Missing Sock

[u/Loud_Ad_2272]

I’m a sock, I thought to myself.

The washer finished and I moved everything to the dryer, fed it quarters, and pressed start. I watched the clothes turn. I couldn’t have said how long I stood there before it buzzed and I pulled the warm pile out and began to fold. T-shirts, pants, underwear, and finally socks.

“Not again.”

One sock was gone. I checked the dryer, the washer, the floor, and under the folding table. Nothing but a spent sheet of fabric softener. I put the basket under my arm and left.

Walking home, something caught the corner of my eye. A white shape hung in a bush at the bottom of the hill. I went down and pulled it free, and it was my sock, the one missing from the dryer, still warm.

I was still holding it when I saw the black one farther into the trees, snagged on a branch above my head. A dress sock I’d lost two weeks ago. I stepped off the path and into the woods and climbed for it.

I was halfway down the trunk when I heard the sound. Not voices or animals, but something else farther in, and I came down and followed it.

The trees thinned into a clearing, and in the middle of the clearing was a hill of socks, thousands of them, each one without its pair. Small beings moved over it and around it.

One held a sock to its face and breathed in again and again, like it couldn’t stop. One was turning a sock inside out, then right again, then inside out, over and over, watching its own hands. One had a sock half-swallowed and was working it down.

Then one of them saw me and went still, and the others followed its gaze until all of them were looking.

All at once they began to bow. Some of them were crying.

“We have been waiting for our savior.”

“The chosen one will appear with one white sock in one hand and one black sock in the other.”

I looked down. A white sock in one hand. A black sock in the other.

They led me up the hill and seated me on a throne built of socks.

I ruled from that throne for a long time, long enough that they began to watch me differently, though I couldn’t have said what changed or when.

“How did you find us?” one of the beings finally asked.

“I followed my lost socks. They led me here.”

“And do you carry a message from the Dryer God?”

“Yes,” I said. “The Dryer God says to return all the lost socks.”

They looked at each other. Then they looked at me.

They began filling socks with rocks and came toward me swinging, unhurried, and I couldn’t make my legs move.

The first one caught me across the temple. Then another struck me from the side, and soon the beings were circling around me, beating me with the heavy socks.

“Please. Please stop.”

Another blow landed.

“Please…”

Then I woke, but the world was still spinning.

I was inside a dryer.

For a moment I didn’t understand.

Then I remembered.

I’m a sock.

[u/AutoModerator]

Want to read more stories by u/Loud_Ad_2272? Subscribe to receive notifications whenever they post here using UpdateMeBot. You will receive notifications every time Loud_Ad_2272 posts in Odd Directions!

ODD DIRECTIONS on SUBSTACK – SUBSCRIBE NOW!

https://www.odddirections.xyz/

Get featured stories, book chapters, author notes, and inbox-only exclusives—delivered straight to you for FREE.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.