Uma pequena amostra de algo diferente

Tenho estado a trabalhar algo que é completamente novo para mim: o conto. Como tal, apesar de extremamente desafiante, tem oferecido algumas complicações próprias de uma arte que ainda não se domina com segurança. De qualquer forma está a ser uma experiência deveras agradável. Pretendo finalizar uma série de contos negros para crianças reluzentes, traçando um género que será algo semelhante a Allan Poe para pequenos iluminados.

Deixo-vos o início da primeira história, que está praticamente finalizada, de forma a ficarem com uma ideia do que tenho escrito ultimamente. Ainda não tem título definitivo, sendo que por ora se chama "A pitch dark soul".

PS: É verdade, procura-se ilustrador que compreenda bem a motivação deste trabalho. Por um lado o traço suave e o universo colorido próprios de uma bonita e esteticamente agradável ilustração para crianças. Por outro, o contraste com uma realidade crua, insensível e cinzenta. Se é desafio suficiente para ti, reply me. :)

Chapter 1 - A Strange Boy Comes By

Adam was a boy living in a countryside village. Despite being no older than 8, Adam was already a very special child. He could not stop ever feeling pain. For people like us, one second as Adam would feel like an excruciating agony. To Adam however, whom was used to live with his pain since he was born, that feeling was nothing but a constant, latent scream. A warning telling him he was alive.

Adam was in constant pain, but what really made him feel hurt was the fact he did not have any friends. Though his body cried constantly as if it was a disfigured sore, his heart actually cried over nothing but its own loneliness.

After school the other boys would usually go play football on some old oat fields, now abandoned, behind the church. Adam would travel south instead, along the old Kerrisburgh road, on his way to the riverbanks. Adam loved to spend his sunny Spring afternoons by the Sleevers Creek, especially next to the abandoned mill. After collecting some poppy heads (they are very abundant close to the shore) he would lay down on the grass and just watch the stripped clouds, those that so many times look like cotton puffs waiting for the wind to shape them. With a little penknife he would cut the poppy heads and wait for its ‘juice’ to become gooey. Then he would chew the poppy gum. This used to make him intimately relaxed, where conjoined with the soft breeze blowing his hair up on his forehead, made him feel truly at peace. After all, afternoons were great by the creek.

On that particular day though something unusual happened. He had already closed his eyes but was not asleep yet. The pain and the sadness were all but forgotten by now and he was feeling as like he was immersed in a pool of tranquility, when a very clear and deep voice sounded from above his head. “Is this what death looks like?” It was a boy, and this boy had a perfect accent, therefore it couldn’t be townsfolk. It was someone from outside, a ‘foreigner’. Adam opened his eyes with a hurry, the normal fastness we employ whenever we are surprised. As fast as he opened his eyes, he let his lower jaw hang loose in complete astonishment as he stared at the other boy standing next to him. The boy asked Adam again. “Is this what death looks like?”

“Who are you?”, Adam replied after the while it took him to recover from the initial shock.

“I am most confident that is the closest definition of death I have ever crossed with.”, said the boy.

“Who are you?...”, asked Adam again, though he was definitely thinking ‘WHAT can he be?’.