Red Crayons

Emma draws in red crayon exclusively now. Has for three weeks.

The refrigerator gallery tells the story: stick figures falling from windows, cars wrapped around trees, kitchen knives beside sleeping forms. Each drawing dated in her careful seven-year-old handwriting. Each drawing coming true within forty-eight hours.

"It's just coincidence," Michael says, but his voice catches on the word. He's been checking the local news obsessively since Mrs. Henderson died exactly as Emma had sketched—face-down in her garden, roses scattered around her head like a gory halo.

The crayon box sits open on Emma's desk. Twenty-three colors untouched. Red worn down to a stub.

"Draw something happy," Sarah pleads, kneeling beside their daughter's chair. "Draw flowers. Draw puppies."

Emma looks up with eyes that seem too old, too knowing. "I don't choose what to draw, Mommy."

Her small hand moves across the paper with mechanical precision. A playground. Swings. A man in a baseball cap pushing a little girl—but the swing's chain snaps, and the girl flies forward into concrete that Emma colors with careful, even strokes.

Sarah snatches the paper away.

"No."

Emma blinks once. Reaches for a fresh sheet.

The pediatric psychiatrist speaks in measured tones about childhood anxiety manifesting through art therapy. About how traumatic exposure to news media can create prophetic fantasies. She prescribes play dates and screen time limits, as if schedule adjustment can stop whatever flows through Emma's fingers onto paper.

That night, Michael burns the drawings in their backyard fire pit. Each paper curls and blackens, releasing smoke that tastes like copper pennies and salt water. Sarah watches from the kitchen window, arms wrapped around herself, as her husband tries to incinerate the future.

But Emma keeps drawing.

The swing accident happens Tuesday morning. Channel Seven shows the footage: little girl airborne, chain link dangling, impact that turns parents away from their screens. Michael and Sarah recognize the playground. The baseball cap. The precise angle of Emma's prophetic geometry.

Emma colors at her desk, humming something that might be a lullaby or might be a dirge. Her latest picture shows a house—their house—with flames licking the windows. Two adult figures stand in the doorway, not running, just standing. Waiting.

Below the drawing, in her careful script: Tomorrow.

Sarah finds matches in the kitchen drawer. Michael discovers gasoline in the garage.

They look at each other across the kitchen table where Emma's picture lies between them like a roadmap to nowhere good. Outside, night falls with unusual weight. Inside, the house creaks with the sound of structure settling into its final configuration.

Emma appears in the doorway, red crayon in her fist.

"Don't be sad," she says. "I drew us together."