Friday, August 5, 2022

The Flying Carpet Underground (flash fiction--fantasy)

Copyright William Hammett 2015, 2022


As you might expect, the grandmother's name is Nana. She lives in an old Victorian home in need of repair, a ramshackle house with wings and porches and chimneys jutting this way and that like an uneven deck of cards. In the basement, Nana weaves throw rugs on her antiquated loom. She makes them with prayer and humility.

Across the meadow from her home is a modern town, on the edge of which sits a factory filled with dirty orphans working oily machines from dawn to dusk. The factory produces metal gizmos, although no one in town knows what they're used for.  They're shipped by rail to parts unknown. 

The orphans live in a large brick building near Nana's home. It's dreary and looks like a prison, and in some ways it is. Sometimes Nana sneaks into the orphans' dormitory and gives them extra food and a rug to place next to their beds so that their feet will be warm on cold winter mornings. But the rugs are imbued with Nana's boundless love of all creatures. She doesn't know it, but the rugs are magic carpets. One by one, the orphans are escaping, floating away in the night to families who welcome them with open arms.

The factory manager thinks the missing children are just runaways. With each passing month, the factory produces fewer and fewer gizmos. Nana's flying carpet underground is slowly shutting down the factory with a little prayer and humility. Not bad work when you can get it.

~William Hammett

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