A Sketch for all Time

 

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    As a elementary school teacher you have the joy of viewing a variety of artwork by your students, which often equates to several thousands of pictures of houses, dogs, families, doctors, nurses, policemen and women, trees, cats, and an unending stream of made up creatures and monsters by the end of each school year.  Once in a while you will see something striking and unique, but for the most part it all starts to blend together after awhile. 

    So on this particular day in mid-December when all the children in the class had been asked to draw a picture of what they wanted for Christmas this year that I was given a refreshing new bit of artwork to look at. 

    Every child in my class had drawn a picture of  four horses with riders on them. Each child of course had their own variation and drew based on their ability, but the basis of each image was the same, four horsemen wearing darken clothing riding away from a glowing orb in the background. When I asked my students to explain their pictures none of them could explain the drawings. In their memory, they had drawn images such as rollerskates, bikes, new clothes, etc. 

    Later, in the teacher's lounge I overheard disturbing whispers from other teachers reflecting a similar story of students who drew images of the four horsemen without remembering that they drew it. 

    I had a friend who taught in another county, so I called her and asked her what her students drew for Christmas, and found that her students had also drawn the four horsemen.  It was as if all the children in the county had seen and drawn the same thing. 

    Once I got home, I tried to settle down with dinner and the news, only to find myself unsettled once again by the news on the television set. Seemed my kids were not the only ones drawing, teachers and parents from all over the globe had sent in reports of the disturbing images.  Seemed the older the children the more detailed the drawings and the more frightening the details were. Emphasis was placed on some of them in the faces, while some placed emphasis on the background. 

    Before bed I dug out my family's bible, and there I read the passages discussing the dreaded four horsemen of the apocalypse. Troubled dreams about the children and the horsemen played about in my head, giving me no end of a restless night. 

    In the morning I awoke, and readied myself for work. Today the class was fairly normal; math, science, history, reading. But again when it came to the art lessons, the pictures turned in today showed a woman with the last horseman, riding off into the blaze and the other horsemen escorting them back towards where they came from.  The message seemed clear enough; if this woman would go with the horsemen to their hellish world, then this world might be saved. Though what was to become of the woman was not disclosed in the images.

    Again that night I watched the news, and again the headlines dealt with the children of the world and their artwork. One set of pieces specifically were being shown. These showed in detail the face of the woman. I nearly choked as I was in the act of taking a drink from my cup. The face was one that I saw everyday in the mirror. Fear washed over me. There was no way that children that I had never known before in my life could possibly know what I looked like. 

    That night there was troubled dreams stirring about me as I attempted to rest. Visions of men both handsome and terrifying. Some causing mayhem, while others were aiming at preventing the mayhem.  

    I awoke midway through the early course of the morning hours to sounds of insanity outside in the streets. Looking out the window I could see people running through the streets, screaming, fighting each other, breaking things. Shouting. So much violence. Confused and even frightened, I couldn't stop myself from getting dressed quickly and running outside to see better what was going on. It was then that I saw the first horseman. He  rode on a white horse and the nearer he came to where I stood the fighting took on definite directions, those who were already advancing, immediately  gained the upperhand and they ended up killing the weaker foe.  No one else seemed to either be able to see the horseman or just didn't care that he was there.  Fear became overwhelmed within me as I grabbed a dropped weapon and charged at the horseman. Thinking that if I could somehow end him the chaos would stop.  The weapon, I grabbed was a baseball bat that someone had impaled with a spike on the end. The horseman saw me coming and charged me. Somehow I ended up dodging and he missed me, but I ended up driving my spike deep into the belly of the rider's horse. It fell and the rider flung from the saddle. Oddly, he laid down his sword  and pledged fealty to me. It was at this point that I woke up startled, sweating, and very confused. 

    During the work day I noticed that the children had drawn images nearly identical to those created the day before. The evening ended with me falling asleep to the news on television, which not only depicted  the drawings but also the new turmoil which had begun to spread throughout the world as if the world had been draped in a red cloak soaked completely in blood, brought on by the conflicts of warfare, both on a small local manner; neighbor against neighbor and community against local government, and on a massively larger scale  of nation against nation.  I again found myself outside my apartment, but this time with the white horseman of Conquest by my side. He handed me a sword and a shield. Then he bowed and stood aside. Approaching from across the street in the park a horseman wearing red armour and riding a horse clad in red began a charge, sword and shield at the ready. Fear froze me in place. I dropped the shield and held the sword up in front of me. Cowering behind the sword ended up giving me the physical position to cleave the horse nearly in half. The rider quickly flung himself from the saddle just in time to avoid his own demise. Now soaked in the steads blood I somehow found the presence of mind  to twirl around and grab the shield. I got it up just in time to block an attack and then to jab at the horseman with my own sword. The hand to hand combat continued between us until I was able to seize upon an opportunity to place the point of my sword deep into the chest of the horseman. He fell  to his knees. Oddly I noticed that he had not bled from the wound. Instead he bent his knee and pledged me his sword.  I awoke, once again feeling strange, sore, and still confused. I looked into the mirror in the bathroom and screamed. I was covered in drying blood and had bruises and cuts from the experience. 

    This day though I at least as though I felt like I might get a reprieve from this strange nightmare, since it was the weekend. So I spent the day cleaning myself up, and trying to focus on the duties of grading papers, and in general just trying to get things out of my mind. Wanting to chalk it all up to a really bad dream in which the past several days really hadn't happened. This hope was soon dashed as I went to leave the house around two o'clock to do a bit of grocery shopping  and was nearly ran over by a mob of people heading to and from the stores. By the time I managed to get into the building people seemed to have given up on the idea of paying for the things they had fought to get their hands on and were just fighting their way out of the stores with whatever they could keep their hands on. Grabbing a passerby who was also heading into the store I asked what was going on, he briefly told me that the market had crashed, and that all the crops the world over had mysteriously started going bad. Thus creating the stampede on the stores to stock up on whatever you could get your hands on. I flew my hands up in the air and turned around to go home. After all, why bother shopping when the world had gone mad. I still had plenty of food at home so I didn't see the need to fist fight over a twinkie with anyone. 

    As I was about to reach my house ( I thankfully only lived about two blocks from the store), I noticed a vast black storm cloud fast on the approach. There was bolts of lightening which touched the ground with Conquest and War on their mounts positioned almost like sentries at a castle gate. The storm cloud touched down between the two of them and then dispersed slightly leaving behind a horseman in black armor  on a sickly, but still massive, black stallion. Rearing up he charged at me. This time I had no weapons on hand except myself. I rolled out of the way and when he came back around I somehow managed to grapple him off of his mount without getting trampled myself.  We fought in hand to hand combat. He got his hands around my throat and squeezed. Nearly blacking out, somehow I managed to find some strength to punch him out. His grip on me loosened. I clambered off, thinking I had killed him. Instead though his fellow horsemen came over, pulled him up and all three bent the knee. Suddenly all the chaos dispersed as though it had never happened and they disappeared. 

    I was left standing there in the middle of the street with a car horn honking at me while I stared around in a stunned daze for a moment. The third horn blare got me to stumble out of the street and eventually into my home.  

    The next day was Sunday. With everything weird going on I initially opted to stay in bed. I didn't know what was real and what was dream anymore. I honestly thought I had gone quite mad and that being buried under my blankets was probably the safest place for me. 

    That was until I got up and went to the kitchen for a glass of water. In the hallway I had a full length mirror and in my reflection I saw myself, and behind me all four horsemen. The three that I had fought against were mounted but the pale rider dismounted and walked towards me as I turned around, my back pressed to the mirror. They were really there, in my livingroom. I dropped the glass and was about to scream when the horseman removed his helmet to reveal the face of the man whom I vaguely recognized. It wasn't until he spoke that everything started clicking into place. 

    "I am Death. I have been dreaming about you for awhile now Persephone. As you have been dreaming about me. It is time for us to be together now that you have proven your worth to be my bride."

    "Why did the children draw all of this?"

    "They were there to prepare you and to also help us find you."

    "Will they have a memory of any of this?"

    "No, the drawings will be a mystery to them and to the rest of the world. And for as long as you are with me my love I give you my promise that my brothers and I shall never again ravage the Earth as we have these past few days."

    Everything clicked. I had gone through this lifetime by the name of Elizabeth Percilla. And I had always had a strange ability with children, small animals, and plants. Things often grew for me and no one else, animals were often calm and/or friendly towards me, and I never had a single experience with a distempered youth. Earlier memories came flooding through me. Images of different times and places. Historic times. Until the realization finally dawned on me of who I was and why Death had been looking for me. 

    I was the Goddess Persephone, and he was Hades. Every so many generations I would tire of the constant immortal life. Wanting to experience the new version of the world. So we would make a pact that so long as I was able to prove my worthiness of being his queen when the time came for me to return I would regain all my  memories and return with him, but should the time come when I couldn't defeat his brothers I would be allowed to live a mortal life full till the natural end, in which time I would then be returned to him without any other memory other than our deep eternal love for one another.

    My memories fully restored, I leaped into his arms, kissed him deeply. And the five of us returned home. Leaving the mortal world really not too much the wiser of the truth behind the sketches.  

    In my classroom, on Monday. A small girl named Penny pins one of the pictures that she had drawn to the bulletin board, a picture of the four horsemen and the me as we ride into what is perceived as the light of the rising sun. A small tear courses down her cheek as she says;

    "I'll miss you Miss Percilla."

    

 

 

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