Debut Flash: 'I Forgot to Clean The Microwave' by Kate Taylor

I said sorry, repeated it all day like a mantra. Eyes bored into me every time that I moved. It went on for a week and I still said it even as I started to shrink. My trousers dragged on the floor, cuffs dirty and fraying. At home the trees loomed outside the windows and the birds grew louder. Later that month I was twelve inches tall and needed help with the photocopier. All the doors had to be propped open for me so then everyone hated me again because of the draughts. I left soon after, when it became impossible for me to carry my morning coffee and my voice became hoarse from shouting sorry.

I went where all small things go, to the woods. Under rocks and up trees I looked for others like me but found only the curious eyes of woodpeckers and mice. I kept away from sniffing dogs on the ground and lay stomach down on branches up high, cloaked in moss against the early morning chill.

When the day warmed up, I would sneak to the edge of the park and watch the round cheeked children play. I stopped shrinking. The children were so loud and hungry, brazen with wanting. I wondered how tall they would grow. The mothers all sighed and nodded.

I have stopped shrinking but I don’t grow. I live here among the trees, play on the swings at night, startle the squirrels as they climb onto my branches. The sun wakes me and I watch it rise with the birds. Chimneys smoke, buses screech, takeaway coffees are carried to places of work.

I shouldn’t have said sorry, I should’ve said thank you.

 

---

Kate Taylor is a writer from Devon. She is currently creating flash pieces as a distraction from trying to write an uplifting novella about the end of the world. This flash is her first public piece of work, and with luck, not her last.