Everybody loves my Grandma’s art work. Mostly abstract pieces, painted on canvas with an array of pastels, watercolors, and oils. They’re as colorful as they are random, but the randomness is methodical, calculated. That’s what everybody loves about my Grandma’s artwork—the chaotic precision within each brush stroke. The art tells stories, but the stories it tells depend on the listener.

My grandma submits her artwork to local shows and exhibits, receiving praise from viewers and money from the occasional buyer. My grandma takes pride in her artwork, but I’m not really sure why. She doesn’t make it.

---

My Grandma’s art studio is a closet, 6 feet wide and 10 feet long. It’s really cramped but many great paintings have come out of it. There are no windows in the closet. It’s lone light source comes from a half-burnt bulb on the ceiling directly above the center of the closet. The walls of the studio are lined with shelves filled with art supplies. Stencils, pencils, paintbrushes, paints, papers, oils, charcoal—if it can be used to make art, my Grandma has it in her closet.

But there’s something else in my Grandma’s closet that if seen, would change people’s perception of her. What I’m about to tell you is a secret known to nobody but me and my Grandma. Until now.

In the far-right corner of the closet is a metal stake that sticks into the concrete floor, and wrapped around that metal stake is a metal chain, which connects to the right leg of—and I’m not lying—a small Elf.

This Elf has no name, but he wears a deep blue button-down shirt with green cuffs and gold linings and a pair of striped yellow and black pants with pointy red-velvet shoes. He wears a matching blue beret hat with a feather on the left side, which really accentuates the curls in his dirty brown hair that runs down his neck in a directional frenzy. But the thing that really strikes me about the Elf are his purple eyes—I’ve never seen so much truth as I did when I looked into them and met his stare for a brief moment. Those eyes hold a lot of soul.

I’ve felt guilty about this for a while so now I must confess the truth: Everybody thinks my Grandma makes those paintings but the truth is that she doesn’t. Her Elf does. She locked him in that closet and forces him to paint. If he doesn’t produce artwork, he doesn’t get fed. My Grandma makes the best cookies, so I guess that’s why he paints so much.

I can’t help but feel sorry for the little Elf though, because no matter how much he does for my Grandma, he never gets to remove his chain and leave her closet. The only way he can leave that closet is through his paintings. Even though the Elf must hate my grandma for keeping him prisoner, he loves when she tells him all the compliments she receives for her artwork. He feels hope knowing that even though he is never seen, he is heard—at least in some small way.

The Elf admitted to me once that he’s thought about murdering my grandma so that he could escape her closet. He’s afraid to do it though, because he doesn’t know if there’s a place for elves in this world. The Elf told me that if he were to escape, he’s not even sure where he would go, or if people would still appreciate his art, knowing that it came from an elf. I told him not to worry—my Grandma is 95 years old and she’ll be dead soon enough. Once she passes, he’ll be free to leave her closet and show the world his artwork.

I hope for the Elf’s sake that he does leave her closet one day, but part of me wonders if he’d prefer to remain in there since it’s all he’s ever known. I told him that if he decides to stay, I’ll do him a favor and continue to send out his artwork to the shows and exhibits. That way, he can remain where he’s comfortable and still be free.