Mumbling under his breath, he dug into the couch cushion beside his leg. Feeling nothing, he squeezed the other hand down the other cushion, coming up with half a Cheeto and some lint. He rolled his eyes and stood, pulling the cushion he had been sitting on to the floor. Change, more Cheeto’s, some dog hair. No remote. The room at large absorbed a string of curses as he yanked the next cushion from the couch. He pocketed the additional change under it and rolled his eyes at the dirty sock that had also been hiding there. The third cushion flew, just missing the lamp as it sailed across the room. It bounced to a stop against the bookcase, shaking the DVD’s. Three of them fell over but his attention was diverted. He’d found a rip in the lining of the couch that had been so recently covered by a cushion. Thinking the remote had fallen in, he’d plunged his hand into the innards of the couch.
His fingertips skidded across slick plastic. He groped, closing his fingers over warm, pliant plastic. Extracting his arm from the slit, he opened his hand and stared. He forgot about trying to find the remote and his pupils contracted until they were the size of pinholes. The object in his hand glowed, the light of the sun emerging from deep inside its baseball-sized interior. Shifting it, he held it in both hands and brought it up, almost touching it with his nose as its mystery hypnotized him. Unnoticed, the room around him began to dim as though the thing was sucking all the light into itself. The room dimmed while the little orb glowed brighter. He felt pulled toward it in both the figurative and literal sense. As his nose approached its surface he felt his feet begin to tingle. Risking a glance he watched his feet leave the ground. Something knocked his head and he looked up, pieces of the popcorn ceiling falling in his eye as his head brushed more of them loose. He looked back at the tiny singularity.
Whoever left this here wasn’t going to get it back.
Bethany A. Perry 