Ordinary Obsessions
Lately our staff has been experimenting with taking on prompts as a group. To kick off a new quarter we did another!
Prompt: Ethan Canin said that he wrote “The Accountant” (in The Palace Thief) because he wanted to write a story in which a pair of socks seemed important. Pick an ordinary object. Make it someone’s obsession. Write a story about the obsession.
In My Pocket
By Natalie Lydick
I felt weight in the back of my mouth as I wiggled my tongue. When I’m nervous I always end up sticking my tongue in my tooth gap. I could feel my eyes set into my face, but it seemed as though they were rattling around my cranial cavity, my ears, and that great, open, dry maw. I was looking at my hand vibrating slightly as it tapped my notebook, but I felt incredible unease, as though I were looking at the twitching fingers from behind my own teeth.
As though it flew on its own, the twitching hand bolted to my right breast pocket. My eyes must have been glossed over as they stared at the paper in front of me. My sight was inside my pocket, with my hand, as it grazed the metal of my rusty dime. I refused to polish it, because I worried that I might accidentally wear down the beautiful little coin. As I let my fingertips rub along the ridges on its side, I remembered the day I had found it on the ground and had done the very same.
A 1904 dime. Genuine. So small, so much history. I took my hand out of my pocket, setting it on the desk. My hand was still, but my brain still jittered. I looked down at the paper in front of me, but my eyeballs are still in my pocket, looking at my dime.
Sniff.
By Nicole Sowers
It’s really not that big a deal, I tell you. Some people, they like the color pink. And everything they own is pink. Their clothes, their hair, their furniture, their car, everything. Their fingernails are painted pink. Their dog is dyed pink. And that, we accept, as quirky, as fun, but not so strange that we have to reject it from the tantalizing label of The Normal. What if I don’t care about being normal? What if all I need is this enormous pile of used tissues to be happy? Are you really going to take that away from me? It’s all my tissues, don’t worry. No dangerous mix of bacteria from different people’s sneezes and diseases. I just like them okay?
If I liked pink things, this wouldn’t be a problem. But no, my hobbies are “a biohazard,” “gross to think about,” and “harmful to the other people in the building?” How dare you judge me for this, Bonnie, I didn’t say anything when your disgusting boyfriend was always around, taking over the couch to watch his football, did I? He literally only wore football jerseys, usually the same one, and remember playoffs? He didn’t even wash it, Bonnie, he just kept wearing it, over and over, the same stinking #45, Karl Kayes, who hadn’t caught a pass since spring training.
So you can’t say shit, Bonnie, about the accumulating pile of used tissues that is slowly taking over my bed. It’s my bed, after all, and I have my own room, so you don’t even have to see it! Oh? The roommate agreement? Show me on the roommate agreement where it says I can’t collect every tissue I’ve used since I moved in here and keep it, just in case? Oh? Nowhere on the roommate agreement? So you can just close the door, Bonnie, and leave me alone. I’m not feeling well.
I haven’t been able to breathe clearly since spring.
I haven’t stopped sneezing for longer than five minutes.
Leave me alone.
What is in a name?
By Reese Welch
Does a name give something meaning, or is it the other way around?
I have often wondered about the importance of names. About how a name might change or alter the meaning of an object, or person. I’m not the first to question this. There’s a famous Shakespeare quote about how the fact that a rose is called a rose has no bearing on how sweet it smells. I suppose this is correct for objects. What we call an object has no bearing on its function, only on how we think of the object itself. But for people… I find myself wondering how strongly our names affect who we become as people.
This very subject fascinates me to no end. I find myself making judgements on people as soon as I meet them, based solely on what their name is. I analyze how they act, what kind of person they are. And then if I ever meet another person with the same name, I compare how similar the two people with the same name are.
I’m constantly looking for new names. I have no children, but if you were to enter my home you’d see dozens upon dozens of baby naming books. I’m a hoarder, but not in the traditional sense. I don’t hoard things in my home, piles upon piles of junk left to rot. No, I hoard names in my mind. If I come across with a name I haven’t heard before, I write it down immediately, and add it to the ever growing collection in my head.
As of late, I’ve taken to introducing myself with different names. I wear names like clothes. Trying them on, seeing how they fit. Perhaps I’m waiting for the day I find a name that fits perfectly, one I feel comfortable with holding onto forever. So far that day hasn’t come.
I move often so that I may continue switching names. I don’t feel it is possible for a single name to capture the complexity of an entire person. On one day I might be a Jordan, but on another I might be a Riley. People are dynamic– constantly changing and growing. So how can a single name be expected to match with us for the entirety of our lives?
Those Bristles
By Matthew Gustafson
It’s a strange, tingling feeling I get when I use that hairbrush. I certainly can’t be the only one who feels it; lots of people like having their hair brushed, right? When I start to wonder whether or not I’ll be gone the next day, I let the brush run across my head, and I smile. I’m reminded of home.
My mother gave me that brush before I left for college. It was the same one me and my sister used since we were ten years old. She wanted a new brush before she left, one that wasn’t missing a few bristles and didn’t have a splintered handle. But for me, those flaws are what made it special. Every morning, after my 8 AM shower, I let the brush flow through my long, smooth hair. The small, plastic bumps on the bristles tickle my scalp, euphoric. Sometimes, I comb my hair multiple times a day just to get that feeling again. When I started feeling sick, I combed my hair. The brush was like a drug, staving off the illness bit by bit.
Now, as I sit awake at night, I keep my brush close to me, clutched to my chest. It moves much smoother across my head now that my hair has fallen out. Medicine and chemotherapy help physically, but it’s those bristles that I think really make me feel alive again.
