The Man Who Made Things

by Eli S. Evans

Most days, every day if he could, a certain man tried to make something. Some days he made one thing, other days another. Then, one day, the man’s doctor gave him the news that, though he would more likely survive, he also might die any day. As it turned out, knowing this was enough to prevent the man from making anything at all for some time, for the simple reason that none of the things he could imagine himself making seemed good enough – though perhaps “good” isn’t quite the right word – to be, or better said to have been, the last thing he ever made, which is precisely what they would have been if the day on which he made them also happened to be the day on which he died. And yet this man was so accustomed to making things that soon enough he could no longer tolerate making them no longer, and so he sat down and made this little story you are reading right now, about which, still alive, he subsequently thought to himself: it’ll have to do.

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About the Author

Eli S. Evans is the best writer you’ve never heard of, along with about a million other people who are also the best writer you never heard of. In short, you should probably have heard of more writers (but it’s not your fault). In the past month or so, his work has been published at Drunk Monkeys, Cowboy Jamboree, Six Sentences, Misery Tourism, and Queen Mob’s Teahouse (RIP). Obscure & Irregular, a small book of small stories, is available from a small press, Moon Rabbit Books & Ephemera, as well as the standard online retail and distribution behemoths.

Publication Rights

Story first published in (mac)ro(mic). Republished here with permission.

Image Rights

Detail from Marjan Blan: Kyiv Children’s Railway Museum, Ukraine, 2019 (Unsplash).