She stood in line at her usual falafel stand when she noticed the paper stuck to her shoe. Reaching down to pull it off, she noticed writing on it, and before she knew it she was reading the story of a girl with her name, who looked very much like her, who had done all the same things that she’d done throughout the day. It stopped when the girl in the story got to the falafel stand and picked a piece of paper off of her shoe. A detached, rational part of her mind observed what a depressingly dull story it was, which shamed her a little, and tempted her to re-examine her life. But there would be time for that after she sorted out just what, exactly, was going on here. Someone must be playing a practical joke—a friend, or the universe, maybe. What bothered her most about that theory was the size of the paper in relation to the story. It was about the size of a business card, not nearly big enough to contain all of the details that it presented, at least not legibly. It was too much to think about. She wadded it up and tossed it in a nearby trash can.
The line moved forward.
Thinking better of it, she went back to the trash can and fished out the paper, just as the girl in the story did, the words forming before her eyes to tell her so. This almost startled her into dropping it again, but she held on. When the paper reported that, too, she stopped reading. She felt frightened, because this was strange and, to her knowledge, impossible. She also wondered how this might be useful to her, because she was human. But she was hungry and she had a job to get back to, so she tucked it into her bag for safekeeping and got back in the falafel line. Life couldn’t stop for strange and scary psychic paper. Even a story as tedious as hers had to play out to its natural conclusion.
At least now hers was getting interesting.
4 comments:
That is an awesome story idea. It seems really original (at least, it doesn't immediately bring something else to mind).
The POV is a little distant. I'm interested in the story, but I don't care too much about the girl, which is fine for a story idea, but if this is a first page, you need to make the reader care about her in addition to the piece of paper.
Thanks. I should probably explain that your post about business card drabbles, plus a mention that Neil Gaiman sometimes writes short stories for business cards, inspired me to try writing a non-fandom-drabble story that could fit on a business card. This one fits--if I print it in 6-point font, double-sided. I thought about trying to trim it to fit in a more legible font, but then I remembered that even when I have a good reason to hand out business cards, like, say, trying to promote a fledgling gift basket business, I'm always too shy, so my cards always sit around useless and are only ever seen by my family. So I haven't bothered.
Cool! The story on a card is a really interesting idea, isn't it?
I'm not sure if you are into reading Sci-Fi at all, but if you are, I totally recommend Robert J. Sawyer's short story collection "Iterations", which is where I got the idea. You probably won't be able to find it in a local bookstore, since he's Canadian (lots of copies in my bookstores!), but he writes sci-fi with an artistic and scientific POV and a real sense of humour.
Cool. They've got him on Amazon. I added it to my wishlist. I'll check him out next time I go on a book spending spree. Thanks for the rec!
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