Three Stories
He could not say when, or how, or exactly where he first felt the urge—only that when it came to him, it had the quality of irresistibility, of absolute compulsion. At two, he was already crawling in circles. There were shaky videos of him, with muffled background laughter: footage of his little twitching body, going round and round large squares of linoleum, patio, lawn. At four he discovered triangles; at five, squares, rhomboids, polygons. As life went on, he took the jokes and jibes well: he could not run in certain parks, found it hard to walk around older cities. No forest ambles for him. Snakes and crabs filled him with disgust. Deserts horrified him. His workplaces immediately dictated his home addresses or vice versa. Life was exhausting: always buying return tickets, no mystery tours, no surprise parties. The ridicule matured him quickly, made him kinder, forgiving, ironically more flexible, even as the patterned contours of his life grew ever more rigid.
Three new microfictions by Arthur Mandal.