The Collector of Impossible Things
The first time I heard about the Collector, it was through a whisper—a whisper that traveled through the market like smoke. People said he carried with him a suitcase that could hold anything, even the kinds of things that had no shape or substance. He claimed to own the sounds of a sunrise, locked inside a vial of trembling glass; the feeling of a dream fading, folded neatly between two pieces of paper; and the weight of a sigh, kept in a small iron box that rattled whenever you thought about loneliness.
I didn’t believe any of it until I met him.
The Collector wore a coat that shimmered between colors depending on where you stood, never quite settling. His eyes seemed borrowed from someone else—too big, too ancient, like a pair of marbles filled with storms. When he smiled, his teeth looked slightly wrong, as though they had been rearranged in patterns not meant for human mouths.
“Everyone owns impossible things,” he told me in a voice that rang twice, once in my ears and once inside my skull. “The trick is knowing how to extract them.”
He showed me his treasures. In a jar of blue smoke, he claimed to have bottled the silence that falls when you realize someone you love has forgotten your name. In a delicate locket, he kept the taste of the last word of a dying language. From one pocket he pulled out a coin, which, when I held it, was heavier than memory itself.
Each item seemed to hum faintly, as if still alive.
And then he said:
“But you… you carry something I don’t have yet. Something rare. Something I must have.”
My chest tightened.
“What is it?” I asked.
He leaned closer. His breath smelled of dust and rain on stone. “You carry the hesitation that exists just before a choice that will ruin or save you. That moment—pure, sharp, trembling—it has never been captured. But it lives in you.”
I wanted to laugh it off, but the way his eyes glimmered told me he was not asking. He was waiting.
That night I dreamed of him standing at the foot of my bed, his suitcase yawning open like a second mouth, its lining lined with shadows and faint echoes of voices I half-recognized. I felt his gaze pin me to the mattress, cold and endless, as if he were already unspooling something from inside me. When I woke, the air felt strangely thinned, my chest hollow, my hands trembling. I knew with a certainty that something essential had been tugged loose, the way a single pulled thread can unravel an entire garment.
The Collector was gone. In his place, on my desk, sat a small glass orb, faintly glowing, humming in rhythm with my heartbeat. Its light seemed to lean toward me, as though it knew me better than I knew myself. Inside, swirling like smoke caught in water, was something I almost recognized—and the sight of it made my throat ache with an inexplicable grief.
A hesitation. My hesitation.
And since then, every choice I’ve made has come too quickly, too easily. I can no longer linger at the edge of decisions. I move forward without pause, without doubt, as if I’ve been robbed of the ability to wonder what if. Sometimes I even frighten myself—accepting offers without weighing them, stepping into places without thinking why, agreeing to words I don’t fully mean. The pause between thought and action, that fragile breath of hesitation, has been stripped from me.
The Collector of Impossible Things got what he wanted.
But sometimes, late at night, I hear the sound of a sunrise—or maybe something stranger—tapping gently at the glass orb on my desk, as if trying to escape. The glow inside it shifts, growing brighter when I resist a decision, dimmer when I surrender too easily. And once, when I leaned too close, I swear I heard my own voice whispering from within—asking me to let it out.
The Collector doesn’t steal objects—he steals the moments you can’t afford to lose.
Note:
Thank you for reading “The Collector of Impossible Things”! This is a story in a series created for avid readers and English learners who want to enjoy captivating tales while practicing their language skills. Stay tuned for more stories and language tips to enhance your journey!
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Short Stories / Cuentos Cortos
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