Free After the Bite by David Lovato, Seth Thomas Page A

patches of skin, and his clothes were loose and torn. He reached forward, attempting to grab the nearest object with a hand that had missing and mangled fingers.
    Elliot worked on another drawing as he sat waiting for his train. It was a piece he had put a combined two hours into, but every pencil scratch, every smudge meant something. This wasn’t just something for his entertainment. It was for the person who’d stolen his heart, and nothing would stop him from finishing this masterpiece. Beth’s birthday would be a few days away, and he wanted to surprise her with it.
    It was an abandoned city. There were no cars or people. The sky was colorful. It was not a rainbow, but more like a child had been painting with multiple colors and had mixed them all together. The buildings were dark and decrepit. It was a dark but beautifully stark image he’d seen many times before, and he just had to put it down on paper. The world needed to see what Elliot had seen.
    The train station Elliot was waiting in was a small and very old one in the heart of Pennsylvania, in Centre County. He sat on a wooden bench that was once shining with a fresh coat of red paint, but was now faded and cracked and falling off to be blown away by the howling wind.
    Elliot continued scraping his pencil over the paper’s surface. The sky of the drawing had been done at his home, it was an exact replica of the sky in his dream. He had sprayed it with a fixative spray to prevent the detail from smearing, so he could continue to work on the drawing with peace of mind.
    The wind began to calm down as a train pulled up in front of Elliot. He checked his ticket and looked at the time. Hanging to the right of him was a wide, round clock. It had a metal exterior, the paint falling off of it as well, and the glass plating held a yellow tint. Beneath the numbers were bold, in fancy italics. The old clock chimed at the quarter after mark as the train’s wheels squealed with the weight of the cars riding on them. The train finally came to a complete stop, and passengers began exiting down to the platform.
    This was not his train, and he was slightly relieved, as he still had his art supplies spread out all over. He smiled as he retrieved the pencil from his lap. His train would not arrive for another hour. The sound of children’s laughter and adults conversing did not disturb Elliot from his work, it actually helped him. He had always been good at focusing. His hand flowed confidently across his paper.
    Soon, as the wind died down to a warm flutter, Elliot began to sweat. It rolled down his face, but Elliot wiped it off with the back of his hand to avoid the drops falling onto his drawing. He pulled a duller pencil from a small tattered bag. He loved the sound rounder-tipped pencils made against paper. He used the dull pencil to pave the dark streets of the unpopulated city. The pencil was also used to fill in the white spaces of buildings, and as he moved on to those, another train pulled in to the station.
    Elliot looked up from his work, saw the old clock to his right, and chuckled at how fast time had gone by. He gathered all his drawing supplies in an old worn rectangular suitcase. It had been used in the early part of the 20th century by his grandfather and was covered with various stickers from visits to many places around the globe. Elliot hadn’t been to many of those places; he mostly liked how the suitcase looked.
    His left leg popped as Elliot rose to his feet and walked over to the platform. His eyes scanned down the track at the next few cars of the train. He looked up and saw the blue cloudless sky, then stepped up the stairs and into the train. Elliot shuffled toward the back, and found his seat on the second-to-last car. It was a window seat, Elliot’s favorite. He could ride for hours and watch the scenery pass him by. He often drew what he saw. It calmed him.
    Elliot sat with his belongings on his lap and stared at his drawing for a little