Short Stories: A Collection of Magic - Updated Irregularly

Paper Sorrows

A tear dripped slowly from the man’s eye, as he stared at it in the mirror. He’d allow himself a moment to simply be, before leaving the bathroom and returning to his own chair in his own little cubicle.

He didn’t understand why he was sad. Nothing had upset him recently; he was just sad.

Perhaps he should leave. Perhaps he should simply tell his boss – but no. He had asked to leave twice in the past two weeks. Soon he’d be fired.

He sat at his desk and stared at the keys on his computer. He began to see words written out of those keys. Dreary was spelt once. Sorrow. Sad. Tear. He thought he should look away.

Why do I feel this way? he wondered. I should tell Marry. No, no. She worries about me lately. She’d worry too much. Too much. Can’t tell. Keep it secret, keep her safe.

Sorrow.

He looked at the words on the top page of the stack of papers on his desk. At first they spelt things he was used to reading: “sales,” “wage,” “month.” Soon they changed. Soon he read “sorrow,” “dreary,” and “gloom.”

Tell Marry. Can’t. Can’t tell Marry. Can’t tell. Just work. Need help. Marry’s help. Need Marry’s help. Maybe she can help.

His boss approached him.

“Trent, how’s it going?”

For a moment, Trent thought his boss wanted to know how he was, but then he realized: he wanted to know how the assignment was going.

His boss sighed. “Don’t tell me, Trent. Again? Have you started on it?”

Trent mumbled something about “I promise I was about to,” when his boss cut him off.

“Listen. You look sick. Go home.” Trent got up to leave. As he walked away, the voice behind his back said, “And, Trent. Don’t come back.”

He was fired. He was a fired man who had no idea what was wrong with himself. Jobless, he felt no different. He felt only his sorrow.

He put his hand in his pocket. His hand ruffled paper. He had no memory of placing any paper in his pocket. He took it out and looked.

It was just a tiny piece of paper, but on it was a face.

The face was sad.

He let the paper slip through his fingers as he walked through the cold to his car. He felt happy, free from the sorrow that had gripped him firmly only moments before, when he had held the paper.

The paper. Could the paper have been the cause? he wondered. He laughed at the idea, not because it seemed ridiculous, but because he was happy.

He smiled until he reached his car, and then he scowled. He gripped his steering wheel as if to strangle it, breathing in and out like a bull. A slip of paper in a pile of trash caught his attention. The face on it looked angry.

Trent tossed the paper out of his window and drove home with little emotion at all. He was tired of having so much emotion; he just wanted to be normal.

He pulled into his driveway. Marry’s car wasn’t there. She must have been out shopping, but it was better for him to be alone, anyway, he thought. He needed some time to himself.

He closed his door behind him and walked to his room. He took out all of his clothes and searched their pockets. He found papers in them, and the papers all wore faces. One was happy, and Trent realized that he hadn’t worn the pair of pants it had come from in ages. One paper looked confused. Two wore frowns. Three wore scowls. He walked to his stove and burnt them. Perhaps now things would change.