The Artist

He hadn't meant to start drawing her. While he was up a ladder, trimming the hawthorn whose straggly branches always threatened to encroach on others, he spotted her. She was sat, holding a carrot, trying to entice a rabbit nibbling her lawn. Her hair was glossy, golden, silky and she had to keep pushing it behind her ear, which she did slowly and with great smoothness, so as not to alarm her quarry.

It was utterly charming.

He had had to abandon his pruning to sketch it quickly, not having the drawing dexterity nor the physical balance to climb again to get a more prolonged look and draw her live, as it were.

It was the start of an obsession, an itch he had to scratch. There was nothing sinister in it, nothing sexual or predatory; it was simply something that he felt compelled to do.

His home, the home of a bachelor, was soon adorned with sheets and sheets of sketches of her in various positions. The hawthorn was his main hide, providing less dense cover but sufficient, he thought, so he could remain undetected.

But she was not always there in the garden and he found taking the ladder out all the time to check was arduous. He couldn't leave it as the neighbourhood was known as a hotspot for opportunistic burglars and he did not want his ladder implicated as an accessory to crime.

He needed a hole in the fence. It didn't have to be big, he reasoned, eyeball-sized and there was an obliging knot of wood which would work. He inserted a nail in it, making it easy to extract and to replace, like a simple wooden toddler puzzle.

It was while he was using his new spyhole that he was rumbled.

First, an eye appeared. Hers.

Scrambling with panic to withdraw, he was too slow and a guttural cry of "You dirty perv!" was issued, followed by a blast of water, causing his eye extreme pain as he spluttered and fell backwards.

He decided later, his eye smarting, it was time to find a new muse and, sad though it would be, to indulge in some judicious paper burning.

***

365 words

I can't turn the bold off. Anyone else having this problem? Nothing to do with the story but the bold just won't go.

Thanks for stopping by! If you do read this, please leave a comment as I love to interact with my readers.

204/366