I started this wanting to illustrate the fact that technology has not improved or changed the essential elements of human nature. Also, I wanted to create a story for a character with an interesting name that I found in my husband’s accounting homework. Neither of these thoughts were particularly reflective or serious…but the story went where it would and I think I ended up with something a lot weightier than I’d intended…
After a while it was easy to ignore the wails emitting from the appliances. Sure, sometimes you’d get up at three in the morning to get a glass of water and the refrigerator would startle you with an eldritch moan as you were bumbling back to bed, but for the most part, the groans of grief and pain became part of the background noise of your average first world household.
Occasional moaning aside, there was for many decades, simply no reason not to use the souls of Fae to power our appliances. They were carbon-emission free, they didn’t create nuclear waste, there were no dangerous chemicals used any more—it wasn’t just an ethical and sustainable solution, it was perfect.
This was the prevailing cultural belief, and it was also Karl Ruiz’s belief—until one morning, two days after his father’s funeral, when his toaster oven stopped working.
He was halfway through his morning routine—paused mid-tie tying to pop his frozen breakfast sandwich into the toaster oven and press the button on the Keurig—when the toaster coughed, sneezed, sent up a plume of smoke, and stopped ticking.
Karl finished tying his tie and peered inside. His breakfast sat, cold and solid on the grill. The breadcrumbs on the floor of the toaster were black, but there was no warmth and no red glow coming from the elements. Karl cursed and fumbled with the electrical cord, pulling it out and putting it back in.
“Work.” He muttered at the toaster. “Work, why don’t you? Uugghhh….”
For a moment he hesitated, considering grabbing a banana from the bunch leaning against his fridge. Behind the banana was a North Carolina magnet pinning a card to the fridge. In the middle of the card was a picture of his father’s face from decades past; rubicund, healthy, his white teeth gleaming under the thick black mustache. “Diego Ruiz, 1975-2019,” read the inscription beneath the picture. “Beloved husband and father.” And then at the very bottom, “Larsen Funeral Home, Argos, Wisconsin.”
The fancy script made him angry. The fact that his mother had sent him the card even when he’d refused to come to the funeral, made him furious. Why would he weep for a man enslaved to addiction? Why would he honor a man who wasn’t ever strong enough to escape the drugs that destroyed his latter years? He’d not been the man he had taught Karl to be.
Unplugging the toaster again, he upended it on the counter, spilling out black crumbs.
“Oh, disgusting,” He snarled, and started fiddling with the screws on the bottom of the toaster.
By the time he finally popped the bottom panel off in a spray of more black crumbs and crustly bits of cheese he was possessed of a furious intention to have a toasted breakfast sandwich, even if he had to drag the soul of the Fae out and shake it into working order again.
“What is wrong with you?!” He said, unwisely fishing around in the guts of the oven with a fork.
His fork hooked on something and he pulled out an aluminum tin, plain, simple and somehow familiar in the way it was shaped. It was warm, but just barely, and when he shook it, something soft moved around inside. There was a faint pop as the cord that had tethered it to the toaster came loose.
Karl paused in his angry haste. He sat with his elbows on the counter, his white shirtsleeves getting crumbs on them, holding the tiny tin up to eye level. He had a sense of unease. But it suddenly came to him that this little tin was shaped alarmingly like a coffin. Between his mother’s Lutheran upbringing and his father’s Catholicism, Karl was an indecisive mongrel of religious feeling, but he tentatively raised a hand and crossed himself.
The tales of the Fae abounded; creatures of beauty and malice, intent on destroying the human race, immensely powerful (otherwise how could they power modern America’s household appliances?). Would he be ensnared if he opened this small case? Bewitched? Tricked?
But, he had gone too far to stop. He carefully pried the tin up with the tines of the fork. The lid popped free and clattered to the counter. It wasn’t loud, but Karl flinched. And then he sat down the tin and looked inside.
A very small person lay there. The person had white hair streaming down its shoulders, its face was wrinkled with age, and it was so pale it bordered on translucence. It was beautiful. Beautiful, and fragile, and—dying. Karl didn’t dare breathe, almost afraid he might blow the creature away with an exhale. He didn’t need to worry—tiny chains strapped the body to the floor of the tin. Under the chains, all along the arms and legs were sores and white, knotted scars.
Then the eyes opened. They were large and dark and full of sadness in the small face. Karl wasn’t entirely sure that it was aware of him; no recognition or fear or anger brightened its eyes. It merely looked up. “My children will not weep for me any longer.” It said, its voice small but clear. “I cannot be held prisoner any longer.” The person’s chest rose and fell. “I am free.”
And it died.
Karl sank to the floor and sat there, among the black crumbs and burnt food. He held the tiny aluminum box and wept.
Ordinary Fantasy 