The Fox on the Wall

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Grey and white, I come into existence - graphite scratches on a blemished drywall in a naked room. Born with open eyes, I look into the eyes my creator as she stares back into mine, seeing more of me that has yet to be drawn. Jade stones nestled in waves of aged skin that hide behind soft, amber locks - this is her face, and I wonder; what was mine? But almost as if intentionally answering me, she leans in close enough for me to smell the warm vanilla aroma of her hair, and in the wide pupils now so close to my face, I can see me reflected through her.
I sit erect and at command, a steep arc curves down my back ending in a sharp flicking tail. Attentive are my ears, and gentile are my eyes that look back at me with understanding. Whiskers protruded through bristly, light fur like a wind is blowing through the infinite white around me. I am majestic, intimidating, and proud.
After adding a little more volume to my nose, she pulls back and scans me intently with the pencil to her lips. Although she is trying to take in her work as a whole, her green-irises keep skipping back to meet mine. Now, she is just staring into me as if she sees something there - nothing to fix or improve, but a certain liveliness. The vitality I feel that she gave to me is almost visible around me like an aura. I feel as if I could jump off this wall and into dimension, but for reasons I can’t quite grasp, I stay.
As the woman steps back and smiles; not at me particularly, but her artistry; a rambunctious rattling comes from the door to my right. A tiny, tulip of a girl bursts through the door with a cardboard box hardly small enough for her petit arm span to grasp, she crashes into the woman’s legs. Like a million icicles shattering, a cup full of colored pencils spills across the ground.
With yelping coughs, the mother hoisted the girl into the air and plopped her down on her hip. Gently she combs the blonde hair out of her face, tucking it behind her seashell ears, and begins to bob up and down, shaking the gathering tears loose.
“Oh, shhh-shh, honey,” the woman says. “There, there, big girl. Yeah, you aren’t going to cry, are you? No, no, you’re not because you’re a Graham. You might have the blonde hair,” she ruffles the girl’s scalp, “the cherry nose,” she pokes her nose with a boop!, “and blue eyes of your father. But you are strong like me!”
A soothing warmth overtakes me because that pitchy giggle that just erupted from her three-toothed mouth could make the daisies bloom in February. She is lifting up her scrawny arms and flexing them with a fierce grunt.
“See, you are a Graham for sure - Oh my! Look at those muscles,” she said pinching the very squishy arms that are trying so hard to be firm. Another ice-melting laugh rolled out of the girl. “How do you like your new room, Alice-baby? It’s a lot bigger than your old one.”
“It’s so big!” Alice, the girl, said, bending her neck every which way to take in each angle. “Can all of my friends fit in - fox!” Her large, deep blue eyes spot me and she wiggles out of her mother’s grip to race to my wall. With a soft, plum-sized hand she strokes my torso as if she can feel the silkiness of my fur in between her fingers. “She’s so pretty, Mommy.”
“Do you like her?”
“She’s so pretty!”
“Just like you, baby,” The woman laughs.
Alice’s gaze finds her way to my eyes. For a moment I felt a sort of surge run the course of my spine, making my fur stand erect - if it could. There was so much to see in that glassy stare: ivy crawls its way across the sea of vibrant blue, lightening in hue towards the pupil like an ocean meeting the shore.
“Come, honey, we have some more boxes to bring in.” With that, the two left.

Days went by like minutes: Alice, the woman, and another man came and went with brown boxes; unpacking and assembling miscellaneous bedroom furniture and sorting through the mess of inanimate animals and large-font books. Alice spent most of the nights on the floor, playing with long-legged dolls and miniature sports cars, until the silky-haired mother came in to tuck her little cub into bed. Books were typically read by her bedside until Alice’s eyelids gave in half way through “The Fox and the Hound”. And as the last bit of light extinguishes with the closing door, the girl’s purring snore is all that’s left to fill the dark room. I watch over her all night, and across the room I can see the trusting link between us like a strand of red ribbon.

As the seasons passed from summer to fall and dropped into winter, the mother perfected my body in dark pencil. Trees were outlined on both my sides with furry critters playing in the branches - Alice’s requested. Grass lined the baseboards and tickled my paws, ivy sprawled up the tree trunks, dragonflies, bees, and dandelion seeds filled the air, and rays of sun were personified through the thinner branches.
As the sun winked over the horizon on a particularly cold December day, the normally bleak clouds and white snow were drenched in hues of crimson and gold. Two figures creeped into the room with silent socked feet. Carefully, the man and the woman leaned over the bed where Alice slept, and right next to her ear bellowed, “Merry Christmas!” In what was only a few seconds, the girl with the blond hair popped like a jack-in-the-box from her pillow, threw her covers clear over the foot of the bed, and ran downstairs fast enough to leave her skin behind.
The mother and father laughed to themselves and made their way to the door. The woman put her hand on her partner’s shoulder. “Any news yet?” The man shook his head - his dream of toy-making was beginning to look more and more like just a dream. “Well, what are we going to do, James? We can’t just wait until our bank accounts are dry to start worrying. I’ll get a job. I’ll-”
“No,” James said as clearly as he could. “Don’t worry about money. I will handle it, I promise. We just need to wait things out a little longer.”
“We picked up our lives and came here for what? It’s sucking us dry! What if we - if we lose the house - or - or - the car? What do we do then?” Her hand shook off his shoulder and she hugged herself, struggling not to cry.
“We won’t. Listen to me, Emma. Things will work out. Just have a little faith, okay?” He wrapped his arms around her.
“Mom!” Cried Alice from several halls away.
“See, that’s why you need to stay home. She needs her mother.”
“She loves you too, you know.”
“Yeah, but like you, she has favorites.”
Emma laughed. “Well your my favorite,” she said before kissing her husband.
“Mommy!” Alice cried again, except with more desperation in her voice - eager to officially begin her christmas.
“Are you okay? No pills today, okay?” She nodded without looking him in the eyes.
“I know,” she stated knowingly, but unconvincingly. “I’ll be down in a minute. You go.” He hesitated, but nodded and left.
I didn’t like to see Emma this way. She gave me such life and vitality here on this wall, and yet her desperation is so thick I can smell it stronger than the vanilla fragrance in her hair. She paces around the room, biting her nails and inhaling in deep, guttering sobs. It takes a while, but she eventually calms to a mild shiver, but by the way her lips curled in a most sorrowful way, I could tell she hasn’t recovered emotionally yet. And by the way tears threatened to reemerge when Alice cried for her mother once again, that something more was wrong. Doing it without realizing, Emma had drawn a palm’s worth of pills from her robe pocket. She stared at them blankly, unsure what to do. Her hand trembled more violently and the light stomping of Alice’s feet coming up stares forced her to make a decision. Two white, capsules vanished into her mouth and the rest were pocketed.
Three steps later she was in the hall and I was left with the remnants of her dignity on the floor in front of me. Silently I cried for her, because if the smile of a little girl’s face on Christmas morning wasn’t enough to resist an urge, then nothing would.

Winter stayed for awhile but melted away as the trees birthed new leaves. Emma left the window open on warmer days: the scent of lilacs carried in the crisp wind that tickled my nose and rustled the leaves of the tree that hung just outside the pane. Alice’s golden locks grew past her shoulders, tickled the mid of her back, and began to curl slightly like her mother’s.
Alice spent most of her days outside, playing with the neighborhood kids in rambunctious games of hide n’ seek, hopscotch, and other childhood activities that sent giggles to flutter in the air. Emma worked in the gardens while the weather permitted and James came and went, sometimes gone for days at a time only to return more dismal each time he sputtered into the driveway at midnight - home from failed bids. I could hear their arguments through the air vent below me; they grew louder the longer they questioned their financial situation. “We are not moving again, James,” was Emma’s usual contribution. James was too stubborn to give up on his dream and look for something more lucrative, and Emma wasn’t educated enough to find anything worth the sacrifice of leaving her daughter’ full time care.
Some nights their volume rose so loud that Alice awoke and crept over the vent to listen, leaning against me and hugging her pillow. I wanted to soothe her, comb her hair gently, or sing her back to sleep. No child should be bothered with the burdens of maturity.
Tonight, arguing turns into yelling which elevates to screeching and Alice takes off out of the room and scurries down the hall. I see her long shadow stopped at the end of the hall, peering around corner. She called down to her parents with a half-asleep, half-worried whimper. Sighs punctuated the argument and Emma came up the stairs - stomping a little harder than usual. “Come, Alice. Bed.” The television flicked on somewhere beneath me, and the two women trotted back into the darkened room.
“Come on, back in bed. Now,” Emma said with displaced frustration. Alice scampered back underneath her covers and Emma retrieved the pillow resting against my paws.
“I’m sorry, mommy,” Alice said, burying her head back into her bedsheets.
“I don’t have time for you, Alice. This, I don’t have enough time for this, “she corrected herself. “You are old enough to stay in bed all night. You hear me?”
“I was scared. I thought that-”
“Don’t worry about it. You need sleep. Go to bed.” Emma turned away, eyes glassing over as she walked back through the door, closing it hard enough to rattle in its latch. The apology of the little girl teetered on the tip of her tongue, but melted into tears which leaked onto her dandelion yellow comforter.
Oh, Emma. I thought to myself. Alice’s muffled sobs in her pillow filled the air and I thought of the owl who so often sat outside the window and questioned the night until dawn broke. Your child needs you. I could only keep thinking to myself. Over and over, silently begging her to come back to ease her cub back into slumber. Never leave a crying child alone, because when life needs answers, a wandering, anxious mind is no place to find them.

Over the next few months, Emma and James’ quarrels happened less often. However, so did all forms of communication. The father slept less in his bed with Emma and more in front of the television while his wife tossed and turned in her much too-large bed. Alice smiled less, the stress of the house sank into her head like second-hand smoke. She sat in her room most nights and read books to herself - hardly able to walk through the thick tension between her parents downstairs.

Now, it’s all bleak. Rolling storm clouds suffocate the moon and drown the room in a pale grey. I liked it when it rained, it made the house seem less quiet. My senses are keen, I can smell the acidity in the humid air and hear the gurgling of drain spouts. Alice is at a neighbor’s house for the night, as she tended to do more of lately.
If I could close my eyes and just listen to the rhythmic pattering of rain on the window pane, I would most definitely fall asleep. But only for a little. Because from the kitchen below, after a very quiet dinner that most likely didn’t dwell in subjects deeper than the weather, came a shattering of what seemed to be a thousand dishes in the silence. “****,” said James, annoyed.
“Well, I guess we should move. How else are we going to afford new plates,” jabbed Emma.
“Will you give it a rest for a goddamn minute.”
Voices began to rise.
“Don’t you dare talk to me like that.”
“Then quit acting like a ****ing child!”
“Child? Child!” Emma’s voice cracked and trembled like a twig about to snap. “‘Child’ says the man that - that makes toys for a living, kicking his feet and throwing a temper when someone tells him he needs to give up his stupid dream and find something to take care of his - his goddamn family!
“You think I act like a child? This is how a child acts!” Several more dishes crashed to the floor, slowly, as if slid off the table one at a time.
Then came a noise loud enough to dwarf the lightning. A clap of flesh-on-flesh, palm-on-cheek, that vibrated through the house and screamed in my ear. Everything became very silent - the grunting pants of an animal echoing up the hall.
The clock ticked twice as slow, and my heart beat twice as fast. Foot steps came scurrying down the hall and found their way into my room. Emma threw her body into the door and it slammed into its latch and locking it from the inside - the cries of James down the corridor were muffled into nothingness - the wood between them and the sobbing of his wife, now hugging her knees to her chest, drowned out the storm.
The imprint of a once loving hand glowed pink from the corner of her lip to whole of her ear. No longer did her hair fall in amber curtains around jade eyes - now puffy and red. Pale skin now sagged from worry and wrinkled like a dried apple. She shivered violently where she sat, not from the elements, yet still desired the warmth of something to hold onto. The trembling traveled down her arms and into her fingers - they were no longer the instruments of the artist who birthed me one year prior. They carried no use anymore. There was no one left to hold; Alice was falling from her grip, only hanging on by a couple fingers, but they sweat too much to hold on. The only thing those hands were good for now was to connect the pills to her mouth so she could slip back into oblivion; as she had done countless times before.
The pills were already out of her pocket and trembling in her hand as if she was about to toss dice. One swift motion send them down her throat. Nothing. Tears continued to cascade and she could still feel the pounding of James’ fist on the door, begging entrance. A couple more slicked down Emma’s throat. Hard to swallow when there is hardly enough space in her esophagus to breathe. Thunder rolled outside and vibrated the house, rain smacked into the window glass, and the wind howled through the trees so loud that it almost sounded like it was screaming stop. Still not enough.
While wiping the tears from her face with the inside of her wrist and choking on her sobs, her eyes ventured around the room until they met mine. They were not the same eyes I first looked into, those flawless gemstones. Like a spiderweb fracture in a pane of glass, she stared back at me - but only a refraction of what I know her as. She was distorted and not herself.
The longer she stared at me, the more her look turned from curious to frustration. She saw that liveliness in me like the first time she drew me, but this time she despised it. Like an essence of her former self, before the troubles and financial worries. Foxes are wonderful mothers, better than Emma.
She stood up and walked over to Alice’s desk, littered with colored pencils, crayons, and scrap pieces of construction paper. Picking up a large, pink eraser, Emma made her way over to my wall in a wobbly strut. Nose to nose we stood, she glared into my eyes and silently I begged her to open the door and let her husband in. No such move was made, but she held the eraser up beside my ears and with one agonizing swipe, my eyes were lifted off the wall and into nothingness.
Burning like someone pulling out each hair across my face with a swift tug, I screamed into the silence. All was dark.
Emma grunted back into sobs and slid down the wall. I wanted to cry, but had no means of doing so. The pills in their plastic bottle rattled as the remainder of the contents were dumped into Emma’s trembling hand. They pattered onto the floor, vibrating out of her grip. Then I heard a large gulp. The pills slipped down her throat, and things grew very quiet. The storm seemed to die with the night: the wind slowed to a whisper, the rain sprinkled, and the thunder moaned in sadness. And for the first time in my existence, I felt dimensionless.

delete

Good to see a new writer on here. A couple of things before we get down to the nitty-gritty. It's frowned upon if you post more than one piece each day (either poetry or prose) as other people's work has less chance of being read before falling off the bottom of the 'page'. Also, when posting lengthy blocks of prose it's easier on the eye if you place a line space between each paragraph like so.

Now to your writing. I'll add comments as I read through it:

Interesting beginning - the narrator a work in progress (a sketch even rather than a flesh and blood character).

Born with open eyes, I look into the eyes of my creator as she stares back... - repetition of eyes (unintentional I assume)

Attentive are my ears, and gentile genteel are my eyes that look back at me with understanding.
'gentile' means something altogether different - and I'm not especially fond of the rather fussy phrasing of 'attentive are my ears'. Why not concentrate on keeping things clear and concise. 'My ears are attentive' is no less descriptive.

Whiskers protruded through bristly, light fur like as if a wind is blowing through the infinite white around me.
unless the whiskers really are like the wind, which I doubt is what you were trying to say.

This entire piece is written from the perspective (or pov - point of view) of the imaginary fox, so how does the fox know she is trying to take in her work as a whole? It can't unless you give us some indication of how the fox discerns this. Perhaps describe her gaze flitting from one part of the drawing to another before refocusing on its eyes.

You can't have multiple pov's in a piece without creating a clear break in the narrative.

I feel as if I could jump off this wall and into a new? or alternative? dimension, but for reasons I can’t quite grasp, I stay.

Love this: A tiny, tulip of a girl bursts through the door...
with a cardboard box hardly small enough for her petit petite arm span to grasp

With yelping coughs, the mother hoisted the girl... doesn't sound convincing to me.

“See, you are a Graham for sure - Oh my! Look at those muscles,” she said, pinching the very squishy arms that are trying so hard to be firm. Another ice-melting laugh rolled out of the girl. “How do you like your new room, Alice-baby? It’s a lot bigger than your old one.”
“It’s so big!” Alice, the girl said, bending her neck every which way to take in each angle.
I'm not sure why this part is written in past tense when everything before it is in present tense... indeed, from this point onwards the tenses keep switching, even in mid-sentence. Perhaps you paused half way through writing this and when you started again you forgot. It's best to remain consistent.

Two figures creeped crept into the room with silent socked feet.

The woman put her hand on her partner’s shoulder. “Any news yet?” The man shook his head - his dream of toy-making was beginning to look more and more like just a dream. “Well, what are we going to do, James? We can’t just wait until our bank accounts are dry to start worrying. I’ll get a job. I’ll-”
In terms of plot development this seems a strange moment for your characters to have this conversation. Perhaps you felt the need to inform the reader of their dilemma and couldn't find a better way. Personally I'd have a rethink.

I could tell she hasn’t recovered emotionally yet.
See how illogical this sounds when you have two verb tenses? Either I can tell she hasn't recovered... or I could tell she hadn't recovered...

And by the way tears threatened to reemerge when Alice cried for her mother once again, I realised? that something more was wrong. Doing it without realizing, Emma had drawn a palm’s worth of pills from her robe pocket.
The first sentence is incomplete the way you have written it - and Doing what?

She stared at them blankly, unsure what to do.

Again you have jumped from the fox's pov to Emma's. The reader has lost track of who to focus on. Imagine it's a film. We're experiencing this story through the fox's eyes so we never see the fox itself - nor can we see what's going through the other characters' minds unless you change camera.

Her hand trembled more violently and the light stomping of Alice’s feet coming up stares upstairs forced her to make a decision.

Alice spent most of her days outside, playing with the neighborhood kids in rambunctious games
Quite a horrid word - and to have it appear twice in the same story is too much!

Emma worked in the gardens while the weather permitted and James came and went, sometimes gone for days at a time only to return more dismal each time he sputtered James? or his car? into the driveway at midnight - home from failed bids.

Here and in the following paragraph we're being fed a lot more information that the fox can't possibly know. It seemed as if you lost control of the plot because you're trying to give the reader too much background information.

You retrieve the situation before the end and I felt the closing scene was particularly well controlled.

Overall - an impressive piece of writing. It's original and clever - yet mostly not too clever to make us believe here's someone who wants to be seen 'writing' rather than someone who wants to share a story or an experience.

My only criticism is that the plot became too unwieldy towards the second half of the story. You were so busy juggling various plot elements and characters that the whole tone of the piece changed and it became just another story about domestic strife. I think if you take out some of the mundane detail - the arguments and the melodramatic scenes - and imply the situation rather than document it you'll have a much stronger piece.

Thanks for sharing it.

H