Connoisseur of the Self at the Door

by Kevin Spenst

“Mom, there’s a guy at the door selling something,” the lanky, blond boy shouts up the tower of stairs but the fedora-topped man at the door corrects him. “He says that he’s not selling a thing per se but he’s offering a whole new outlook on the world and our place within it and really he just wants to give us a tip or two on how to fall asleep or wake up or even just talk to each other with our unique selves intact,” the blond boy shouts, takes a deep breath and then looks back at the man for a quick appraisal. The tall man pushes his hat back to scratch his forehead and then nods yes, well done. There are weighty footsteps upstairs in a world suspended high above everyday interactions. The blond boy cocks his head to catch the words shouted from above. “Sorry, we’re not home,” he says with deflated-blue eyes and he shuts the door.

6S

Kevin Spenst's prose has appeared in the pages of Geist, Broken Pencil and the Martian Press Review. He has one collection of short-short stories in print called "Fast Fictions" which was launched with a fifty-venue, one-day only reading tour of Vancouver. To date he's written 1083 short-short stories online, the latest of which can be found here.