5 Minute Fiction: Tuesday

Author’s Note: If you picked up a copy of my short story, Fixer Upper last year (offered exclusively to newsletter subscribers and now listed in my "retired stories" section), you might recognize this one because I included it as a bonus story. It popped into my head recently and I thought this was a good one to post here.

The little worm inched its way through the soil, feeling the pulse of life through its tube body. Though it didn’t know anything about the pulse of life. To the worm, it was just a Tuesday. But, even that, it didn’t know.

The soil was moist, but not wet, and the worm scrunched its body up and then elongated it as it moved, though it didn’t have anything in particular to do. The soil was particularly tasty that day, although, frankly, it was tasty everyday.

Unbeknownst to the worm, it lived in the garden tended by Jill. Jill would come out to her garden behind her house and tend to the flowers and shrubs and fruits and vegetables and herbs. Anything that would grow in this particular climate. She wasn’t picky.

She’d come outside with a shovel, or maybe just a little spade, and maybe the garden hose too, and dig and plant and water and just generally enjoy being outside and being in the dirt. Kind of like the worm.

The worm would feel the vibrations of her footsteps and her voice, though it didn’t really care. It was just Tuesday after all, and he didn’t know Jill from Carissa, Jill’s neighbor a couple doors down who also liked to garden. Nor did it have any concept of human beings.

Sometimes the worm would get scooped up in Jill’s spade or shovel, and find itself still in the soil but moving, and not just moving with its body. A few seconds later it would be in another spot in the garden, though it didn’t know that, because it was in the same soil.

Sometimes its small tube head would pop up above the surface of the soil, and look around, if you will. But because it didn’t have eyes, it didn’t see much. But that’s okay, it was just a Tuesday, and eventually the worm would go underground again, leaving Jill up top with her spade and her garden hose and the sunshine.

Jill knew that worms were very good for her garden. Although she wasn’t particularly fond of picking them up or touching them in any way—they were a little too slimy and weird—she loved them from afar. Just as any gardener loves the things that make their gardens grow. Sometimes she’d see the worm poke its head out of the soil or see it in the soil she had just shoveled out of the ground. Not that she knew it was the worm, there were so many of them.

Sometimes her husband would dig around in the garden a little to find a few worms that he could use as bait while fishing. He’d take their son and daughter to the stream a few minutes walk from their house to fish for a little while. He never took the worm though. Well, not this Tuesday anyways, but maybe next Tuesday.

The worm inched its way through the soil, still, not knowing the danger it might be in, but not caring either. There was no danger in the worm’s world. There was soil, and movement, and moisture until there wasn’t. And, hell, it was only Tuesday, but even that the worm didn’t know.

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Amanda Linehan is a multi-genre fiction writer and indie author. She has published 13 titles since 2012 and has been read in 113 countries. Get a free, exclusive short story, The Sommer House, when you sign up for her newsletter.