'For Those With Eyes to See'

'For Those with Eyes to See'

by Troy Blackford

Magdalene Palmer felt slightly miffed. For her, that was saying a lot: like you or I saying we were royally pissed. Magdalene Palmer wasn’t that type of person. On the kinds of terrible days that make people like us punch walls, she jogs down to the park and feeds the ducks. She couldn’t recall the last time she had felt mildly peeved, let alone slightly miffed.

But she was peeved now. A set of ceramic craft eyes--usually referred to by non-crafters as ‘googly eyes’--she had ordered from an online shop weeks ago still hadn’t arrived. Magdalene had waited one extra week over the seller’s maximum shipping time before deciding to write. Magdalene selected this woman, who handcrafted each eye, out of a large pool of potential suppliers on the basis of her many positive online reviews. Her customers all insisted this woman couldn’t be beat by any other eye-maker on the market.

On the basis of this merchant’s customer service reputation, Magdalene expected her polite e-mail to elicit an instantaneous response brimming with apologies and packed with assurances. No such e-mail ever came, nor did she receive any response whatsoever, nor to several further messages. As weeks wore on, Magdalene’s confusion coalesced into the mild form of displeasure that counted, for her, as ‘fury.’

Only one choice remained: public shaming.

Will this be a smart course of action, or will Magdalene regret her negative feedback? Find out in the short story collection 'For Those With Eyes to See' in Kindle and Paperback!