Mr Albert was a tidy man. He liked everything to be in its proper place. He abhorred chaos and disorder. So, when he saw the broken end of a thread protruding from the carpet around his desk, he felt that he had to do something.
At first he tried to cut the thread with a pair of scissors that he kept in his grooming kit. However, no matter how hard he tried he failed to cut the strand. Instead it flopped this way and that, lying along the sides of the blades.
Not wanting to accept defeat, Mr Albert tried to pluck the thread away. He pinched it between finger and thumb, and pulled gently. But, when he brought his hand up, the errant fibre wasn't there. The damned thing had slipped through his fingers and was still there, standing proud and defiant above the carpet.
Still Mr Albert refused to give up. He retrieved a threading tab from a sewing kit that he kept in his desk drawer, then dropped the wire loop of the tab over the thread and twisted. There was a feeling of resistance, then the thread started to come away. Mr Albert continued to pull, looping the filament neatly around the neck of the tab.
The bundle of thread grew bigger and bigger, and Mr Albert kept pulling. He shuffled along the floor of his office, chasing the thread along the carpet. It led him to the office wall, along the skirting board, then up towards the ceiling. Still Mr Albert stuck to his task, obsessed with finding the end of the fibre. He was so focussed that he failed to notice the thin strip of bright, white light that followed him.
Finally, the last of the thread came away. Mr Albert allowed himself a smile and cleaned the threading tab, dropping the tangled skein into his bin. It was only then that he noticed that the walls of his office had vanished, leaving him standing on a carpet suspended in an infinite, grey void.
Mr Albert stopped. He looked at the relative clutter of what remained of his office, comparing it to the still, featureless perfection of the abyss. There, in the corner where there had once been a door, he caught sight of another piece of broken thread. Mr Albert held up the threading tab and knelt down.
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In 500 Words Or Less
Short Story'In 500 Words Or Less' is a collection of short stories, all of them 500 words or less, written for the WattPad WriteOn Writers Weekend WriteIn.
