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Run of the Mill

"...they never left her room."

By Jocelynn TaylorPublished 3 years ago 5 min read
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Image by Pexels from Pixabay

They were everywhere. No matter which direction Morgan looked, the sticky notes were scattered around the room. Urgent messages filled them. ‘Did you finish the homework?’ ‘You need to take out the laundry.’ ‘Make sure to eat today.’ ‘Finish mowing that one part of the lawn that you know isn’t the same length as the rest of the yard so don’t even deny it!’

Morgan definitely did not write these notes for herself, despite the fact that they are written with her hand-writing. And neither did her mother. Nor her father. Or her little brother or her friends or anybody else. You see, about 8 months ago, Morgan had gotten a new package of sticky notes. They were all just regular, yellow, run-of-the-mill sticky notes.

Now, because Morgan was a teenage girl and aggressively pack-bonds with everything, she picked the package of sticky notes that was torn and probably beaten in shipping. The wrapping was half off and the bottom left corners were turned upwards. Naturally, she was drawn to them. When she got home, she unwrapped what was left of the packaging and set them on her desk. They were a little bent, but worked just fine.

The next morning when Morgan woke up, cursing the very existence of mornings, she found a regular, yellow, run-of-the-mill, slightly bent sticky note on her door. It read: ‘MATH TEST!’ in all caps. Completely puzzled, Morgan pulled out her planner to check. Realizing that she had never used that planner since school started, Morgan changed her mind and checked her phone. Sure enough, a math test that poor Morgan had completely forgotten about was scheduled for her third period. She spent some time reviewing her notes and realized she was late for class. She had to take the shortcut past the old pear tree to even make it to her class on time.

Since then, sticky notes filled with anxiety ridden messages had appeared on her walls.

They always had a borderline hysterical message that sounded like the sticky notes themselves were stressed at the sheer lack of organization in Morgan’s life and had taken it upon themselves to fix this. And it wasn’t just on her walls! Oh no. These notes appeared on the door and in her closet and, one time, in her shoes. But they never left her room. And the pile of unused sticky notes never seemed to lessen in height. However, Morgan never had any difficulty throwing them away after she had read them. Out loud, that is. Sticky notes apparently need verbal validation.

Now, most people at this point would either blame vivid hallucinations, or black magic. Since the rest of her family could in fact see them, Morgan figured black magic was to blame.

But she couldn’t bring herself to throw out her new pack of not-so-regular, yellow, not-really-run-of-the-mill-either sticky notes. They would be so lonely in the trash and what good is empathy if not to be applied to the endless amounts of black magic, panic-inducing stationary.

So Morgan learned to live with her new reminders. She told her, frankly concerned, mother that she was just trying a new method to keep up with her to-do’s and whatnot.

Today though, something was wrong. Morgan didn’t know what. It seemed like a regular day. She was dead tired as the sun was barely up. She knew her schedule for the day and nothing too urgent was happening. Her backpack was on the floor, next to her shoes. Her phone was lying on her nightstand. The magic, possibly cursed sticky notes were hanging on the walls.

So what was wrong?

It took Morgan longer than she would like to admit that she only realized what was wrong once she started to read the sticky notes. It took her sleep addled brain 4 notes to realize that they had all said the same thing. ‘ANSWER!’

Morgan was a fairly smart girl. She got decent grades and planned to go to a decent college. She helped her brother with his homework. So it didn’t take long to figure out what she was supposed to do. Morgan wasted no time in writing a response. After all, if it was urgent enough for the sticky notes to forget about her homework, it must be important.

She wrote a simple sentence. ‘Who is this?’

She realized that this didn’t sound very polite but what else was she to say to the communicating paper?

Morgan stared at the stack but nothing happened. After some time had passed, she turned her head quickly to look at her clock and when she turned back, there was writing. ‘My name is Toby! My friend has been putting up the sticky notes for you to read!’

Morgan didn’t know what the proper social etiquette was for talking to magic and/or possessed paper so she wrote back a simple, ‘Why?’

Again, no more writing appeared until Morgan had turned her head away. The sticky notes- Toby apparently- seemed rather offended. ‘Why!? Because you were always forgetting things! Because you needed help! Because you never would have passed that history test without me!’

“That’s fair.” Morgan thought. She jotted down her response. They were on their third sticky note now. ‘I’m sorry. Thank you for your help. I really appreciate it, honestly.’

If paper could huff, Toby did. The next words read: ‘Good. Besides, it keeps me from being too bored. Being paper is not very fun.’

‘That’s understandable.’ Morgan wrote back. ‘But why contact me now?’

‘Oh yes!’ Toby answered. ‘I remember! My friend told me to warn you!’

‘Warn me about what?’

‘The gremlin invasion of course! You may want to sit down for this.’

It was going to be a very long night.

Short Story
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About the Creator

Jocelynn Taylor

I love writing and was finally convinced to put some of my work out there!

Follow me @chachi_taylor on Instagram! I would always love to hear any reviews, constructive criticism, or to just talk about writing and books!

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  • Sydney Higginson11 months ago

    Creative and funny!

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