Toothpaste

by Robb Lanum

At birth, Gabriel was granted a magic tube of toothpaste: “Enough to last a lifetime.” As a child, he squeezed out handfuls just to taste it. In college, he used it to patch holes in dorm room walls to get his security deposit back, lent it out to everyone on the floor, even brought it with him at night to use in women’s apartments the next morning. Until one night decades later, long after his wife had passed, Gabriel flattened the tube and pressed until his thumbs hurt -- but all the toothpaste was gone, and no matter what he tried, Gabriel couldn’t get more toothpaste into that tube. He looked at his hands and tried to remember the taste, wondered if it was still in those dorm room walls. But this story isn’t about toothpaste.

6S

Robb Lanum is a failed screenwriter in Los Angeles who fell in love with the short form. His work has appeared in 6S, 50-Word Stories, 101words and Friday Flash Fiction, and he was a winner of the Summer 2020 Los Angeles Public Library Short Story Contest.