Special Selection for One-Year Anniversary Issue
Fiction by Foster Trecost
Boredom lurked like a silent companion, sometimes causing him to see things that weren’t there, sometimes causing him to miss things that were. Such was the case when he caught sight of something he’d never noticed before, though it had been there all along. He moved in for a closer look, so close his nose nearly touched the glass, and what he saw, in the language of his age, was an assortment of creatures, some big, some small. They moved about the confined space and he wondered if they were bored, too.
His brother, a bit older and much wiser, knew things and knew how to explain them. “Where’s my brother,” he asked.
“With his friends.” The answer was always the same, just like everything else. But the creatures through the glass were trapped, they weren’t going anywhere and neither was he.
“What are you looking at?” His brother had returned.
“Them,” he said, then streamed a series of questions so fast, each was asked before the prior could be answered.
“Slow down. One at a time.”
“That one,” he said, pointing to a large figure hovering in the back. “Why is that one bigger than the others?”
His brother presented a different view: “She’s the biggest because she’s everyone’s mother. All the others are her children.”
“All of them?”
“Not the skinny one. He’s the father. He worries all the time, that’s why he looks sick. They’re just like us.”
He believed every word and should have because every word was true, or at least the truth as his brother believed it. He spent the following days matching his newfound knowledge with what he saw, and concluded, just as his brother had, that they weren’t so different.
“You still thinking about them?” asked his brother. “Don’t waste too much time. It’s hard enough understanding our side of the glass.”
“You’re right.”
“Not always, but most of the time.” The two boys laughed, then his brother said something he’d never said before. “Come on, let’s go play.”
“I can come?”
“Sure, the others are waiting.” They turned away from the glass. “You want to race?”
“Can I have a head start?”
“Okay, but you better take it now before I change my mind.”
Without another word he swam away, his fish tail all that could be seen, swishing from one side to the other, and his brother swam after him just as fast as he could.
Foster Trecost writes stories that are mostly made up. They tend to follow his attention span: sometimes short, sometimes very short. Recent work appears in Potato Soup Journal, Halfway Down the Stairs, and BigCityLit. He lives near New Orleans with his wife and dog.
