**Title:**

Is Someone Drawing Me?

**Body:** Ok guys, I know this is weird but I’m kinda freaking out right now and I don’t know what to think so I thought I’d come to the experts!

About a week ago I was gardening in my backyard when I came across a tiny pencil sharpener. You know, one of those cheap little plastic ones. My neighborhood has lots of squirrels, so I figured one of our little furry friends had found it somewhere and brought it here to stash it as a souvenir or because he thought it was food. (Glad he didn’t swallow it—yikes!) Anyway I thought nothing of it, and pretty soon I had all but forgotten I ever found it.

…until today.

I went grocery shopping this morning. I was out for about four and a half hours because I couldn’t find the right type of potato for a recipe I wanted to make for dinner tonight. I got home around 11:15 AM (only like 20 minutes ago) and found something quite… disturbing.

Our driveway pulls around the side of our house, so we generally enter through the back door. The back of the house has a large deck which spans about 15 feet out from the back door to the end of the deck and is maybe 10 feet wide from one side of the deck to the other. (Edit: I measured the deck; it is actually 13.7 feet long by 11 feet wide) At the end of the deck, we have a small flight of five stairs down to the gravel driveway, where we usually park in the summer, spring, and fall. In the winter we like to park in the garage, but this year we couldn’t because it’s been packed to the brim with crap—we were “evicted” from our storage shed because the credit card we used for the auto-pay became “compromised in a data breach” and when the credit card company sent us a replacement card, we didn’t realize it had a whole new set of numbers on it, so we defaulted on our auto-payments to the storage shed and now we have to park outside. This is important later. But I digress.

So I was I walking in with the second batch of grocery boxes when I saw it (we use boxes in this house because those plastic bags are ruining the environment and cardboard holds the heavy stuff better, and ever since we got an espresso/latte machine we’ve been burning through gallons of milk like it’s gasoline!)

I had brought the first batch inside to put all the cold stuff away. But then I realized that *someone* hadn’t cleaned out the fridge *like I asked him to* (cough—lazy husband—coughcough) so I started going through everything in there, opening each item to look for mold and, of course, give it the ol’ handy dandy Sniff Test (I don’t believe in expiration dates—of *course* they want us to throw food away before it goes bad! How else would they get us to buy it again? 🧐). Once I got everything out on the counter, I disinfected the shelves and drawers of the fridge with cold water (I don’t believe in cleaning products—they’re designed by Big Pharma to give us cancer, I watched a video about it), then I organized the old and new items into their respective places, and went back to the car for Grocery Boxes, Round Two.

That’s when it happened.

I walked out of the back door, across the deck, down the stairs, and over to my hubby’s Subaru. He took my car to work today. My car’s a Smart Car. It took me *months* of relentless determination to finally convince him that I should have a Smart Car. He kept droning on in his classic boring “iM iNteLLiGeNT” nerd voice, saying “It’s just not *pRaCtiCaL*” and I kept expertly retorting “Ummm it’s *adorable*!” And after about 10 months of this, plus several months of the ol’ handy dandy Cold Shoulder Method (AKA the “Cold Bedsheets” Method), he finally caved and I got my Smart Car. And I LOVE it! It’s so cute. And great on gas! I mean you wouldn’t believe the gas mileage. But it doesn’t fit groceries so he takes it to work now and I drive his dumb ugly Subaru.

So I walked over to the Subaru and picked up the second batch of grocery boxes. And that’s when I saw it.

It was hidden behind a shadow. I knew what it was as soon as I saw it. My heart sank and my stomach turned in a vicious knot.

It was a pint of ice cream, still sitting in the trunk.

I reached out, slowly, cautiously, and squeezed the sides of it lightly to check how melted it was. The sides gave slightly under the pressure—the ice cream was *undeniably* somewhat-softer-than-usual. This was an emergency.

I threw the ice cream into one of the grocery boxes, lifted it (using exclusively those Power-Lift Muscles along the lower back, of course), and whipped around toward the deck, my heart pounding with anxiety. I started walking briskly—almost *trotting* even—determined to save what was left of the Chunky Monkey’s hard-packed consistency. I only made it three or four trots before it happened.

I tripped.

A while back we had some work done to the exterior of the house, general updates to stuff like the driveway and a couple of the gardens, that sort of thing. We got new gravel for the whole driveway and even some of the surrounding walkways. It used to be those grey & white rocks for the driveway and some darker grey rocks for the walkways, but hubby likes red. It’s his favorite color. If it was up to him, everything would be red. But me? I HATE red. Anything red. Fire trucks? Hate ‘em. Twizzlers? Fucking hate ‘em. When I eat Cap’n Crunch Berries, I pick out all the red berry pieces and flush them down the toilet, one by one, just for spite. I won’t help someone if they’re bleeding—no way am I looking at all that red flowing out of your neck. I HATE red.) But, as part of the tense negotiations that eventually earned me my Smart Car (it’s blue by the way), I was forced to agree to let hubby replace our grey-and-white gravel with those red “lava rocks.” Marriage is about compromise, after all.

So, to avoid spiraling into a fit of frenetic rage every time I walk outside, I just never look down while I’m walking on the new gravel! It’s been an effective solution thus far. That is… until today.

I was trotting back from hubby’s Subaru, grocery boxes in hands with a melting B&J turning me frantic, when I tripped and fell face-flat into the gravel.

I opened my eyes and flew into a shocking panic—all I could see was RED! I started scampering to get up, but in my flustered state I kept slipping and sliding back onto the ground, the red rocks now turning my skin red with scratches! It was a genuine nightmare. And I was (clearly justifiably) *horrified*.

At some point in this scuffle, I noticed something out of the corner of my eye.

Underneath the deck I could see something out of place, something that didn’t belong there. My curiosity distracted me from the violent gravel struggle for long enough to stand up without further incident, and so I began creeping over toward the edge of the deck, attention focused directly at the unidentifiable object underneath it.

As I got closer, I stepped on something unexpected!

Against my overwhelming (and perfectly reasonable and normal) desire to avoid all things red, I looked down to see what I had stepped on. And I screamed in *utter horror*.

Chunky Monkey.

Totally squished.

Totally ruined.

Evidently, my nightmare was far from over.

I wiped the sticky residue from my shoe and redirected my focus back toward the mystery item beneath the deck. This was war now, the Chunky Monkey a valiant fallen soldier on the Good Guys side. I crept slowly toward the deck, holding my gaze, clenching my fists, and clenching my butthole as well. As I moved closer and closer with each slow, deliberate step, as the item became more visible, it seemed to shift shapes right in front of me, so that possibilities formed and evaporated in my mind in split seconds, one after another after another—“Is it a knife? No it can’t be, there’s no metal. Is it a gun? No, it’s too colorful. A bomb?! Bitch it *might* be!” And so on.

With adrenaline coursing through me, I finally reached the deck’s edge. I crouched down and swung myself into the crawl space beneath, and I crawled on all fours toward the object.

To make a long story short, I crawled under the full length of the deck, all the way to the space directly beneath the back door, where the mystery object sat, patiently awaiting my arrival. My nerves were exploding with fear, but I was wearing my brave pants (I have some sweatpants with an image of the main character from the animated movie *Brave* holding a bow & arrow stretched across the butt cheeks from right to left), so I was ready for *anything*.

I reached down slowly, hand trembling with… fear? Excitement? Adrenaline? Dehydration? Both? And as my fingers made contact with the item, it all clicked together in my mind!

It’s the creepiest thing I’ve ever experienced. In my hand I was holding two colored pencils and a charcoal stick. I let out an exasperated gasp, but what actually came out was a terrified moan! It was in that horrific moment that I remembered what I found last week— a **pencil sharpener**! And now, mere days later, I find cold, hard, pointy evidence of a direct connection, and obvious signs of sinister motive. How can I be so sure of the sinister nature of these finds, you ask?

It’s quite simple really. And I’m sure you’ll agree once you know what I know. And what I know is this: Those colored pencils I found? *Both* of them… **two** colored pencils, and two alone, not in a set, nor singular, but TWO colored pencils, placed in the most menacing, deliberate way possible… What did they have in common?

*They were* **RED**.

So, friendly Reddit Investigators, what do you think? Am I being drawn? In RED? What type of gun should I buy? And what type of legal loopholes can I exploit in regards to explosives? Thanks in advance!