The Kraken's Spire Literary Magazine (Volume 1)

Christmas in May! A gift for myself that will keep on giving well into the summer.
At the end of his sidewalk, Malcolm squatted to the ground to pick up his
present, a smile glued to his face like that of a father watching his son hit a
home run for the first time. Malcolm had no sons, so he would never know that
joy, but he thought he got enough joy from his yard. The box that held the key
to his dreams was hefty, weighed down by the liquid gold that promised to
promote fuller flower growth. As he tore into the box right there on the edge
of his yard, Malcolm wasn’t put off by the warnings glaring at him in Cyrillic
letters that he didn’t even try to understand.
Malcolm’s train of thought was derailed by the trill of laughter invading his
property. Those kids next door, he cursed the children in his mind. Good for
nothing…Just get in the way…Take people’s jobs—well, not in my house. He
began to peel off the acetate safety wrap securing the lid to the opaque bottle
to distract himself from the disruption next door.
“Damned plastic just gets in the way,” Malcolm muttered to himself as he
flicked flakes of the pesky film off of his fingers. He rubbed his hands together
as though trying to warm them so he could force the rest of the material onto
the breeze and inevitably into some creek. As long as it wasn’t bothering him,
he didn’t care where it went. Malcolm was unscrewing the cap of the bottle
like a lush looking for his next drink when he heard the shriek. “Those kids
better not be in my yard. I work too hard to have them contaminating my paradise.”
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