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by M Author IconMail Icon
Rated: 18+ · Fiction · Emotional · #2191113
prompted flash fiction exercise: about an article of clothing
Fuzzy socks with little faces on them huddled in the corner of my bathroom - rabbits, dogs, owls, and food items given happy personalities in bright block colors. They all look away, staring down or smiling at or in awe of the crooked door stopper, or perhaps disgusted with the goings on of the bathroom; which they shouldn't be, as nothing inappropriate or shameful occurs here, I think. Aside from the act of dispensing bodily waste; some would consider it both inappropriate and shameful, which is ridiculous. How did we evolve to despise some of our most regular and necessary bodily functions? One of the pink rabbits plastered upon an ambiguous green-blue backdrop reminds me that it is perhaps a devolution, not an evolution that has brought us to this point. But it will not make eye contact with me. Is there anything so cold as a fully present converser who will not look you in the face?

Occasionally, I will lose hours of my time obsessing over the tiny black hairs that poke through my skin on my cheek and neck and chin and the inside of my nose. Like spindly black insects, they weave themselves throughout my face; so elusive, wrought with tricks by the god Anansi himself. I'm afraid if left alone they will crawl out of my like spiders - like Kafka's meta-human I will evolve (devolve?) into some humanoid a face like a housefly's and with tiny, busy, insectoid legs rubbing themselves together off the tip of my chin. The spider sock will not know what to do with me. Maybe it will finally stop smiling. What the fuck could be so consistently pleasant in this world? Is there anything more frustrating than an endlessly positive person? They are not to be trusted with our hurts and our anguish, for they do not understand. And if you cannot understand a thing, how could you possibly hope to give it the honor it is due?

I cannot tell if one of the socks is a piece of salmon nigiri sushi that has grown a face and arms and a timid personality or a red-capped mushroom that has done much of the same. If it would turn around and look at me perhaps I would be able to discern, but also maybe not. Often we assume alternative pasts will lead to alternative presents but that may not be the case at all. I'm tempted to say "that may not be the case at all, depending on what you believe"; but, it does not depend on what you believe in the least. The laws of physics and metaphysics and whatever other kinds of physics deal with time and fate and reality are probably not at all subject to belief, unless of course, they are. Wouldn't that be a hoot? If what became was entirely dependent on what was thought and willed and believed in. In which case, perhaps even the fact that that was how reality was formed and forms and will form is some kind of rule in whatever kind of physics that was believed in such that it is. The happy fucking spider reminds me that some things are not worth thinking about. The yellow pig agrees, but it cannot speak English, so it simply snorts.

The fluorescent light will not stop buzzing and the sound of water running through pipes either above me or within the walls next to me keeps me awake, but I know I am leaving soon.

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