In a small town, there was a shop that sold extra time. People visited whenever life became inconvenient. A young artist came one afternoon and asked the shopkeeper for another year.

“I haven’t started painting yet,” she explained. “I need more time to become good.”

The shopkeeper handed her a calendar and promised to collect payment later.

A businessman came next, asking for ten extra years. He wanted to become wealthy before allowing himself a holiday. An elderly woman asked for one more summer because she had spent too many of them worrying about winter.

Everyone left satisfied.

Years passed, and the shopkeeper finally began delivering the invoice.

The artist owed hundreds of unfinished mornings. The businessman owed countless dinners missed with his children. The elderly woman owed afternoons she could never recover.

They protested. They had never borrowed anything they could see.

The shopkeeper simply opened the ledger. Every page contained a moment they had postponed, convinced there would always be another opportunity.

The artist returned home and opened her paints. The businessman called his daughter. The elderly woman sat outside and watched the sunset without checking the clock.

The shop eventually closed. Nobody wanted to buy extra time anymore.

Its sign remained above the empty doorway, though, carrying a final message:

You cannot save your life for later and expect to find it waiting there.

• The Vignette Gazette Edition #287
• Updated Submission Guidelines For Writing Vignettes

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The Invoice for Tomorrow was originally published in Fiction Shorts on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I woke up on the living room carpet with a strange feeling that something was terribly wrong. My hands looked tiny, my feet barely reached the floor, and my favourite coffee mug was suddenly the size of a bathtub.

Apparently, I was two years old again.

My first discovery was that walking was considerably harder when your legs were this short. My second was that adults had absolutely no idea how to negotiate with someone who wanted biscuits before breakfast.

My mother, who had somehow become responsible for me, placed a bowl of cereal on the table. I took one bite, decided I hated it, and announced my opinion by throwing a spoon onto the floor.

Then I spotted a bottle of bubbles near the balcony.

For the next twenty minutes, I chased floating bubbles around the room, laughing whenever one landed on my nose. I couldn’t remember the last time something so ordinary had made me this happy. At some point, I started to giggle so hard that I fell backwards onto a cushion.

By evening, I was exhausted, covered in biscuit crumbs, and refusing to sleep because apparently naps were a personal insult.

When I finally woke up as myself, my back hurt from sleeping on the carpet.

I made coffee, looked at the cereal bowl, and smiled.

Perhaps being little wasn’t about knowing less. Perhaps it was about having fewer reasons to stop enjoying the little things.

• The Vignette Gazette Edition #286
• Updated Submission Guidelines For Writing Vignettes

rmw

One Day, Three Feet Tall was originally published in Fiction Shorts on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.