A Fourth Helping of Very Short Stories (for the Soul)
The White Shoe Staff
[Redactor's Note: Today is day four of "Very Short Story Week." Hence, we proudly bring you four more of the best stories we received. If you are not familiar with this contest, or if you missed the winners, please go here.]
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The Captive
She awoke, opened her eyes and looked straight into his. "What do you want from me?"
The moment she said that, he knew that he had lost.
"I want what we once had."
"Then you want nothing," she said, closing her eyes.
"Perhaps you're right." He stroked her face once before covering it with the pillow.
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Ubturd
Jormig had lifted the first shovelful of frozen earth. Rika had given birth, another meek mouth. He'd beaten her many nights. Everything to kill it, that cursed womb. He walked back to his home; he could hear his boy. Her face was red with weeping; it had happened before. The beatings she could forgive, this she could not. The child reached for its father. If you had demon ears you could hear a weak man dying, and a small child shivering beneath a smattering of earth. With a shudder, his child died.
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5:59 A.M.]
I died three years ago on a Wednesday, at 5:59 A.M. Heart attack. Has it ever seemed to you that some alarm clocks are more evil than others? Some howl with such malicious delight that they seem possessed. It's not your imagination. Those are the alarm clocks inhabited by the souls of the workaday damned. The one that killed me was an accountant who had died in 1983. I don't blame him. He was just doing his job. As I now do mine, every morning, in the tastefully austere one bedroom flat of a marketing director named Janice.
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Singles: A Fable
An amoeba oozed through viscous limbo. When other minuscule beings approached, she wolfed them down and assumed their shape. Saddened, she longed for self-actualization.
One day, a svelte paramecium darted by.
"Oh sir," she called, "I wish to be an independent, like you. May I follow?"
"Listen, pudgy," he replied, "It's your DNA. But if you really seek transformation, follow yourself."
Zip. He was off.
"Oh dear," she groaned. "But how?"
Balked and bloated, between a snivel and gasp, she hiccupped and her middle narrowed.
Pop!
Now, two amoebas quivered.
Moral: Once an amoeba, twice an amoeba.
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Read the fifth installment of Very Short Story Week here.