Three Small Stories II
Scripted
One day, everyone in the world woke up in their beds or the floor
or wherever and next to them was a binder. In the binder was a script
for the day. Everyone was to set about their day following the script.
A woman walked to a butcher shop and ordered a pound of ground meat
just like her script said to do, and the butcher fixed it up and read
from his printed dialogue.
“Have a nice day ma'am.”
Some people read ahead in their scripts and discovered they would
die or fall in love or kill someone.
A lot of people threw their scripts in the trash and decided to go
about their day unscripted.
The plotlines of the scripts were of a variety of genres. Some people
found themselves in romantic comedies, some were in big budget thrillers,
and some found themselves in stranger, Lynchian sorts of things.
During mundane interactions throughout the day, people from different
plotlines would drift into other plotlines. For instance, two people
standing in line to get some coffee might be engaged in completely
different plotlines, but have a conversation that supported both.
A plotline for one script might be a subplot for another.
At the end of the day, after the billions of denouements, some people
felt more scared than usual, or more sad, or more confused. But mostly,
people just felt happier.
May or May Not
A man and a woman are married. They have three or four children. The
children are either triplets or quadruplets. They live together as
a family of five or six. They have a car that seats seven or eight.
Here are the genders of the children: male, male, male, (male). Here
are the names of the children: Roger, Ralph, Ron, (Ryan).
When the man and woman decided to get pregnant, they discovered that
the woman had polycystic ovary syndrome and couldn't get pregnant
without infertility drugs. The doctor said that if she took infertility
drugs, they should expect twins or triplets.
The children are six years old. They sleep in the same room on two
sets of bunk beds. One of the top bunks may or may not be empty. The
other top bunk is occupied by Ron.
One night, Ron wakes up. Everyone else is asleep. He looks across
the room at the other top bunk. He climbs down the ladder of his bed
quietly and climbs up the ladder of the other bed, quietly. He stops
at the top of the ladder and looks at the bed. He looks closely at
the bedspread. He gently puts his hand on the bedspread.
Tree
The day she left him was the same day she turned into a tree. That
day, he woke up and there was a tree lying next to him.
She had bones and joints in her roots so she could kind of slowly
scoot around the house.
He decided to go to work.
When he came home for lunch she had made it to the living room. He
looked closely at her, her leaves, her bark, her branches, trying
to read her. He couldn't tell what she might be thinking. He thought
maybe she wants some water. He went to the kitchen and brought back
a cup of water and splashed it onto her. It dripped down to her roots
and seaped into the carpet. Then he felt a little foolish, watering
a tree with a cup of water. He went back to work.
Later that evening, he came home from work and pulled his car into
the driveway. She had made it out to the front lawn. Standing out
there in the center of the lawn, leaves blowing gently in the wind,
she looked a little taller, a little happier.
By midnight, she'd made it to the park down the street.
For months, he would walk down to the park on Saturdays and place
flowers at her roots, look down and tell her how much he missed her.
But eventually, he stopped going to see her and got on with his life.
Darby Larson's fiction has been published at Mcsweeney's Internet Tendency, Opium Magazine, Bullfight Review, .ISM Quarterly, Eyeshot, Eclectica, Pindeldyboz, and other places. He lives and works in Northern California.