Once, in a time that was equally so far into the future and so far back in the past that our minds cannot comprehend it, there lived a young girl named Jolean. Jolean did not know how old she was or how long she had been alone. All she knew was that her favorite color was yellow and that she loved to draw.

In fact, Jolean drew so much that she never went anywhere without her sketchbook and a pencil.

One day, after she had just gotten comfortable on her hand-stitched(and slightly overstuffed,) beanbag, she realized she had lost her eraser. At first, Jolean shrugged it off, but after giving a character a particularly horrendous hairstyle, her hands itched with the need to correct it. She looked everywhere for her eraser, including in the creepily large ash pit behind her house. Still, she could not find it.

Jolean looked over at her pencil, which had been whittled down to just long enough to hold between her fingertips .

“Well,” she thought, “I guess it’s time to get some new art supplies!” Smiling wide, Jolean grabbed her wicker basket and skipped off to the store.

However, when she got there, it looked abandoned. She peeked in the windows, fogging up the glass with her breath. “Dark in there,” she murmured, squinting. The place was completely empty. Even her favorite store attendant, Dimitri, seemed to be absent. A chill started to creep up her spine. Jolean whipped her head around, checking for any sign of life.

Silence.

She looked back towards the store. Something was different.

The girl stared into the darkness. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but she knew, deep down, something had changed.

“What…?” Jolean pressed her hands against the glass. “Hey-!” Jolean gasped. There was a figure standing in the art aisle, its its back to the girl.

Tripping over her feet, Jolean scrambled back from the window. Careful not to go tumbling down the hill, she sprinted around the building to the entrance. Jolean had barely even touched the door when it swung open.

Dust covered everything in a gray haze. It floated through the air, glinting in the sunlight that filtered in through the window. She covered her mouth stifling what would have been an ear splitting cough.

“Impossible,” she screamed in her head. “I was just here last Tuesday.”

Slowly, Jolean tiptoed through the linoleum-floored aisles, cautiously looking around every corner she came across.

Eventually, she reached the art section.

Bracing herself, Jolean burst out from behind the notebook rack, coming face to face with the person she had seen in the window. She screamed.

The figure fell over backward, dropping whatever they were holding. Jolean continued to scream, horrified by the eyeless being in front of her. It let out a cry; a terrible, garbled wall of sound. Splayed out on the floor, it fumbled to pick up whatever it had lost.

Jolean whacked it with her basket, causing the creature to go crashing into the shelves with a disgusting crunch! It clambered to its feet and scurried away, a loud, crackly screeching fading into the distance.

Jolean gasped for air, sliding down to the floor.

“What was that thing?!” That terrible creature with black voids for eyes, with a grotesque slimy mouth full of tiny, razor sharp teeth. It was something out of a nightmare.

Her foot kicked something on the ground. She looked down. A large pink eraser lay on the floor. Two bright eyes stared up at her, along with one wide, beaming smile.

Despite her situation, Jolean found herself smiling too. She picked up the eraser and placed it gently in her basket. Then, she grabbed a pack of pencils and made her way back home.

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