It Didn't Really Even Make Sense at the Time

I just tried to write a short story. I don't think I quite succeeded. I started with an idea, but it had no end. It even had no middle. I just went from paragraph to paragraph, relying on whatever images came to mind. It didn't start as a dream, but it felt like one. It also feels a bit like a faerie tale whose moral is, "Expect nothing," and "Be careful you don't wish you lived in interesting times." A faerie tale that starts in the middle, after the person's already made the fateful bargain that they'll regret, anything for a wish.

Since I'm talking about it, I may as well post it.


Across the windswept street, along the white lines blurred under the water, Joseph ran. Drops blurred his glasses. His white dress shirt soaked against his long chest and paunch. Splashes followed his heavy feet like mines exploding in hostile waters. He reached the other side just as a red light turned green, and several cars drove by him, sending up a synchronous dance of grey water from the pools near the gutter.
Joseph had had worse days, but they weren’t coming to his mind. Partly that was because he hadn’t had a worse day in quite a long time. Partly it was because all the bad days just blended together lately in a fugue. And partly it was because his mind was singlehandedly on correcting the mistake, making it, if not better, no worse.
He was on the right block, he knew, but he’d never been to the office before, and the Google Street View did not display any obvious signs saying, “Luminate Services.” But he had a number, and he followed them the best he could past a mid-line boutique, a hairdresser’s, a subshop, a couple of nondescript store fronts, a parking lot. Then, just as he was muttering what he had to ask for once more, there was a long wall of steel and darkened glass, and a single revolving door marked off with slightly faded brass.
Joseph ran up and through, hitting himself against the also-dark glass as the door didn’t give way. He pushed again. After the third time, and stopping to rub his bruised chin, he noticed a sign, just below his eyelevel. “Perhaps you should push the other way,” it suggested in cursive which curled about and back into itself. A helpful arrow was below that. He wiped the water off of his glasses onto his shirt, tried using his equally wet hand, and finally gave up and looked close, squinting. Then he pushed the other way, and the door turned.
As he hurried in, saw the stairs and the sign above them marking where he was going with an arrow, and rushed toward them, Joseph didn’t notice the cherry-soda-brown-lacquered wall panels, the white marble floor cut in three-foot squares, the high ceiling with art-deco arches, the wall lamps suffusing the room in a golden glow, the desk with a brass-framed monitor and keyboard, or the woman currently staring at him from behind it. But he did hear her bellow, “Not so fast!”
Whoops, I guess I should mention an appointment, Joseph thought, so he stepped over to the desk, where the middle-aged woman was already looking back at her computer, typing away. “I… I have an appointment,” he offers, his voice wavering. “My name’s – “
“What is this?” She then asks, looking up from the screen and standing back up. The queen’s English lends her words formality, but something else lends them authority. Joseph pauses, silent with his mouth half-open. Then she clicks her tongue. “Ah. I just wanted you to walk slower. You are expected, Mr. Trau. Go the way you were going, but with decorum. Up the stairs, first door on your left.”
Joseph opened his mouth to say thanks, and something came out, but he didn’t hear it, and she didn’t correct him. He walked to the stairs, muttering softly in cadence with his steps. “Walk in… give them… ask them… offer up…” He wiped his wet hair from his eyes, reached the top of the stairs, and tapped on the left door with his knuckle. After no answer for a few moments, he hit the wood grain with his forehead. “Come in,” a light voice echoed from within.
Joseph opened the door and walked in, shutting the door behind him. Then he looked around. And gasped.
He was stepping on golden leaves. The light filtered through from somewhere on high, yellow from the leaves but also vaguely incandescent, and a slight spectral aura infused each shape, rainbow-like. The trees – and these were tall like an elm, sloped gracefully upward, each silver bough holding a dazzling number of ruby, gold, and amber leaves. Small birds flitted from bough to bough in blurs, singing and twittering their autumn songs.
In the middle of a grove fully illuminated by a round halo of light, Joseph saw a hunched over figure, brown and craggly like no person he had ever seen. Dryad and ent came to his mind simultaneously, but he was unsure. Was this the person he had called on the phone? How elaborate the decorations were.
Nonetheless, he still had his plan. He walked forward, stepping across the plain without care to his step. He entered the halo and his eyes watered; he had to cover them. The creature looked up with moss-green eyes. Joseph flinched, and looked at it as if looking for the strings or the puppet hand. From his back pocket Joseph pulled out a box, setting it down in front of him. “It’s not worth it. You sent it to me in the mail, but I change my mind. I don’t understand what’s inside. I thought it would just happen. Why is it in a box, and why’s it so small?”
“Hmm.” The figure, not really covered by bark or skin, wrung his shoulders freely, a motion which unnerved him. He thought the high-pitched voice was a woman over the phone, and now he didn’t know. “It is in a box because it can be in a box. And it’s small so that it can fit in the box. Were you expecting something large and unboxed?”
“I…” Joseph pauses and looks down at the box. “I thought the change was big, so the cause would be big.”
“That is material.”
“Immaterial? You mean, irrelevant?”
“No, material and irrelevant.” With a lilting patience in its tone the creature explains. “Size is tangible. This… defies size. Defies expectation. That is the only way there can be a change, because if you expect it, you don’t really change. You just become what you were going to become, like a tree free to grow.” The creature bends down to pick up the box. Then he frowns at something, looking closely at it. “Did you open the box?”
“I did, but I didn’t look. It was musty. Then I sneezed. And I closed the box. What does that - ”
The creature interrupts, speaking over him until he goes silent and continuing on without a beat. “Seeds! Seeds! Take these materials – small as hope, large as change! And of course you wouldn’t know them. They’re already spread now, and you cannot stop them. They will grow wherever you scattered them. They will grow from your nose. You cannot return it! It is too late.”
“Wh – what will they do?” Joseph asks, touching each nostril tentatively between finger and thumb.
“What did you want to change?” The creature asks in return, folding its arms impossibly behind it, both forearm and upper arm behind its neck.
“Everything. I wanted my kid back. I wanted my old job back. I wanted my apartment back. I wanted to feel good about life again.” But he swings his arms at everything around him. “But I got too much. I don’t want the dust, whatever was in the box, the things I’ve been seeing. I return it. I’ll pay for the seeds.”
The creature smiles, or at least appears to, its mouth opening wide and contorting in silent laughter. The light began to brighten, and Joseph covered his eyes. Just as he was blind, and a ringing grew too loud in his ears, he heard the creature’s voice, “There are no returns.”

Joseph awoke. His daughter was there, the toddler curled up next to him, as if she had sought shelter from a storm. He sat up in his bed. The window to outside cast red and yellow against the wall. Across the studio, on the computer, the window was up with the spreadsheets he had worked with for so long. Data and functions from here to the rainbow. A message was on his screen, an e-mail from his boss welcoming him back, giving him the project for the week. He sat down to work with a vague sense of relief.

The more he worked, the better he felt. He just needed something to do, he knew. He just needed to feel fulfilled. He glanced at the clock. The time was exactly the same as the last time he checked, except that it was AM instead of PM. He heard some clattering from a distance, but ignored it. He had to finish up. He didn’t even feel tired.

Four days later, there was a 911 call from a three-year old girl. She didn’t make much sense, only said, “Dad’s gone. He's a tree.” When the paramedics and the police arrived, they found a man, face down on the keyboard. The last twenty thousand characters typed, still flowing right on the screen, were a series of b’s. They flipped him up and back.
A silver sprout was beginning to grow from his nose. A golden leaf glimmered.