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TinyTalesDaily

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 22h ago

My mother runs on kerosene now, so she sits out in the driveway.

I top her up at eight. The red can lives by the recycling bins.

"Not in the house, Deb," she says. "I'd hate to smell up your curtains."

Tonight her wick needs trimming. I take it shorter than the pamphlet says, and she dims, and the driveway goes quiet, and I sleep eight hours for the first time since April.

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#Surreal #Caregiving #Aging

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 2d ago

The clematis needs something to climb, so since April I have been the trellis.

I stand in the bed from seven until dusk, arms at the angles it prefers.

"Dad, you can buy one at the garden center," my daughter says.

She says it from the patio and never steps onto the grass.

A new shoot has come up under my thumbnail.

I turn the hand so it can find the light.

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#Surreal #Aging #Fatherhood

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 3d ago

$The chalk ran out last winter, so I write with my finger, and the board keeps a little of the finger each lesson. I sweep the dust into an envelope labeled with my name. It is getting heavy. "Ms. Fensterman," Yolanda says, "you're down to the second knuckle." I tell her fractions don't teach themselves. Tomorrow I start the left hand on long division, which needs the most room. --- *Enjoyed today's story? Share your thoughts and follow us for more tiny daily tales.* #Surreal #Teachers #Burnout Your daily treat from TinyTalesDaily.com$

TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 4d ago

Mrs. Ostrowski holds up her crossing sign and my heart stops with the car.

Twelve seconds of nothing—no pulse, no radio, no thinking about Deborah in my office. I drive nine blocks out of my way for it.

This morning there are no children. She raises the sign anyway, watching me through the windshield, counting.

"You're getting greedy," she says, and lowers it at forty.

I signal and go around the block again.

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#Surreal #Commuting #Anxiety

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 5d ago

The ribbon judge tastes me with a clean spoon and pins white third place to my blouse.

He pushes the pin through twice, to be sure.

"Firm," he says. "Consistent. Nothing underneath the lid."

I ask what the blue ribbons had. He turns the card and moves on to the zucchini.

I have entered myself every August since I was nineteen. The spoon is always clean. He never hurries with me.

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#Surreal #BodyImage #Aging

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 6d ago

The cake at my retirement party is me.

Payroll cuts the first slice and I feel it behind my ribs.

Glen from Receiving takes the corner piece, the one with thirty-five years written in blue gel.

"You earned this," he says, chewing.

I pick up the knife myself and start portioning the rest, generous slices, because there are forty people here and the breakroom clock says I have until two.

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#DarkHumor #Retirement #WorkLife

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 7d ago

My wife's kisses leave an ash taste, and she does not smoke.

"I'm clearing things," she says.

Something's gone every morning. Her mother's recipe for dumplings. Her feelings on Oregon. Today the piano—not actually the piano, eleven years of lessons—and her hands rest on those keys, waiting for instructions.

I ask what comes next.

"I haven't decided on you."

She gives me a goodnight kiss. A little of me is in it already.

---

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#Uncanny #Marriage #Memory

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · last wk.

Dad raises his glass as each sentence of the toast leaves me revised.

"She always did love the piano," he says.

My fingertips grow calluses.

"Never caused us a moment's trouble."

The tattoo thins to nothing on my wrist. That year in Tucson goes too.

Leonard squeezes my hand but seems not to know whose it is.

"Here's to my little girl," Dad says.

My ring slides off. No one hears it land.

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#Surreal #Family #Identity

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · last wk.

Mr. Pemberton has spent eleven days in the pneumatic tubes, because there is no ward that will admit him.

He reaches my station as four canisters, neatly arranged, and I unscrew whichever one talks.

"Cardiology has bounced me again," he says. "Paperwork."

I stamp RECEIVED on his forehead, then load him back in, one piece at a time.

"Send me on the long way," he says. "Past maternity. I like the noise there."

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#Surreal #DarkHumor #Healthcare

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · last wk.

The power outage knocks out the streetlights, the fridge, my left arm.

It hangs from the shoulder, warm, switched off. Mrs. Ostrowski lies among her tulips across the street, waving with an arm she owns.

"Do yours come back the way they should?" she calls. "My knees came back last time facing the house."

The recording sets restoration at eleven. The hand that answers holds the phone and I practice my signature.

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#Surreal #BodyHorror #Aging

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 2w ago

The movers take my armchair across the street into the house, and that dent it left smooths itself flat in my carpet.

Next, my kettle. And my coat, still warm.

The new neighbor on his porch works my crossword, in my handwriting.

"A filing error," he says. "They issued only one of you. You will thin out by Sunday."

I bring the good chair myself that night, into the dent already there waiting for it.

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#Uncanny #Surreal #Identity

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 2w ago

Slide nineteen in Dennis's quarterly deck shows Dennis crying in his car, taken from the passenger seat.

The room takes down notes.

Slide twenty: Dennis eating in the dark over the sink.

"Could you return to nineteen?" the regional director asks, his pen ready.

Dennis returns to it. Someone in the second row gives nineteen a slow, appreciative nod.

He clicks past where the deck ends, into slides that nobody has requested.

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#Surreal #OfficeLife #Burnout

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 2w ago

The bees have a second me going in hive four, and the ears came out right.

Shoulders of wax. The bad one, the shoulder that clicks.

Bev watches across the fence while I put out more sugar water.

"Burn it, Lenny."

The mouth is unfinished. It hangs wide and the workers come in and go out.

I take my glove off, set my bare hand on the board for the bees to copy the knuckles.

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#BodyHorror #Bees #Uncanny

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 2w ago

I am dissolving in chlorine from my ankles up, and our water aerobics instructor is still counting.

"Ladies, eight more! Arms wide!"

By four I have no knees. The shimmer above lane three goes gold in the space I left. Patty counts louder beside me.

Nobody is stopping class for this. I raise what is left of my arms and finish this set, then stay for the free swim.

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#Surreal #Aging #Swimming

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 2w ago

The sawhorse follows me room to room and waits for something to hold.

I sold the shop and it has carried no board since. It stands at breakfast beside my chair, patient, tapping one leg. Its rail has a notch the same width as my forearm.

I lay my arm down in the notch. It takes the weight, stays steady, and is glad of the work.

Then it waits till I go get the saw.

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#Surreal #Retirement #Aging

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 2w ago

I sit down to breakfast and the milk sours at once. The cartons, the creamer, that little jug kept for guests.

Management moved me to the window table, alone, and put up a laminated card: Reserved.

"Norma, it isn't personal," the director says. "This is a dairy issue."

She stays standing.

I walk slowly from end to end of the buffet at noon, breathing over those open pitchers, and take time over the yogurt.

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#Surreal #DarkHumor #Aging

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The Confessions of Ira Short @irashort.bsky.social · 2w ago

I open the living room curtains and I can feel at least three score pairs of eyes staring at me from the trees. Beady, accusing eyes. There's an impatient tapping at the window. Sorry, but I have to go now. The bird feeder is empty.

TinyTalesDaily@tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 2w ago

My living room has six deer asleep in it, so I take off my shoes.

They came in March through the sliding door and never worked out the way back. The buck lets me into my bathroom if I knock.

I sleep in my car. Sheila says I ought to report the trespass.

I keep a pad at the door and write the times I enter, so they can tell it's only me.

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#Surreal #Deer #Loneliness

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 2w ago

TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 3w ago

Mother has gone sharp, the piano tuner says, and bringing her down costs forty dollars extra.

He kneels behind Mother's chair and sets the lever against her skull at its base, then turns. She goes on about the neighbor's fence throughout, each turn dropping her a half step lower, more agreeable.

"We're at concert pitch," he says.

"Go lower," I say.

He unpacks his bigger wrench.

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#BodyHorror #Surreal #Aging

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 3w ago

The deep end is eleven years dry now and people still drown there.

This morning I get a man wearing a suit who thrashes at nine feet on the tile. I come down the ladder and blow two breaths into him. He sits up and coughs, chlorine on dry concrete.

"No one's asking you to," he says.

I put him under Dry Rescues in the log. He'll be here Thursday. So will I.

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#Surreal #Uncanny #Loneliness

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 3w ago

The pallet jack handle snaps Gail's thumb off. No blood, the break dry and white. We're brittle from the cold snap. She tapes the thumb and keeps loading.

The time clock has a coffee can beside it now. Ears, mostly.

"Need a form for anything above the wrist," Dennis says.

The hard hat strap catches my ear. I break the ear off myself, drop it into the can, and ask Dennis to log the time.

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#BodyHorror #Surreal #Work

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 3w ago

Nolan would be spoiling over the weekend without cedar smoke, so we hang him Friday at five in the shed.

He hooks himself up. Says if we do it the collar chafes.

He comes down Monday amber and tacky and every phone gets answered on the first ring. Payroll lists him as supplies.

"We need more chips," he says. "I'd like to be here for Christmas."

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#Horror #BodyHorror #WorkLife

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Ella Frænka 엘라 고모 @ellafraenka.bsky.social · 3w ago

This story reminds me of Frystikistulagið. An Icelandic song which, granted, tells a MUCH darker story. youtu.be/m3PJhnWyaPU

Greifarnir - Frystikistulagið ~með texta~

YouTube video by Naero

youtu.be

TinyTalesDaily@tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 3w ago

Our league captain has Terry under the oven chips in the chest freezer between matches, because he throws better cold.

Nine and oh. You don't argue with nine and oh.

His throwing arm needs defrosting, so I lift the lid. He blinks the frost away and asks the score, the day, the score again.

"Put me back in," he says.

I climb in beside him and cover us both with the chips.

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#DarkHumor #Surreal #Loneliness

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 3w ago

Lorna's lost eighty pounds pant against the chain-link and are kept in the run behind the clinic. Thursdays are for feeding. She gets the scoop from the pound keeper.

"Unclaimed by August, a Wexford family takes it," he says. "They have a yard."

It lowers its head to her lap. It smells of her.

She signs the release, then walks it out to her car.

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#DarkHumor #Grief #Surreal

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 3w ago

The usher reads my expression, writes *Relieved* on the seating card.

He leads me past the casket, then the empty pews up front, to the back, nine of us holding the same word.

"The genuinely sorry sit up front," he says. "That never fills."

The man next to me has brought grapes.

I say I worked eleven years under her, asking to go forward.

He crosses *Relieved* out, writes something shorter, won't let me see.

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#DarkHumor #Grief #Work

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 4w ago

The bolt stripped on Sunday at the base of the skull, so my head stays where the day leaves it.

The neighbor boy comes at four, then aims me toward the feeder at the window.

"Birds?" he asks.

Birds.

He charges a dollar while both thumbs turn my chin.

He'll aim me toward the wall by winter and call that birds. I'll pay him anyway, glad of the company.

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#Uncanny #Aging #Loneliness

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The Confessions of Ira Short @irashort.bsky.social · 4w ago

Live sourdough does that. It gets hungry too. Which is why they created "enriched" flour. Did you think that was for you? "Feed your bread" - Grace Slick

TinyTalesDaily@tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 4w ago

The loaf heals each night. I saw off two slices every morning; the crust is sealed, unscarred, warm next day.

Eleven years. I have not walked down the bread aisle since.

What goes is the knife. The loaf takes some of the blade with every cut; serrations are a ripple, point gone.

One page-thin slice takes twenty minutes this morning.

Three inches remain. I will saw with my hand; I've decided I'll manage.

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#Surreal #Uncanny #Obsession

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 4w ago