It had been a long, hard day of balancing work around his playtime and McKnackus was ready to hit the sack. He sauntered up the stairs to his half-bedroom, half-art studio, plopped onto his bed, and started snoozing.
By the next morning he was up, eating breakfast, getting dressed in his favorite red shirt with a plaid shirt on top, and all that other fun stuff. Still bleary-eyed, he sat down on a stool in his bedroom-art-studio and stared at the blank canvas in front of him.
Now, normally he had no problem taking any idea off the top his head and applying it to a canvas. He had been doing the Daily Draw contest each and every May, after all. But for some reason, nothing was coming to him this morning. He sat and stared. He tried to think of something that deserved to be more openly visualized. Nothing.
McKnackus decided to drink coffee while staring at the canvas. Maybe that would get his mind jogging. Nothing. Frustrated, he threw the rest of his coffee on the canvas to see if it might make some interesting array of splotches that would give him an idea. Nope, just looked like a big old splotch of coffee.
Now McKnackus felt like jogging. He left his room and jogged up and down the stairs. Suddenly, when he was at the bottom, he heard something. It was like the opening of a window…upstairs. Wondering what that could mean, he rushed back.
Opening the door to his room again revealed a young man wearing a light blue long-sleeved shirt, black pants, and a purple knit cap taking the coffee-stained canvas. Hovering beside him was what appeared to be a crystal ball glowing light blue. The window was open behind him.
McKnackus said nothing upon seeing the man, for he was speechless. Then the man, canvas held in one arm, looked at him, smiled, and said, “Hello, MK! Pleasant morning for painting, isn’t it?”
“Who are you??” demanded McKnackus.
“My pals call me Moogle, for I am just that lovable,” answered the man.
“What are you doing in my room?!”
The man called Moogle took a seat on the crystal ball beside him, which then hovered out the window while Moogle sat cross-legged on it, still facing McKnackus.
“I took your inspiration and put it inside this little ball!”
“What?!”
McKnackus wasn’t believing any of this, and yet, it explained everything. Well, everything aside from the fact that some hoodlum, however fabulous, was using a crystal ball to steal from him in the first place.
“Not your greatest work, but I suppose every little bit helps,” Moogle remarked as he looked at the coffee-stained canvas. He then proceeded to squeeze the canvas into the crystal ball somehow, which glowed a bit brighter afterward.
“Give me that back!” McKnackus shouted, suddenly enraged. “I need my work! My inspiration!”
“Sorry, but I have more use for it than you every could!” Moogle sneered. “Kupo!” And with that, his ball carried him away.
“Noooooooooooooooooooooo!” McKnackus shouted to the heavens. In complete and utter despair, he cast aside his easel, stools, and various other items of furniture before slamming his head down on a table, which hurt his head so much that he crumpled onto the floor in a fetal position and sobbed.
Then he sat up, realizing something. If Moogle was able to absorb his inspiration by sucking up his artwork, then did that mean…?
Quickly, he rushed to his closet and opened it up. They were gone! Every single piece of art he had made that he normally stored in here, all gone! Moogle must’ve taken them all overnight!
“Noooooooooooooooooooooo!” McKnackus shouted again, taking his clothes out of the closet, tossing them onto the floor, dumping a can of red paint on them, and proceeding to belly-flop onto them and roll left and right during the midst of his yell.
But then he sat up with renewed determination and wiped the paint off his face. He had a mission now: to get back his inspiration from that thieving Moogle. And he could think of only one way how: by using his trusty calligraphy brush to paint out a message of peace and reconciliation to Moogle. After all, beating up people just wasn’t his way.
So McKnackus took up his trusty calligraphy brush and marched out of his house. Down the driveway he went, and there he took out his cell phone and called a cab. He didn’t have his own driver’s license, you see.
After about five minutes, a taxi drove up. McKnackus sat inside.
“Where to?” asked the driver, who was dressed like a green dragon, wings and all, for some reason.
McKnackus didn’t question this and simply shouted, “To Hobby Lobby!”
And so the cab took off on the first leg of McKnackus’s journey.
To be continued...?