MicroZine Digital Issue 4
Volume I (2024)
A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR
Happy Halloween to all of you!
—
(EiC)
251 to 500-WORD STORIES
Doll Face by
[427 words]
“Isn’t she adorable?” her mom asked. “Look, she has pigtails just like you!”
The little girl pawed at the box and peered through the plastic film. She shook it and set it back down.
Her mom frowned. “Aren’t you going to open it?”
The little girl just shook her head.
“What is it, baby? Are you still upset about Daddy?”
Silence.
Her mom sighed and stared up at the ceiling. “So am I…” she muttered. She looked back at her daughter. “You’ll never leave Mommy, will you?”
Before the girl could answer, a timer began to beep.
“Shoot,” she muttered before standing up and rushing toward the kitchen.
Once alone, the girl turned her attention to the box in front of her. She reached out and began undoing the cardboard flaps. The doll was tied down to a flimsy piece of cardboard. The girl carefully undid the restraints and pulled it free. She held the doll before her and stared into its lifeless blue eyes.
A string dangled from the back, and the girl pulled at it tenderly. As it slowly slithered back, the doll opened its mouth.
“Where am I?” it asked.
“You’re in my house,” the girl whispered back.
The doll didn’t answer, so she tugged at the string again.
“Help me!” it called out.
“How?” the little girl mumbled back.
Silence.
Another pull of the string.
“I’m trapped,” the doll replied. “I need to get out of here. Please, help me.”
“What should I do?” the girl asked, yanking the string.
“There’s a switch on my back,” the doll said. “Flip it. That will set me free. Please, do it fast. I’m so scared.”
The little girl glanced around the room. Her mom was still in the kitchen, and the house smelled like burnt cookie dough. She picked up the doll and felt the switch on its back…
A few seconds later, her mom dashed into the living room, holding a platter of overcooked chocolate chip cookies.
“Alright, cookies are ready!” she shouted as she put the tray onto the coffee table. She glanced around the room. “Honey bear? Are you in the bathroom?”
Silence.
She glanced down at the floor and saw the doll’s cool eyes staring back at her. She picked it up and pulled the string.
“Mommy,” the doll said. “Mommy, I’m scared. I want to go home.”
A jagged smile spread across her mother’s face as she cradled the doll in her arms. “Don’t worry, baby,” she cooed. “You are home. And mommy isn’t ever going to let you go.”
Out of Office by
[307 words]
He closed the door trying to block out the chaos on the other side. He had connived his entire life to be in just this exact spot. Head man. Had done some honest work to get there too. The office itself was done up exactly as he’d envisioned it. He had his dream job. Feedback so far was overwhelmingly almost unfathomably positive. He seemed to have tamed every conceivable internal and external threat. But now this. It is always what you’re not expecting, his Aunt Elsie had been known to say. He had always taken that kind of attitude as a fatalistic excuse for not preparing.
But now he saw how spot on the old bird had been. And now it really was all over. He really should be with his family at a time like this, but he wanted to be alone. He ditched his security detail and locked the door to his office, loosened his tie, sat quietly for a moment with only his thoughts. Of course, he had done nothing wrong. Nobody could allege he had. This was nobody’s fault. When he got the news about the hostile takeover, every chief executive’s nightmare, he gathered his management team, but it was pretty clear nothing could be done. The Public Relations people wanted a speech, but he knew this couldn’t be fixed by talking. He took one last look around his kickass office, the stuff of boyhood fantasies. If he couldn’t have it, nobody would.
Then, gazing out the window, the POTUS dropped a lit match onto the Hayes desk he had already soaked with Scotch, the desk carved out of a sailing ship and used by 8 preceding presidents before him. He watched the Oval Office ignite as the first invading saucers landed on the White House Lawn hard by the fabled Rose Garden.
250-WORD STORY
Myrtle Dean by
The tea kettle was whistling impatiently on the cook-stove. Myrtle stood at the kitchen sink, not paying attention. She was staring out the window at the empty pasture, the lone willow tree, the large orange mailbox at the end of the drive. The laundry was already out flapping on the clothes line. Her apron was damp, her hands red and wrinkled from the dish water. She pushed a wisp of hair out of her face with the back of her hand and sighed.
On the drainboard was a pile of potatoes to peel — the brother and sister-in-law were coming tonight. A chicken waited to be scalded, cleaned and plucked for supper. Lord, how she dreaded the disgusting smell of hot, wet feathers and innards. She was standing there gazing at the flat line of the horizon, only three miles off, really, but it felt like three hundred to her.
Myrtle suddenly called up a memory from her younger life: the cool evening mist lifting off the lake back home in Maine, the breeze on her bare arms. The scent of pine and the shrill call of the loons at nightfall. She dried her hands on the towel and called out, “John?” No answer. She called again from the open back door. “John?” She saw him way out in the south field. She stepped up on the stool to retrieve the old broken tea pot from the back of the corner cabinet. Ninety-seven dollars, she counted. She only needed twelve more.
A 6-WORD STORY
by
Gentle river meandered under the bridge.
For "Out of Office," I loved the reveal at the end of what I thought was the result of a business merger.
Thank you, Erica, for including Myrtle Dean with such fine company.