Sitting at my typewriter, staring at a blank piece of paper. Writer's block again. I've been trying to start this new book for a month and nothing is coming. Oh, excuse me. My name is Tillman, but many of you may know me by my Nom de Plumes. The crap I write, I would never put my real name on them. Fantasy shit, science fiction crap.....Giants, dragons, wizards, Big Foot, UFOs, spooks and poltergeists. All a bunch of bullshit so people who have no lives can believe they do. The Earth is a boring place. Maybe some exotic animals like tigers and shit, but everything else is just simple everyday boring crap.
I heard a noise coming from the bookshelf. Mice. I haven't seen any, but there's obviously a couple. Food disappears, other small things vanish. Nothing important, but I can't stand the thought of them in my house. I don't anyone in my house, not even a friggin' mouse. Tired of people and their whining and crying about everything. That's why I write. I don't have to be around anyone else. I can work from home and mail in my manuscripts and some other poor saps have to work in the factories to print and sell them. I picked up my empty glass and slowly stand up. If it's still up there, I'll catch it and throw it out into the snow. Ready.....ready.......now. I spin around and raise the glass to slam it down on top of that stinkin' rodent. But WTF? I see it peeking around the edge of a book. It's not a mouse......it's a girl. A tiny girl. She's panicking, she knows I see her. She looks for somewhere to run, but she has no escape. She looks at the glass high over her head and drops to the ground, knees drawn up to her chest, her hands over her head as if she's waiting for a painful, but quick death. When it doesn't come, she raises her head slightly and looks at me, still holding the glass above her. Fear in her eyes liked a trapped animal. I look at the glass and quickly lower it and set it down on my writing desk.
She slowly raises herself to her knees, then stands up. I see she is wearing what looks like a homemade blouse and skirt and she has a straight pin tucked in her belt and a small satchel hanging from her shoulder. She looks young, maybe a teenager or slightly older. Much younger than this old war horse. Prettier too.
She manages a weak smile as she stands there. I slowly extend my hand towards her, and I see her fear return. My hand stops at the edge of the shelf, palm up. She looks at my hand, then back at me. She takes a tentative step towards my hand, then reaches out and takes hold of my thumbnail, then steps one foot, then the other. She carefully walks across my fingers to my palm where she settles down in a crossed leg pose. I pull my hand from the shelf. She is looking straight up at me, her eyes still filled with fear, though she is trying to force a smile. I carry her gently into the kitchen and set her down on the counter while I make something to eat. I carry the plate and a beer to the table, then return to the kitchen and place my hand flat on the counter, palm up again. This time she doesn't hesitate, but crawls right onto my hand. I carry her to the table and set her down next to the plate. Cutting a few small pieces of meat, potato and veggies, I push them to the edge of the plate next to her. She stares wide-eyed at the food, then at me again. I smile and point to the tiny pieces of food, then at her. She digs in with her hands and devores it. My ex didn't like my cooking that much. Poor little thing must have been starving.
After we eat, I pick her up and carry her to the kitchen so she can wash her hands and face of the food she smeared on herself while eating. Then to the living room where I sit down in my leather recliner and set her on my knee. She hadn't said much since I found her. She said her name was Teagan and that was about it, but now, less frightened and with a full stomach, she seems more in the mood for conversation. She tells me her people call themselves "Borrowers" as they borrow, steal actually, what they need to live from us, who they call Beans. It's a hard life. Usually barely scraping by and most falling victim to predatory animals like cats or large birds, or at the hands of Beans that like to kill small creatures they don't understand. Whether out of fear or to feel God-like and powerful. A few months ago, she was hiding from a Bean that had spotted her and tried to stomp on her. The "squishing" as she called it, like she thought I was going to do with the glass. She managed to hide in a box that another Bean picked up and took to another location. When she escaped from the box, she had no idea where she was and found a way into my house through a broken basement windowpane. She had been living, literally, right under my feet since then.
We talked long into the night. She finally curled up in my hand and fell into a deep peaceful sleep. I sat there watching her tiny breasts rise and fall with her deep rhythmic breathing. Her feet occasionally twitching in response to some stimuli in her dreams. As I sat there, I began to think. If you had told me this morning this tiny little girl existed, I would have suggested a month stay at the boobyhatch. She is obviously real. Though she weighs a mere few ounces, I can feel her in my hand. I touch her shoulder, then her cheek with the tip of my finger. She smiles, wriggles a little and sighs, but doesn't awake. If she is real, maybe the other things I always believed were bullshit, aren't. Maybe they exist or at least existed at one time. I find my finger absentmindedly stroking her back, running down the curve of her tiny but cute butt and down her legs to her impossibly tiny feet, eliciting a tiny giggle from her sleeping mouth. An unexpected feeling begins to flow through my body. I can't quite put a finger on it, but it's something I haven't felt in a long, long time. A warmth deep in my chest. Was it simply peacefulness? Contentment? Maybe....and if you laugh, I'll punch you right in the face.......happiness? Is it possible that holding this tiny insignificant being in my hand has done something all the money I've made from my books could never do.
The next few weeks were more exciting than the last forty years of my life. I feel alive again. I feel like there is a reason to live again, a much better reason than just to pound on a typewriter and put out book after book about things I never believed could be real. The words I put on paper to write my next book came much easier. Believing the mystical creatures I've been writing about for decades could possibly be real, made them come alive in my mind and on the paper. My publisher created a new pen name for me as my books were so different than my old ones, and when I co-wrote a book about a Borrower, she named the author "Tilly" as she thought no one would believe a man wrote that book. Teagen would often sit on my shoulder as I typed, hanging onto my earlobe while I tried to stifle the ticklish feelings she gave me, along with other feelings. She no longer lived beneath the floorboards. I made her a bed on my nightstand (although many mornings I woke up with her curled up under my chin). Thank God for Amazon. I would have hated going into a toy store and buying the doll clothes I bought for her to wear. And it turned out, she wasn't very shy about her body. She would undress right in front of me when I got her a bowl of warm soapy water for a bath and afterwards, wrap herself in a towel that I had cut up into one foot square pieces and let me dry her off by manipulating her in my hands. And then one day, she reached up out of the water, grabbing hold of my finger and pulling it into the soapy water and let me "wash" her. ALL of her. Damn little vixen. No more writing got done that night, as well as many nights afterwards.
