliberate stroke, she crosses a thick, black, diagonal line straight through him, and then another, skewering him from both directions.

He’s folding up just like an insect.

She hangs up the phone and looks at him regretfully, caressing the black huddle with the tip of one idle finger.