The Pen Master has a hundred different pens. A rainbow of dazzling colors.
Every lecture, he takes out the black cloth case, unrolls the sturdy fabric, and surveys the precise cylinders, belted and aligned like ammunition. Then, every lecture, he pulls out a slim cartridge of black ink. Always black.
As class begins, we wait. Hoping.
Finally, the professor pauses his scrawling text and boxes a solution. Our eyes strain. There it is. A flash of glorious color on the Pen Master's page. A perfect emerald square.
One morning, a boy sits behind the Pen Master. He leans forward. Hesitates. Then, he asks.
"Can I borrow a pen?"
The room is silent. We hold our breaths.
"Sure," the Pen Master drawls. Have we ever heard him speak? "What color do you want?"
"How about blue," the boy shrugs. As if he's not asking for a treasure in sapphires. The sky. 71% of the earth's surface.
At the end of class, the boy slips silently from the room. The next lecture, he hunches in the back, scribbling brilliant blue notes.
The Pen Master doesn't confront him, but the empty line in the pen case stares accusingly at the room.
A few days later, the boy looks half-dead, drained of life. His eyes are bloodshot. His hair is greasy. His skin is palid and the blood runs horridly bright in his veins.
His notes are gorgeous.
In a week, he stops coming to class.
I find out his name. I try to call him. I'm not sure if I'm looking for him or the pen.
The hole gapes in the row of colors and I call again.
Eventually, I give up. The absence eats at me — like drowning in a missing ocean — but I cannot cease my drawing. The scenes are vivid and the ink never seems to run out.
Memories are a blur.
I'm leaving class. The crowd jostles. In front of me, a black pen case pokes out of an unzipped backpack. How careless of me, to leave it there, I think as my hand reaches out.
The colors are my only clarity. Burning orange and jealous green. Velvet purple and sugared-rose pink.
I slice my finger on a piece of paper. The blood is shiny, like ink. I stare. Then, shaking, I put the pen back down to paper, eyes closed so I cannot see the swirling rainbows in my veins.
I draw.
I draw until all the colors fade to black.
