A woman sat in a brown cubicle, unplugged. She went to get coffee from the lunchroom. When she took out the milk from the refrigerator, the milk bottle spoke.
“You don’t want to do that just yet, darlin’,” he said. His voice was measured and it resonated in a deeply familiar way. He had no mouth or anything, she just knew the sound was emanating from him.
“Why not?” she asked.
“I’m magic, baby. Listen. You can change your life.”
“Me?”
“Precious thing, you. I’m all for you, sweetheart.”
It didn’t seem strange that the milk bottle was talking to her, or that there was a milk bottle at all, like in old times. She and the milk bottle must have met before, long ago when she was a little girl, or in a forgotten dream.
“This is one of those make a wish deals?” she asked.
“If you think of it that way, honey. What I’m telling you is that you can have anything you want.”
The truth was that there was so much she wanted, she’d almost stopped wanting altogether. She’d wanted to play jazz piano for a living. If the milk bottle was for real, life as she knew it could disappear and she could be in a club in the cool part of town with a rapt audience. She could sleep in and wear jeans every day.
Her thoughts transitioned to personal matters, in that she thought about how she’d never climaxed with a man, and she asked herself whether she could find herself melting into the blissful loss she’d imagined before the disappointment of the real thing. Then she felt selfish, thinking about sex and her mindless job, so she thought about the poor world, all of its wants.
She looked at the milk bottle again. Where did she know him from? The perspective in the room seemed to be shifting, so that she felt she was shrinking, or the bottle was growing, and she could climb over the rim and swim in him.
“I can’t tell you how wonderful it is that you’re trying to do this for me,” she said, beginning to feel wrenching regret. “But I think I might pass,”
“Sweetheart. No.”
There was so much she wanted to change that choosing one thing would be impossible. Anyways this wasn’t real, his offer. There was a pause in the conversation in which, she hoped, the milk bottle was coming to understand.
He said, “What about your dream?”
Vision blurred with tears, she picked him up.
“Baby, please,” he said.
But she tipped him over and poured some into her coffee, at which point the talking stopped. She set him back in the fridge with the office lunches and leftovers and closed the door.
In a moment of panic, of second-guessing, she flung open the fridge. There wasn’t even a milk bottle anymore, just a carton as always. She sipped her coffee, which had cooled, and took it back her desk. She forgot the milk bottle’s offer, the dream she hadn’t fully remembered.
Katie Rose writes out of New York, New York.
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17 Responses to “THE MILK MAN’S OFFER • by Katie Rose”
Comments
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March 27th, 2008 at 4:51 am
I enjoyed this surreal story. Great work. Thanks!
March 27th, 2008 at 5:47 am
Katie, I met this really nice packet of crisps once but when I got to the bottom of the bag, guess what? They’d all gone!
-story of my bleedin’ life!!
March 27th, 2008 at 6:33 am
Really really like this. As fresh as milk straight from the cow.
March 27th, 2008 at 6:57 am
So many things to wish for, too many to chose. A great story.
March 27th, 2008 at 6:59 am
Nice work!
I totally would have taken the milk man’s offer.
March 27th, 2008 at 7:53 am
That was a sad story. But true in a way. A lot of people do discard their dreams at the very moment they finally have the opportunity to reach them.
March 27th, 2008 at 8:11 am
Lovely, sad story. I’m old enough to remember milk bottles…think I’ll go check my ‘fridge, I have a few dreams of my own.
March 27th, 2008 at 8:31 am
Dreams, like milk bottles, need to be shaken.
Great story!
March 27th, 2008 at 9:39 am
Thank you all so much for reading and writing these comments, I’m so glad that many of you enjoyed it. I’m new to this site, but I will check to see if you have stories here too and reciprocate with comments to yours as well.
Best, Katie.
March 27th, 2008 at 10:09 am
I loved this. A lovely,elegant style. Slick and humourous… well done.
March 27th, 2008 at 6:20 pm
Great story,
I would have defiantly take him up on his offer.
March 28th, 2008 at 3:55 am
That’s very sweet of you, Katie.
March 28th, 2008 at 8:22 am
I really enjoyed this. Did anyone else keep hearing Barry White as the milk bottle spoke?
Great, quirky story, Katie.
March 28th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Ah! i love stories like this!….not only orginal but fell of little messages here and there…and funky milk bottles too!
March 29th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
[...] article quotes Katie Rose’s story “The Milk Man’s Offer,” a quirky little piece of fiction that I thoroughly [...]
March 31st, 2008 at 1:07 am
Excellent work, funky, funny and touching. I loved it.
September 10th, 2009 at 11:33 am
Katie,
I liked your story, so sad, but true.
Jim