“ARRRRGH!” Ken growled. “I just can’t DO this!!!” Ken had always wanted to draw manga, but unfortunateley, he just couldn’t get the head right. Or the eyes or the hair or the legs or, well...anything. It just wasn’t in him. He really wanted to learn this art, so he could start drawing girls and selling the really sexy ones to his friends. Yeah...that’ll ever happen.

“Maybe I should just give up.” he sighed out loud. Of course, this would be practical in saving paper, but not practical for his dream to be a manga artist. Finally, Ken decided to do just one more, and if it failed, he’d haul the gigantic stack of crumpled up paper wads to the recycle bin and forget this whole thing ever happened. “Glad I started weight lifting...” he sighed, drawing an actually decent base. Just a coincidence... he thought, beginning on drawing the hair...except it was actually pretty good, too.

Then, the eyes, where he almost always messed up, then, he started realizing that he’d finally done it! He’d drawn a self-portrait! Right as he got out a paper to start the real fun, his mom looked over his shoulder at his totally accurate self-portrait. “Wow, Kenny, that’s really good! It looks just like you!”

“Yeah...it’s pretty good...I guess.” he said, and he shooed his mom away so he could start drawing the base...and the top half of the torso, he learned, was exceedingly hard.

Finally, he took a break to get a drink of water, and went back to work. But as he FINALLY mastered the torso, he knocked over his water onto his self-portrait!!! And all of a sudden, his legs got really sweaty and wet. At first, he thought he’d peed himself, but then realized, that was exactly where he’d spilled the water on in his picture. Just a coincidence, and speaking of legs, these are AWESOME! He said, getting back to work again.
After about an hour, he finally finished his work, and decided to put his self portrait in his drawer so nobody would ever find it. But the moment he did, he felt this sudden feeling of gloom and nervousness, as if he was trapped! He became claustrophobic, so he took the self portrait out of the drawer and put it back in the sun.
Much better. He continued his work until the wind blew the self-portrait around, and that’s when he flew out of his chair and slammed into the wall! That’s when he realised his curse. He would go through the same stuff as his drawing. He had to destroy it. He started by erasing the head. A sharp pain stopped him! He had only HALF HIS HEAD LEFT! He redrew it immediately, but in the process, made things worse. The other side was rubbed off in the process of the redraw, so he had to redo THAT, too!

“I’m going mad!” he thought, and he walked over to the bathroom because he felt like barfing. That’s when he noticed his face. It looked just like his manga! And it was spreading. Soon, his entire body was manga. “No. No! NOOOOOO!!!” he screamed. He ran back into his room and stepped on his drawing. He crumpled like a leaf! The pain was so immense. In anger, he tore apart the drawing. And that was his downfall.