Flash Fiction

Bring me a spoon so that I can eat this can of worms. Bring me a spoon I said. But no one did. Instead they read my doodles and they brought me needles and they said to me you are over the moon. Then they said you are completely unacceptable to us now, we do not need to have you around. Go away. So I went away.

After being sent away all I did was spend more time on my own, listening to more of my own ramblings, rantings and when I went back to see them again, again they said to go away. At that time I was living in a small, very small room that gave me no space to think. The walls were constantly crowding in on me and I had often to beat them back. So I had to go outside to think, but outside was always wet and my shoes were always made of holes and my jacket was thinner than the rain. Thinking outside was a difficult experience. Talking outside was impossible. So I holed up in my room where I held long and detailed conversations with whoever I imagined would listen, not everyone would. I reviewed the situation with every etheral passing stranger.

My first thoughts on being sent away were confusion. I knew that I was right and they were wrong, so utterly wrong. They had sat me in a room of a similar size to mine but with no furniture, nothing. They came to me with crayons and card and then they left. Then they did not visit me for the longest of whiles, until they came with the can. They exchanged the can for the card but left the crayons. Now that I had no real use for them without the card I ate the crayons. The can had a picture on it that gave the impression that its content was worms. They eventually brought me a knife and a fork but not a spoon. I called for an opener. They did not bring me an opener. When they questioned me concerning the can all that I could say was sorry. That was when they told me to go away.

Yelling was the only strategy that I came up with on my second visit to them. It seemed to me that the louder I shouted the more people turned my way. Yell. Yell. Yell. I tried desperately to explain but all faces were blank, expressionless. I yelled some more. It seemed that they all fell to sleep. I stopped yelling and they said that I was to go away.

All that I could do against this very embodiment of cunning was to return to my beginnings. I realised that this was the only way of my understanding of what it was that they required of me.