She pulled the soft, springy little ball out of the jar and placed it in the sink, then followed the rest of the instructions. She turned on the tap, making sure water was flowing directly onto the object, standing back to watch it unfurl and expand. Soon it was too big for the sink, and she heaved it out to place it on the kitchen tiles, where it continued to grow. By the time it was the size of a basketball it started to reveal human features, appearing more like a person curled up, and these features became more defined the larger it got: arms poked out, then feet, a head emerging from the blob. Within twenty minutes, a full-grown man stood in her home, dressed in a blue shirt and jeans, running a hand over his stubble. According to the packaging, she could name him anything she liked. She called him Jim, and he smiled. When they shook hands, she realised he was still a little spongy.
Their first meal together was delightful. She worried he might be highly flammable, but he politely assured her that he would be fine, and she lit a nice candle in the centre of the table. They dined on risotto and tiramisu and shared a bottle of red wine she’d been saving for just an occasion. He laughed at her jokes, and she laughed at his, and they shared many opinions and core beliefs. At the end of the night he agreed to move in.
For a while, things were great. She bought accessories for him online, and they would arrive in small cardboard boxes for them to open together. They went to movies, had friends around for murder mystery nights, booked weekends away. He helped to cook and clean, and was a great sounding board for important decisions related to her career. Each night she would roll him up and put him in a little drawer, and each morning she would take him back out and wait for him to take shape.
But as time went on, their points of connection faded. He became more impatient and aimless, and his flaws became more obvious. He left wet footprints around the apartment. He complained about which streaming services they had and which ones they didn’t. He refused to look for a job. They regularly argued, and he wondered why she had asked him to move in in the first place.
One night, on the evening news, she saw that all jar people had been recalled. The manufacturers stated they hadn’t realised that connection was more than simply perfection, and this failure had caused the product to become moody and start picking fights when it realised it wasn’t meeting a relationship’s true needs. The footage showed hundreds of people lining up at specialty stores with their jar people in tow, all of them looking surly and resentful. The company vowed to refine its development process, with a view to releasing a new version in the coming year.
At the end of the segment she looked to her right, where Jim sat on the couch, dozing between sessions on the Switch.
In the morning, she helped him get dressed and walked him out the front door. He looked at her, confused, and asked where they were going. She told him that she didn’t think they belonged together, and it was time for them to split up. He considered this for a moment, then nodded. He said that he had found their time together beautiful, and meaningful, but she was correct in thinking that they weren’t quite right. He knew it, too.
When a taxi pulled up next to them, ready to drive them to the manufacturer’s office, she looked at Jim, and his wet, soppy feet, leaving a small puddle on the footpath. She thought of him being dried up, shrivelling back into nothing, forgetting her and everything they’d shared. She thought of what it would mean for her to send him to be drained of everything she’d known.
She opened the car door and told the driver they could leave. Once the taxi was gone, she told Jim that he should walk away, make sure he remained free, and find something new.
He thanked her, seeming to understand, and crossed the road, then turned to wave – but she had already turned back to face the rest of her life.
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A Quick Recommendation
This story, ‘Community’ by Rachel Julia Engler in Black Warrior Review, had me from the first sentence.
When I first moved there, I got involved with a group of trepanners. If you felt any stress, any sadness, you’d get to drilling. Let some air in, and out. It was a bloody business.
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