Turning Pages
A contemporary microfiction story
"Contest Entries in the Wild” is a series featuring stories I wrote for the various writing contests I compete in. Check out the prompts and then scroll on to see what I came up with.
Contest: Twisted Tournament 250-Word Microfiction (2024, Round 2)
Prompts: Redemption / A glove / Something crashes
Place - 6.93 out of 10, and I fixed it up a bit since then
Turning Pages
Young Loretta loved reading into the wee hours of the night, wearing socks as mittens to keep the germs away. This was silly, of course. She’d soon learn that Lysol wipes blocked bacteria and kept her thumbs free.
As an adult, the wisp of a question drifted through her mind. She began to wonder just how healthy such behaviors might be. Then the world crashed.
A global pandemic had all the answers. Loretta shouldn’t be washing library books; she should be washing everything. Suddenly her oddities were redeemed. Everyone understood that microbes were the enemy. People thought of things she’d never even considered—like the importance of hand-washing groceries, fully clad in latex gloves and a mask.
It wasn’t until the world opened back up that isolation descended.
No one wanted to talk about it anymore. Her partner asked, then pushed, then pleaded with Loretta to wash her “outside” clothes. Masks around her were thrown out, while she tunneled further in.
She didn’t hit a breaking point until the kids came along. Loretta’s sweet, disgusting children. They snuggled up on bath rugs. They grabbed toilet seats, then grabbed her face. There weren’t enough socks in the world to stop the cross-contamination.
She couldn’t contain them, or live like this any longer.
***
Loretta curled up with an unwashed library book, pages crisp beneath her fingertips. Her phone sat nearby in a Ziploc bag in her purse, but her therapist wasn’t worried. She was learning to face the monsters in her mind. Though ever-present, like germs, they were slowly becoming relegated to the backseat of her life.
Loretta was setting herself free.
This month’s story brought to you by anxiety and coffee. If you find yourself questioning the cleanliness of library books, and want to fuel more fiction, there’s a ko-fi option below.
I’m honestly just glad you’re here, and I hope to be thanking all my early Substack subscribers in the acknowledgements of my very own novel one day. Cheers!