"The Small Things" Short Story

This is a story about a microscope. Thinking about microscopes brings me back to high school Biology class, using old and outdated equipment that wouldn't focus. Thank goodness this story isn't about that.
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Now...
The Small Things

“Thanks for nothing,” Tim sniffed. He held the last box of his belongings. “I’m going to find a real man. One who tries to fix problems.”

Seth looked at the man who had once meant something to him, the man who still might mean something if he was a lot smaller. The insult stung in a distant and half-formed way, a pain dreamed rather than felt.

When Seth said nothing, Tim’s shoulders lifted like a dog’s hackles rising. “Oh, fuck you!” he cried, and stormed out the front door. It slammed shut behind him.

Seth studied his fingers, the grime caught underneath his nails. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew he should have been more bothered about what was happening. Instead, relief loosened his lungs. Tim’s departure had removed a choking restraint from around his neck. Without Tim, he could do what he pleased, and there was only one thing he wanted to do anymore. 

He locked the door to prevent Tim from coming back if he changed his mind. Then, he mounted the stairs to the second floor and climbed the ladder to the attic. The wood squeaked in a friendly voice, an old friend inviting him home. 

Seth let his gaze wander over the items of furniture, the cheap garage sale chairs with their price tags still attached, and the old dolls pulled from antique store shelves. If it was old and funny-smelling and odd, he would buy it. Tim used to find that habit endearing, especially when Seth spent hours perusing second-hand shops for unique gifts. 

Endearing, until the microscope.

Seth walked over to the desk at the far end of the attic, underneath a large and dusty window. The space he once used for restoring old paintings and repairing broken china tea sets was bare now, devoid of all the tools he spent his life accumulating. In their place was a microscope, a bright yellow instrument he picked up last month. He hadn’t thought anyone lived in that strange house at the end of the road. When he saw homemade signs leading in that direction, and the tables of odds-and-ends set up on the lawn, he had been unable to resist a visit. 

Seth caressed the top of the microscope, the way a religious man might touch a Bible. He sat in his chair and leaned over to put his eye to the eye piece. He squinted, and stared, and lost himself in the dazzling sight.

There was nothing on the stage, no slide containing an interesting sample. The old woman selling the microscope had been so right when she told him he wouldn’t need any such gimmicks. 

Like all microscopes, this one offered a view of what couldn’t be seen with the naked eye. It saw through. Through a veil, through time and space, through everything, to a strange and amorphous place of dapples. Everything was light and shadow, a monochromatic field upon which slithering life forms of indeterminable shape and identity twisted and writhed. The creatures were unknown, hidden sideways on some other plane of existence no one had ever glimpsed before. 

Nothing compared to watching their lives in the chaotic and undefined unknown, a world reversed from the one Seth knew.

He switched eyes and leaned his elbows on his desk. He sat there, and he watched the magnified lifeforms as the sun descended across the sky and eventually beneath the horizon. Even when he couldn’t see any longer what he was looking at, he stayed unmoving at the microscope to wait for morning. 

The view was worth it.

©2019 Emily Blue

"Socks": A Quick Story

As promised, here's another short story I wrote! Enjoy and remember to check out my author page at Facebook.com/authoremilyblue and on Twitter @Miss_Emily_Blue. Obligatory self-promotion finished, here's the story.

Socks

Domino looked down at the socks on his feet, socks crusted with dried sweat and blood, less like pieces of clothing and more like shed snake skin. They had never had any shape to begin with and now lacked even the tension to pretend at functionality.

He loved them.

He bent over, one candidate out of thousands in the crowd all undressing. He removed first one sock and then the other. Utterly naked now, feeing his nudity for the first time even though he had tossed his shirt and pants aside already, he looked at the sad, ropey sacks which were all he had left in the world.

“Hey, you,” a sharp voice barked.

Domino turned and looked at the speaker, an older man with large dark eyes and a head shaved except for a thin stripe running from his forehead to the base of his skull.

“You’re done.” The man snapped off each word as if biting vegetables in chunks to drop into a stew in lieu of using a knife. “Go get in line.”

“Yes, sir,” Domino said. His feet moved for him before he finished speaking, taking him to the building whose placement he had memorized when he set foot in the compound. The crowd of others around him blocked his progress. He held the socks tight and shoved his shoulder into thin gaps, splitting men apart like an axe cleaving through firewood. Hands and thrown clothes struck him, other legs tangling with his as he slid by. The stench of sweat, the reek of hard travel, was thick enough to be tasted in the air. Tasted like tears. Because the air was occupied by smells, because all the men were moving as fast as they could, there was no room for conversation. Domino heard only grunts and gasps when he passed by the people making them, mistook the reverberant pounding of footsteps on the ground for his own racing heartbeat.

Another shove and he burst through the bulk of the undressing crowd to a sector with more order to it due to a fence -thin and ramshackle, but still a fence- and men with stripe haircuts guarding each entrance. Lines meandered through the gates. Domino watched, waited for his turn. Anticipation coiled serpentine in his gut.

Men came here in the hopes of being chosen. If someone was approved here, he was sent to another compound to be approved there and then at the headquarters after that, at which time he was to be christened a new citizen of the reforming country of Oss and welcomed into one of the walled cities.

Domino knew he might be rejected at any stage. If a man was not suited for a new life, he was sent away by train to elsewhere. Local rejection offices handed out tickets to anyone who wished to skip the long process. That way out would be so much easier. But if there was hope, any hope at all…

“Next!”

Domino blinked, realized no one was ahead of him. Legs trembling, he stepped up to the gate and looked the soldier in the eye. This one wore so many stripes upon his head, was of such a high rank, he nearly had all his hair.

“What is that?” the many-striped soldier demanded, pointing at Domino’s hand. “No personal belongings.”

“I know,” Domino said. Tried to say. His voice cracked. He licked his lips, tried again. “I know that. My grandmother made these for me.”

The soldier stared at him.

Domino pulled in such a deep breath his shoulders lifted. Everything inside him was loose and tight all at once. “I love them.”

The other man’s lips pressed together, thinning. His decision glowed bright in his eyes. He opened his mouth, showing a flash of folded tongue already most of the way through forming sound.

Spinning around, Domino threw the socks away as hard as he could. They sailed, pathetic kites fluttering in the air, and disappeared under the feet of the mob. “But I love my country more,” he announced, loud and proud, believing with his whole heart what he said.

Momentary stillness. A beat in which nothing breathed, not man, not the world itself. Then, the guard nodded slowly. “Hold out your arm.”

This wasn’t part of the process as far as Domino knew. He did it, anyway. The tendons in his wrist stood out against his skin.

The soldier reached into his pocket and pulled out an object that looked like a modified syringe. He placed the flat tip on the back of Domino’s wrist and depressed the plunger. Pain, sharp and quick. Domino flinched and yanked his arm back, staring at the mark that had been left upon him. It was small and square, too regular to be mistaken for a freckle.

Replacing the device in his uniform pocket, the soldier said, “Show that mark at each compound you visit.”

“What is it for?”

“It shows you have promise and dedication. It won’t guarantee acceptance, but it does increase your chances. Now, move. You’re holding up the line.”

“Thank you,” Domino gasped, and sprinted through the gate to join the others all headed in the same direction. Tears of gratitude stung his eyes, twin to the twinging pain on his arm. He had no idea where he was headed or what he would do when he got there. All he knew was that he would do the best he could. Right now, that was all anyone could do, even if it meant putting the good of the country ahead of the good of the individual.

©2019 Emily Blue

Personal Rejection

It's a busy world. There's not always a reason given for the way things are, or at least there's not enough time. Now more than ever, we as a society are constantly moving on to the next. That's no truer than in business. It doesn't matter so much WHY you weren't chosen for something, just that you weren't. 

That's why personal rejections matter so much to writers. I've gotten used to form rejections. It's just convenience. I accept it and try again elsewhere. But when an editor takes the time that they don't have to give to others and uses it to pen a few lines to you about what you sent to them, it means the world. It almost doesn't feel like a rejection. It feels good because it means I was good enough to stand out and make them want to say something about what I wrote. 

Already this year, I've had a few personal rejections, and on one short story in particular. There's been praise. There's been reasons given why the story wasn't chosen. Not the right fit for the magazine, despite enjoying the story itself, or liking one aspect of it but not another. I was even invited to resubmit a story to another collection after being passed over for the first one. The editors liked it enough to want to give me a second try. 

It's still not quite what I want, but it gives me hope and shows me that I'm moving in the right direction as a writer. I'm improving. 

I was going to post a short story here this time, but this has gone on a bit longer than I thought it would. Look again in a few days, please. 

If you want reminders and convenient links, be sure to head over to my author page on Facebook at facebook.com/authoremilyblue.

Until next time.

~Blue