Stories About Things
by Aelius Blythe
Public Domain
(Creative Commons CC0)
Please respect the hard work of this author by copying, sharing, modifying, or otherwise using this work, wherever and however possible.
No Rights Reserved.
kopimi
Introduction
(Don't worry, it's short.)
These are stories about things.
Some from this world. Some from other worlds.
Small things. Disconnected things. Meaningless things.
Just things.
~A.
Table of Contents
Part I. Thought and Memories: things of this world...
Teacups
Time
The Name
Maple Syrup
The Swing
That Night There Was No Dinner
First Impressions
Part II. Fairies and Things: things of other worlds...
Sun Set
Shark
The Dinner Bells
Leaves of Trees
The Bear Would Starve
Space
Part I. Thought and Memories: things of this world...
ONE
Teacups
Dirt.
That was a more pleasant smell.
Dirt didn't smell dirty. It smelled like life and it smelled like growth and it smelled like comfort.
It was more pleasant than this.
This was old and it smelled like old.
Like oil mixed with dust mixed with rags mixed with closed doors and no airflow and dark. Like the smell of an old barn. Like the smell of someone's grandmother's house forgotten on a lot with too many trees grown up around it.
The smell of neglect.
The china was cold.
It shouldn't have been. It should have been warm, it should have been hot–too hot to hold and filled with tea too hot to drink.
He wiped a finger around the flowers. The paint was fine, thin, almost flat, but he'd always been able to feel the designs on the cup, just a little bit.
He couldn't feel them now.
The flowers were covered in dust, and the dust was all he felt.
She wasn't like this.
He bent down to the shelf. He shouldn't, he knew he shouldn't. His back seemed to know it, it stiffened as his head tried to bend down to the little china cup. He shouldn't. Not here. Not in the place of closed doors and no airflow and dark. Not here. But his head bent down anyway and his nose brushed the dust at the bottom of the teacup and he sniffed.
The dust went in his nose.
The dust and the oily smell of the dark and airless antique shop.
He turned away.
His eyes shut and he straightened up and turned away from the shelf. He turned away even though his eyes were shut, because he didn't want to face the cup.
It should smell like the ground.
It always had.
The tea in the cup had always smelled like the earth after a warm rain. He never tasted it, but he would smell it. As a child, he hated the smell of his grandmother's tea.
Now, the memories were sweet.
It shouldn't be here.
The dust and the smell of the dust and the dark and the forgotten air of the antique shop was no place for this cup. But there was no place for it now.
It shouldn't be here.
He opened his eyes and looked back at the cup. It looked sad. It looked like it missed the heat of the water and the steam and the smell of earth just like he did.
A sticker on the handle said $25. He'd only gotten $5 for it.
But he did not have $25.
One hand brushed out and swept the cup to the ground.
Out of it's misery.
"Oops," he said, because he felt like he should.
"Hey!"
An old man hobbled out of the back room, but he was too slow. The teacup lay shattered on the ground a bell jangled and then the door banged shut.
TWO
Time
Dr. Ellis had nearly given up on time travel. He had built a solid theory, as well as a solid machine (several in fact,) but it was all useless. The machine sat in his laboratory, and the theory sat in his head because he had not yet devised a method to power them with. He had tried nuclear power, solar power, hydrogen fuel and even a wood-burning stove. None of it worked.
The answer came to him one day when he was very hungry. He was considering a slice of cherry pie in a store window, the sweet goo pouring out of the flaky crust, yellowed with butter under a large swirl of cream. For what seemed like an hour he stared, tried to remember how much cash he had in his pocket and stared some more. When the bakery manager came out, Dr. Ellis was startled out of his trance. Wiping a little drool from the corner of his mouth he apologized, blushed, and hurried away, but not before catching sight of the clock.
"That's it!" he shouted, then blushed again as passers-by stared. We've had the power source with us all this time, he thought, silently this time.
And so they–that is to say, people–had. For as he walked away from the store and the cherry pie, he noticed that barely two minutes had passed, yet surely it was an hour! He knew then: the mind powers time.
And we are the machine! he thought in triumph.
Upon arriving home, he scrapped all his old work and began to work on a new theory using the human mind as both the vessel and power source. He experienced great success in this venture. Soon, he could, in theory, make hours race ahead, allowing, for example, one to experience the end and beginning of a dull dinner party without any of the in-between parts that made it dull. Or, he could slow seconds down to a near stand still allowing more time for enjoyable things, like love-making, cherry pie, and good books.
There were two problems with his research. First, though he could slow down time or speed it up into the future, he had not yet figured out how to go backwards. He hypothesized, however, that this was possible, and kept working at it. Perhaps a combination of factors could exert enough force on the mind to make it turn backwards.
He tried many formulas to achieve this. For example: a lecture on the tree-ant's sleeping patters plus full logarithm tales plus a twelve foot pile of manila folders to be filed. That one was pretty close; it managed to bring time to a near standstill. But still it would not go backwards.
The second problem was the interference of the subconscious. If left alone, it would drag the host through the dull moments, expanding seconds into hours, and collapse hours into seconds during the fantastic moments.
Dr. Ellis theorized that this was an evolutionary mechanism, and quite a powerful one. Nature wanted the organism to realize just how boring the boring moments were, so it would avoid those in the future. The organism also needed to get through the fantastic moments quickly so that they could seek out more and more of these. While no doubt a biological advantage, this was exactly the tendency he wished to counter.
The subconscious problem was a particular beast. The doctor worked obsessively on it. He thought it was rather as if the subconscious controlled walking. One could try all morning to arrive at work, only to end up at the theater or the bakery.
To solve the problem, he tried many methods of distracting the subconscious. (Would it falter for a raspberry torte? Or a well-proportioned blonde?) If it were distracted long enough, then the conscious mind could sneak off through time. He also tried tricking the subconscious mind into inverting its natural patterns (would a caramel cheesecake make work meetings fly by? Would a persistent itch make a holiday last forever?) The subconscious, however, was a stubborn and well-disciplined creature. It had made
its patterns and stuck with them like cement.
Still, he worked and he worked. One night, as he was fiddling with a distraction contraption he'd built, he cut his finger on a piece of aluminum foil. He tried to ignore it, but the blood dripped all over the contraption and ran onto his notes. He went to the bathroom to find a bandage.
He opened the door, with the non-bloody hand, and walked into the bathroom. There was somebody there! He jumped in alarm, shoulders twitching, hands shaking. Seeing the stranger's reflection, he whirled to accost the intruder. But his knee gave way, spilling him to the floor. When he looked up, the stranger had gone. Shaking, knee throbbing, he stood, gripped the sink. There! He was back! Slowly this time, but still trembling he turned his head. But as he did, the stranger turned away. They turned back and stared at each other, the mirror in between.
Dr. Ellis looked at his own drooping skin and pale eyebrows.
"No!" he yelled. "I don't know how to go back yet!"
He stumbled back to his desk. His notes were all in disarray. He clawed through them desperately.
"There must be a key in here somewhere!"
Crimson drips fell from his finger.
Through stacks of diagrams and formulas his withered hands searched.
"I know I can fix it...I know I can fix it..."
The faster he searched, the longer his grizzled hair grew. Joints groaned and stiffened. His concave chest struggled to expand enough for air.
"There must...be a way...to go...back."
His head spun, and the panic grew wilder. His hair grew faster, and his joints grew slower. His breaths grew weaker.
Thunk.
The cement floor ground against his bent back. Failing fingers clutched a stack of papers. Pupils, quickly clouding with cataracts, strained to see.
"How...how..."
Then time stopped. At least, it did for him.
THREE
The Name
Goddamnit.
Everyone else was tried not to let their sobs drown out the eulogy.
Not me.
It wasn't that I wasn't sobbing (but I wasn't.) It wasn't that I wasn't listening to the eulogy (but I wasn't.) It wasn't that I wasn't totally remembering what a great guy the dearly departed was (Of he was. Who needed reminding?)
Goddamnit!
It wasn't any of those things.
It was the name.
What was it?
He was a great guy. Totally. Fun, energetic, handsome; the kind everybody liked. That was the reason they all attended his funeral. That's why I was there, anyway. I remembered the laughing, good-natured, slightly drunk face very well.
But not the name that went with it.
Mother always used to scoff at the people with funny names. But I remembered every single Dallas or Anferny I'd ever met. My mental landscape was full of Toms and Justins, and Jessicas and Katies. They were as common as paving stones and slipped by without notice.
Could have been Justin. Could have been Tom.
Tom... Tom?
The name started to insert itself into the memories. Tom. That could have been it.
No stop that.
It would have been awkward if it slipped out of my mouth. Or it would be awkward if it turned out that it wasn't actually his name. For all I knew, it could have been. But if not, would "Oops, wrong funeral," get me out of that one?
There must have been some mention of his name in the "Dearly Departed" clause. Too bad I was trying so hard to remember it to pay attention then.
Then,
Oh.
JACK, it said on the temporary grave marker.
Oh. Jack. Right.
Got back to the apartment.
"How was whasisnames funeral?" said the roommate. "What was his name anyway?"
"I don't know, but the ceremony was great."
FOUR
Maple Syrup
Syrup dripped slowly, not like blood. Syrup was sweet, too, but Chi didn't know what blood tasted like. Rusty, maybe, from the iron, iron like in magnets. He used to think that was why people stuck to the earth: they had metal in them, and so did the planet. He didn't think that anymore. If it were true, then why did dead people stick just as hard as living people, even when all the blood was drained out? Why didn't they go floating up away? He used to think that was why they nailed coffins shut.
Sip. Click.
The flask snapped back in its seat on his hip where a magnet stuck it in place. Mother thought it was rum, and he let her think that. Rum didn't work, though. Rum erased what maple syrup remembered. Other people drank, remembered things that didn't happen and forgot things that did. Chi wanted to remember what happened and forget what didn't.
Sip. Click.
The store itself was not the temptation. Not that Chi could ignore the rows upon rows of maple sugar cookies, gallons of syrup, lollipops in the shape of maple leafs, and tawny fudge squares. He couldn't. He was a good boy, though, and he wasn't tempted by the things that he shouldn't have.
The temptation wasn't the cookies and syrup and lollipops and fudge; it was the key. The key hung on the wall by the door after dark when his parents had gone to bed. He looked at it every evening at six, when his mother and father locked up the store and brought in the key. Sometimes, he would get up in the night, come downstairs quietly, and stare at the little piece of silver hanging on the peg by the door.
Sip. Click.
It was funny that the taste hadn't gone away all these years. Chi had thought that eventually he would get used to the sticky sweetness of the syrup and wouldn't be able to taste it. But he still did. Maybe it was a symbiotic relationship--the syrup and the memories--one kept the other alive. The memories hadn't faded, and the taste was part of the memories. The taste kept alive the memories, which kept alive the taste... Whatever the reason, the maple sweetness was just as clear as the day he'd first drunk it, and it recalled that time perfectly.
Sip. Click.
"No, we're not supposed to!" Geo had said the first time they snuck into the shop after dark.
Chi agreed. They were good boys, both of them. But rows of sweets, stacked neatly in a dark storeroom will sing to any young child, and Chi was listening. Now that he stood, key in hand, with his parents sleeping in the house, he heard their song loud and clear. Geo was not really trying to resist anyway; he was just making a token protest to fall back on later when they were caught. All Chi needed to do was make the token argument to cement the deal. It was the standard contract of light mischief. So he said,
"Who'll know?"
He took one of the little jugs of syrup and poured it into their two bottles (white ones that you couldn't see inside of.) The shelves only took a little rearranging to conceal the empty space. And the empty jar of evidence they buried by a tree. They sipped the syrup slowly so it would last. It wasn't difficult, though, like eating a chocolate bar slowly is difficult. No one can drink maple syrup except drop by drop, one sip at a time.
Sip. Click.
It went in a metal flask now instead of a white water bottle. He was almost grown now, and grown men who didn't play sports and worry about nutrition and hydration and those sorts of things didn't carry around water bottles everywhere. No one carried around hip flasks either, but Chi did it anyway. He needed something to carry the memories in, and the flask had come with a nice holder with a magnet.
"Don't dwell," they told him, all of them, parroting each other. "Look ahead of you, not behind you."
But he wanted to look behind. There were rocks back there, and if you weren't careful you could trip. You had to look. His mother put it a different way.
"Don't run backwards," she said. "Don't run backwards."
And don't push, either, he would add, but silently in his head so she wouldn't hear it.
Sip. Click.
He sipped the syrup carefully, one drop at a time. And he remem
bered carefully, one moment at a time. There was only one thing he couldn't remember.
Sip. Click.
Sip. Click.
Sip, sip, sip.
Click.
No matter how hard he tried, no matter how carefully he went over the memories, there was one he could not recover. For ten years, maple syrup held all the memories except that one.
Why was he angry? He couldn't remember.
Sip. Click.
Push. Thud. What were they fighting about? It must have been something important. It must have been. But if it was so important, then why couldn't he remember?
Sip. Click.
Slip.
Crack.
"Geo? Geo?"
That was the moment when he forgot. He had been angry, he knew he had, but at the sharp crack of bone on rock and the thud of Geo's body hitting the ground, he forgot.
The blood ran fast, and so did Chi. He ran and he ran, back to the house, though his stomach and chest and his legs all cramped up, and he couldn't breathe fast enough to get oxygen to the muscles.
He ran for his father and mother, then his mother ran for the doctor down the street, and someone ran for the policeman.
"Geo's hurt," he'd said, and everyone listened because they were good boys and never got into trouble.
They all ran very fast back to the field behind the house. But the blood ran faster. It was all out of Geo by the time Chi got back with help.
Sip. Click.
Drinking water would give him more energy. If he had more energy then he could run faster. But Chi didn't run anymore. There was no reason to. Blood was like water, and it ran fast. If you had a race with blood, it would always win, no matter how fast you ran. Maple syrup ran slow, and you didn't have to race against it. He was done racing.
His mother thought he was too slow.
"You have to get out of the room," she'd say. "Get a job, meet some friends."
She wanted him to go forward instead of backwards. Chi didn't think he was going backwards, though. He was looking backwards, and that was an entirely different thing. Looking backwards was important, even when you were standing still. He had to see what was there. There was something back there, and even if everybody else didn't see it, he had to.