Marissa looked down at the stack of notepaper on her desk and smiled. It was held together with a new binder clip she’d found at the store yesterday. Her weakness when it came to impulse spending was cute office supplies. As vices go, it was a minor one and not even worth noting for a workaholic.

The new binder clip had a smiling face cut out of its metal body and made even making a to-do list seem like more fun. Marissa pulled a pen out of the cup on her desk and went to write her list for the day.

“Hello,” the binder clip said. “Are we going to work together today?”

Marissa dropped the pen and her mouth fell open. This was it; she was finally having a nervous breakdown from having worked too much.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. Just want to help.” The binder clip went back to smiling.

“Okay,” Marissa said as she picked up her pen. “If I’m breaking down, I might as well get help from the office supplies.”

An hour later when Marissa’s colleague passed her office door, he heard laughter. He peaked in through her window to see if she was goofing off, but she was working on a large spreadsheet, chuckling and talking to herself. He shrugged and went back to his office.

“Do cats dream?” the girl asked as she watched the brown tabby cat’s feet and whiskers twitch as she slept.

“What do you think?” I asked.

She squinted her eyes at the cat as if she looked hard enough she could make the cat’s dreams become visible. The cat’s whiskers twitched again. The girl shook her head.

“I don’t know.” She looked up at me. “What do you think?”

I smiled. “Of course they dream. Everyone dreams or else how would we keep this world spinning?”

The girl smiled. “I like dreams. Cat’s dreams must be exciting!”

I took her hand and reached out my other hand to the cat. I laid my hand gently on her head so as not to wake her. One of her eye’s opened to a slit before closing again. “Then I think you’ll this dream.”

“No one’s ever made it to the end of the breezeway,” Clif said with a shake of his head. “They run and they run, but that green you see there it don’t ever get closer.”

“Why do they try?” Lee asked and pulled her scarf tighter as another gust of cold winter wind blasted through the unprotected space.

“They say if you can make it to the end, to the green, on that side is paradise.”

“Have you tried?”

Clif nodded then  turned so he could blame his tears on the wind.

Lee stared at the far patch of green then turned and began walking back to camp. “One day I’ll try to,” she said. “And I’ll make it, too.”

“I’d like to see that,” Clif said as he caught up.

Lee nodded. “You’ll be with me old friend. Together, after the wind changes, we’ll make a run at paradise.”

 

“Well, here it is,” the shopkeeper said as he placed the worn volume in front her on the counter.

The spine had been worn down in places, the brown spine showing the cloth weaving of the binding below. The cover was similarly battered, but the words “Weekly Time Book” were still legible as was the line drawing of a watchface, wings, and scythe that made the shopkeeper shiver if he looked at it too long.

“It’s not much use,” the shopkeeper said, scratching his head. “Most of the pages are already scribbled on with gibberish. If you wait ’til next week’s train comes through, we’ll have a shipment of brand new time books. You could get one then.”

Devin looked up and smiled at the shopkeeper as she pulled out her coin purse. “No, this one is perfect. How much?”

“Ten cents seems fair. New one would be twenty.”

Devin nodded. It was more than fair. The shopkeeper had no idea what he had and she had no intention of telling him otherwise. She counted the coins out on the counter and the shopkeeper wrapped her purchase up in a sheet of yesterday’s newsprint. As she took it in her hand, he held on and she frowned at him, an eyebrow raised in question.

“Tell me, miss, what could you possibly want with this old thing?”

Devin’s face melted into a smile. “Time waits for no one, Mr. White, but perhaps someday it will wait for me.”

He let the parcel go and watched her walk out of the shop. He shivered once as the bell on the door chimed from her passage and shook his head as he went back to work.

“That’ll be twenty-five,” the taxi driver said.

Bethany turned back to the taxi. “Of course.” She reached into her wallet and pulled out the fare, plus a generous tip. “Thank you.”

The taxi driver grunted and stuffed the money into his pocket. Bethany decided the grunt meant thank you in taxi-speak and turned her attention back to the sky. She closed her eyes and smiled as the sun warmed her cheeks. As she opened her eyes, she looked at the white stucco patisserie in front of her. The fanciful, painted script was still there on the side of the building, just like she remembered, and the bush in front was now flowering.

“Perfect,” Bethany said as she picked up her two bags and walked to the front door. A whisk stuck out of one of the bags as she set it down to fiddle with the lock.

A few hours and few bangs of pots, cupboards, and doors later, the unmistakable scent of baking sweets curled out from the patisserie’s doors. And, for the first time in many years, people stopped and sniffed the air with puzzled, but hopeful smiles on their faces.

One man was bold enough to knock on the door and, finding it unlocked, popped his head inside. “Hello?” he called, more question than greeting.

“Oh, hello,” Bethany said, sticking her head around the doorframe to the kitchen. “Come on in. I just finished the first batch of madelines and would love a taste tester.”

“Madelines?” His face lit up with a smile half-hidden on his lips.

Bethany smiled and nodded.

“They’re my favorites. My wife used to make them.”

“Then you must try mine. Perhaps they’ll be half as good as hers.” She set down her bowl and brought out a plate of delicate madelines.

A few minutes later, the sound of laughter combined with the smell of pastries and sweets swept out the front door and into the street. The patisserie was perfect indeed.

 

Holly looked at the cooling jars of strawberry jam with her arms on her hips, head cocked to one side. The jars sparked on the red and white checked cloth, like jewels but tastier. Jonas walked up and stood beside her.

“So what did you put in this batch?” he asked.

“What’d you mean? It’s strawberry jam, of course.”

“Yeah, but you always put something else in it. Remember last year?”

Holly shook her head and shivered. “Wouldn’t do that again and you know it.”

Jonas raised an eyebrow at Holly before walking out of the kitchen. When he was gone, Holly turned back to the jars with a smile on her face. Putting a pinch of foresight into the jam last year was a bad idea; it made the jam taste too tart and people had visions they didn’t understand for a couple of weeks, but Holly had smoothed everything over. This year she wouldn’t make that mistake. This year she just added a dash of curiosity to the jam. What could possibly go wrong?

She found the typewriter on a weathered desk shoved behind a chest-high stand of dried weeds near the shed. Mavis stood looking at the typewriter with one hand on her hip and the other shading her eyes from the late afternoon sun. Sweat from clearing weeds and bramble from her newly purchased property dripped down the back her neck.

“Well, it ain’t the weirdest thing I’ve seen today,” she said to herself. “Better condition than I would have thought being out here.”

As she finished talking the keys on the typewriter depressed as if someone was responding. Mavis jumped back, hand flying to her chest. “Now that’s the weirdest thing I’ve seen today.”

As the typewriter keys started clacking again, she ran for the house and threw open the porch door without breaking her stride. A few moments and a few curses later, she ran back with a piece of paper in her damp hand.

“Now don’t you be typing while I thread this paper through, you hear.” She waited and nothing happened, so she slid the paper into the typewriter. As soon as her hands left the machine, it began to type with faint words from its nearly exhausted ribbon appearing on the paper.

“Nice to have someone to talk to,” the message read.

Mavis fingered the large ring strung on a cord around her neck. “Isn’t it just? But shall we get out of the sun?”

“Much obliged.”

Mavis picked up the typewriter and walked back into her house. The sounds of clacking keys and laughter soon filled the air.

 

“Follow me!” she heard a voice call out from the narrow walkway between the buildings.

“Excuse me?” Marie asked, sticking her head into the entrance her head spinning from the heady fragrance of the rain splattered flowers.

“Follow me!” the voice called again and Marie felt a hand touch her cheek.

She spun around, but saw no one but her shadow dancing under her.

“Follow me!” a whisper at the end of the archway.

Marie pursed her lips, then smiled, and stepped onto the path.

Whenever the sea and the sky came together as one study in grey, and the sun was nothing more than a memory, Lily would walk out to the beach and see a man standing on the rocks. She’d never said hello or walked out to join him. Lily made a deal with herself that she’d talk to him if he ever turned around. He never turned around, not even when she’d see him as she went out for a run and came back an hour later. She never saw him in town or anywhere else except on the rocks when the skies were grey and the sea churned. He never turned around until today.

Hello, weekend! Saturday morning’s always seem bright with possibility, so I thought we celebrate with a short, short piece of fiction based on a photo. I love that Sarah Addison Allen shares a super-short fiction piece every Sunday, so I thought I’d follow her lead. I decided to have my short on Saturday, though, to usher in the weekend. Hope you enjoy it.

Charlotte rushed out her door, car keys in her hands only to find the breezeway occupied by two men working on a cherry-stained door. She frowned at the chisels laying on the saw bench and the bucket of tools sitting on her stoop. Why were they working on a door here?

“Excuse me? What are you doing?”

They turned around and smiled. “Working on your door, of course,” the one holding the chisel said.

“I don’t need a new door and I certainly didn’t ask for one.” Charlotte rapped her knuckles on her solid wood door and wondered if her HOA had messed up a work order, again, it wouldn’t be the first time.

“Oh, we’re not replacing that one, ma’am,” the man holding the door in place said as he turned back to his colleague.

“Then which one are you replacing?” Charlotte crossed her arms in front of her chest and frowned.

The man with the chisel smiled. “The one that leads to your dreams.”