Etch-a-Sketch: No Hands

Children? Where are you?

Now where could they have gone? Just disappeared, and left their Etch-a-sketch out on the back lawn. They never want to play with the same toy for more than five minutes. It’s just as well toys can’t think, or they’d all feel rejected.

How they get this Etch-a-sketch to work with the knobs all broken I’ll never know.

Now what’s this? Who’s been drawing this rubbish? When I find them...it looks like one of those awful movies. They’ve drawn themselves buried in shallow ground, and then they’ve been digging around here too. Their drawing is really quite realistic, but hardly appropriate for children.

I’ll wipe this clean.

That’s strange. No way to clear it. Maybe it really is broken. Off to the bin perhaps.

Now that’s very strange. The picture’s changed. It wasn’t this a moment ago. Now there’s a lady—looks a little like me—lying on the footpath that leads to the back of the house. She has a broken head and a bloodied brick beside her.

What’s going on here?

Oh well, it’s out the back into the bin for you, Etch-a-sketch.




Title
Etch-a-Sketch: No Hands

Length
200

Written
June 2005

Dedication
To Yevgeny Kafelnikov, just because he's got a great name

Editorial Notes
The power of the Etch-a-sketch is not in its ability to entertain children, but its ability to slay anyone trying to throw it in a bin

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