Fiction

The whole world stands above my spot on the floor. I am overlooked by everyone in the Moore household except for the tabby cat, Mr. Anderson. Although, they step on me almost every time they walk through the living room. Being treaded on has been an unsuccessful method of flattening me back into the carpet.  

What I like to consider my “domain” stretches from the brand new couch to the glass front door where I can see other houses that must have their own living rooms. Inside those living rooms must be other carpets with tufts sticking out. What do they do to pass the time?  

The majority of my days are spent thinking. Amongst the tuft community, I would like to imagine that I am something of an intellectual.  However, next to even the dumbest human, any tuft must be a fool by comparison. I don’t have eyes, a brain, or a mouth. But, I still see, think, and feel like screaming. This is pretty upsetting to me. So, I try not to think about it as much as other things with less consequence such as, “Why does the alphabet have an order?” 

The best days are when the mom, Cheryl, leaves on the television when she goes to work. On those days I don’t have to sit and consider my existence as an imperfection of the carpet and what might happen to me if I were to ever disappear back into the material that I spawned from. Instead, I have the pleasure of catching up on whatever new show Keifer Sutherland is starring in that fall.  It would be a big deal to me if she left the TV on all day.  

A drawback of being a tuft is that there is no practical way for me to communicate with anything else. About two weeks ago, there was a piece of lint that landed right in front of me. For days I tried and failed to make first contact with them. Before I could decide if our shortcomings were due to their lack of consciousness or the absence of a mouth between the two of us, they  

were vacuumed up by Cheryl.      

If scientists ever discovered that loose portions of carpet became sentient, I believe that a lot more would be understood about how the universe works.