physical graphite

Something about broken pencil leads has always made me think of severed fingers, but it has to be the sort with wood still clinging to a majority of the circumference. I can see a small broken graphite point by itself and just see a broken pencil lead. Those do not give me pause when I open an otherwise empty desk drawer, but something about seeing a broken pencil lead with a fringe of wood causes a Bernard Herrmann film score to slowly build in the back of my mind.

I don't know why this is. It could be that the broken wood around it gives it a more flesh-like or human appearance, or there could just be something creepy about the now phantom pencil that it is no longer attached to.

Then again, seeing a pencil with a broken and missing lead does not bother me, and I do not suspect that they are behind the door hoping to catch me alone or biding their time at the back of an otherwise empty drawer just waiting for that perfect moment when the suspense has passed and I have breathe my sigh of relief to leap from the shadows and...

erase me, I suppose. There is not much danger to pose with the pointy bit missing.

Sometimes it is more a David Lynch moment than a Hitchcockian one, but the sight never fails to briefly derail my train of thought.

Then again, I suppose it is seldom on the tracks anyway.