Free Stories About Things by Aelius Blythe

 
     
     
    Part I. Thought and Memories: things of this
world...
     
     
     
    ONE
Teacups
     
    Dirt.
    That was a more pleasant smell.
    Dirt didn't smell dirty. It smelled like
life and it smelled like growth and it smelled like comfort.
    It was more pleasant than this.
    This was old and it smelled like old.
    Like oil mixed with dust mixed with rags
mixed with closed doors and no airflow and dark. Like the smell of
an old barn. Like the smell of someone's grandmother's house
forgotten on a lot with too many trees grown up around it.
    The smell of neglect.
    The china was cold.
    It shouldn't have been. It should have been
warm, it should have been hot–too hot to hold and filled with tea
too hot to drink.
    He wiped a finger around the flowers. The
paint was fine, thin, almost flat, but he'd always been able to
feel the designs on the cup, just a little bit.
    He couldn't feel them now.
    The flowers were covered in dust, and the
dust was all he felt.
    She wasn't like this.
    He bent down to the shelf. He shouldn't, he
knew he shouldn't. His back seemed to know it, it stiffened as his
head tried to bend down to the little china cup. He shouldn't. Not
here. Not in the place of closed doors and no airflow and dark. Not
here. But his head bent down anyway and his nose brushed the dust
at the bottom of the teacup and he sniffed.
    The dust went in his nose.
    The dust and the oily smell of the dark and
airless antique shop.
    He turned away.
    His eyes shut and he straightened up and
turned away from the shelf. He turned away even though his eyes
were shut, because he didn't want to face the cup.
    It should smell like the ground.
    It always had.
    The tea in the cup had always smelled like
the earth after a warm rain. He never tasted it, but he would smell
it. As a child, he hated the smell of his grandmother's tea.
    Now, the memories were sweet.
    It shouldn't be here.
    The dust and the smell of the dust and the
dark and the forgotten air of the antique shop was no place for
this cup. But there was no place for it now.
    It shouldn't be here.
    He opened his eyes and looked back at the
cup. It looked sad. It looked like it missed the heat of the water
and the steam and the smell of earth just like he did.
    A sticker on the handle said $25. He'd only
gotten $5 for it.
    But he did not have $25.
    One hand brushed out and swept the cup to
the ground.
    Out of it's misery.
    "Oops," he said, because he felt like he
should.
    "Hey!"
    An old man hobbled out of the back room, but
he was too slow. The teacup lay shattered on the ground a bell
jangled and then the door banged shut.
     
     
     

TWO
Time
     
    Dr. Ellis had nearly given up on time travel.
He had built a solid theory, as well as a solid machine (several in
fact,) but it was all useless. The machine sat in his laboratory,
and the theory sat in his head because he had not yet devised a
method to power them with. He had tried nuclear power, solar power,
hydrogen fuel and even a wood-burning stove. None of it worked.
    The answer came to him one day when he was
very hungry. He was considering a slice of cherry pie in a store
window, the sweet goo pouring out of the flaky crust, yellowed with
butter under a large swirl of cream. For what seemed like an hour
he stared, tried to remember how much cash he had in his pocket and
stared some more. When the bakery manager came out, Dr. Ellis was
startled out of his trance. Wiping a little drool from the corner
of his mouth he apologized, blushed, and hurried away, but not
before catching sight of the clock.
    "That's it!" he shouted, then blushed again
as passers-by stared. We've had the power source with us all
this time, he thought, silently this time.
    And so they–that is to say, people–had. For
as he walked away from the store and the cherry pie, he noticed
that barely two minutes had passed, yet surely it was an hour! He
knew then: the mind powers time.
    And we are the machine! he thought in
triumph.
    Upon arriving home, he scrapped all his