Camano 2 by Tommia Wright

Today’s ficlet (trying to return to the Friday habit) was inspired by an ‘interesting gift’ given to a friend of mine. Some key details were changed for ‘safety’s sake’

A Matter of Drowning

The straw box had seen better days, in a time before Adam and Eve most likely. While the apple had been dangerous to Eve’s health (way to go, Adam!), the string-wrapped sin contained under the lid with its faded fuchsia bow brought about a personal Pandora’s Box problem to the recipient.

Jim Simpson had been generous to a fault, never saying ‘no’ to anyone’s request. It was only a matter of perspective to him: Was the problem really as large as it seemed or were folks taking a pebble and blowing it up into an island? He always believed the former, leading people to see the problem could be put under foot.

Until now.

He would have preferred his mother-in-law’s fruit cake over the contents of the box (not that he didn’t love his mother in law, bless her soul, but she didn’t know the first thing about fruit cakes and that was another story he would eventually pen and publish in the local paper – if the local paper ever returned to being a ‘local paper’ again).

The request was simple – read the memoir. Jim tried. He failed.  It took ten takes to get past page one as it was. So many times, he tried, skipping or diving deeper into the stack.He knew the person and the fact of the fabrication in the first five lines fried his mind. He even tried to read later chapters – chapters separated by torn pages of newspaper comic sections in their full color. Poor Snoopy, poor Dagwood, poor Annie and Calvin and Hobbs. Maybe he could file claims of ‘abuse’ for these innocent characters being wrapped around such….such…

For a man who swam in words most of his life, Jim couldn’t find the right one now. Had his previous writing marathons led him to a ‘drought’ or had he simply used all of his words now? Was that even possible?

Jim gave a heavy sigh, wishing for once he was a dragon releasing fire with every other breath, tempted to pour his cup of ‘morning mistake coffee’ (the result of brewing a pot using an already pot of brewed coffee in lieu of water) to see if that might make waves. Probably not, he decided. He was a reasonable man who lived by reasonable beliefs and practices and values.

If there was a comprehensible story buried in this mess, he’d find it, despite the waves of resistance and reluctance. He would find it, highlight it, (aware that the nugget would most likely be the size of a pebble if not a grain of sand) and resist the urge to hand write a note with the instructions: ‘Apply lit match. Contents combustible.’