(Note: This short story was published in its entirety in the 2007 issue of “Spire,” the annual literary magazine for Elgin Community College. What follows is an excerpt)
Furniture frightens me.
It doesn’t always stay in the same place. The shift may be subtle, granted, barely perceptible even; but I swear to Loki it’s moving.
On any given day I might find that a lamp (its switch having been easily within my reach before) lingers suddenly, playfully, just a stretch further away; or a table (once perfectly parallel) has crept slightly backward on one side, creating an uneven space between itself and the wall.
Yes, furniture moves in my town home—it most definitely moves.
It watches too. Observes every move I make. It knows things about me that should never be known. I’d burn it all in the fireplace but I fear retribution. If all the furniture attacked me at one time I wouldn’t stand a chance. I could not bear to be the victim of such a murder.
More unnerving still, crickets paint portraits of me in my sleep. They look on from the night stand—creature and object working together in conspiratorial splendor. They’re making a mockery, exaggerating my features for their sordid amusement; the wrongfully appropriated artwork to be dissected at leisure in smoke-filled cafés, amongst twitching antennae and tiny cricket furniture.
What pressed me, though—beyond the limit of rational action—were the time leaks.
Plugging them is useless. Cotton balls, paper sacks, socks, bandages—I’ve tried everything. Plug one and another pops open, sucking and hissing, pulling bits of last week and nearly all of yesterday late-morning into the unholy abyss of lost time.
It’s a merciless, unforgivable sort of thievery and I can’t help believing the furniture is in on it. The leg of an end table cleverly disguising a portal here, a mirror obscuring an aperture there.
I’ve given up fighting against it.
It’s a bargain you make. You reckon with futility and capitulate to inevitability. Time is being stolen and there’s nothing to be done about it.
it was pretty good. i really injoyed it.
You are incredibly talented, this story is unlike anything I’ve ever read before and usually, at least so they say, it is the tried and trusted writing that is considered good. But yours is different and very gripping; I also liked the name Lori, it sounded almost exotic (other than Britney or Melanie or something of that caliber).
I also wanted to express my condolences for the loss of your dear friend. Now especially you must not give up writing but use it as a creative energy to release that immense sadness that you feel.
All the best wishes from me, for your writing and your coping with the absence of your friend.