Sometimes things are not as shiny as they seem. They break, crack, are taken forcefully and shaken until they burst.
Sometimes there is no tape or glue that can put these once-shiny, previously wholesome and glittering, historically better things back together.
The future waits for no one.
So I picked up my suitcase and coat, bowed to my plants, and walked away. I walked down the street like all those other people and I waited for relief or release, or maybe I didn't.
Maybe I sat down at the table and pulled out a cigarette, from the new blue packet, stuck it between my lips, flicked the lighter and took a puff. Remembered that smoking was prohibited in the building and stubbed it out. Or maybe I didn't.
Maybe I suited up and powdered down, carried on and shrugged off. Saved it for a rainy day. Wrote a list and threw it from a ten-story building, wishing while watching it float, hating those parts, wanting those parts, remembered my eleven o'clock lunch appointment and turned away.
Or maybe I decided to invite my friendly wizard neighbour over to drink tea and make a potion.
"Bartholomew," I said, clearly and around the bubblegum in my mouth because his attention span was, and still is, appalling. "There is something we need to discuss."
He nodded, a little too gravely for such a situation, and replied, "I fear this has come. Here, have a candescent cupcake." And he pulled out a plate of plump, magnificently whipped, bright blue cupcakes from his jacket.
I declined. Bartholomew nodded as if it all made sense and slid the plate back into his jacket. I felt a tad worried. Just how were those cakes keeping shape?
"I bought those from Gerald-" Bartholomew started seriously.
"The cupid fellow?" I interrupted.
"Yes. The very fellow."
I said, "Look, things are a bit hazy betwee-"
"Hazy or not," Bartholomew rumbled calmly like a still pond at midnight, "disregarding the haze-"
"Oh, no... there was haze. There was actual haze, it was the required pink and fluffy, mostly softly-spoken and occasionally fragrant-free. There were times it was not fragrant-free, and those times were some long winters."
"So there was haze."
"Yes."
"I see."
"Can you? The haze is only visible to those involved in it."
"No, I meant figuratively."
"Oh, right, I see."
"I do not believe you can."
"No, I meant-"
"Of course."
I stopped and reconsidered things. All things. I sat and thought about time and space, the sound of a baby's laugh, water flowing through a hose, toe-stubbing, worm-farming, tongue-curling. You know, the important things.
In this time Bartholomew took a shower. He sang long, curly songs about romantic stars and dyed his hair an off-shade of red. Then he straightened my eighteen paintings that were straight to start with, mended his undergarments, taught my tangerines to love, and wrote a book on the unique and under-appreciated life of pigeons and their need for thick-rimmed glasses.
"...as there have been many sad yet slow-moving stories about the mending of such glass..."
I put an end to all the considering so I could exercise my goodwill as a host. I asked placidly: "Is there really someone who makes and mends glasses for pigeons?"
Bartholomew said, "I haven't a clue."
I frowned, "You just wrote a book on them! An entire book! And bored me to death with thirteen chapters!"
"You weren't paying the slightest attention, dear neighbour."
"I most certainly was attention-paying!"
"How much did you pay?"
"What?"
Bartholomew stared at me from over his tattered and stained book. Had he spilled something on it already? "I paid all of it!"
"I charge three-hundred dollars a page," he said with a flourish of his hand.
"You ask too much." I snapped. I might have been a little tired from such a long day, but I might have also been annoyed at the antics of such a wise-looking man. So wise and all he had to was look. Could life be more unfair?
"Young one," he started in a seriously gentle manner as he closed his book and set it down. "Young one. I wrote a book about pigeons years ago-"
"Years?!" I spluttered.
"-foolish, devoted wholly to the well-being of things smaller than myself (yes that means you, too. How do you think you came to have such abundant fruit trees?). But I came to realise, upon a brilliant, financially well-to-do, semi-retired midnight star that such things cannot be the essence of my days. There has to be a spark in my child-like soul. Helping the small things does not, and did not, light that flame."
I put a hand up in the pause gesture. "Ok, Bartemus. Tell me straight. Just how long have I been sitting here?"
I was fearful. Don't get me wrong. I may have oozed total calm and elegant chic sophistication, but deep down I was wondering how many times this sort of thing had been going on. "Have you done this before?" I asked in a hushed voice around the gaping hole of growing horror. "Have I been sitting here like this millions and millions of times before without knowing it? Has the generation grown? Is there still life outside?"
Bartholomew shook his head. "Korban-"
"My name's Cerri."
"-there is life out there. It might be a slight flicker and it might only belong to the zombies who shamefully shuffle as if listening to a mediocre dubstep beat, but it is there."
He smiled.
I said with heavy disdain, "Zombies?"
"In the flesh."
"Ok, now. Listen. You straightened my pictures, thank you, but only you didn't straighten them you just tilted them because your glasses are crooked and tilting, so fix that. You look demented. Secondly, I now wake up at night to talking fruit having full-blown arguments in my kitchen, and it took me a long time to figure out that you switched my coffee with onion root powder. Thanks again for that. I walked down main street and people cried-"
"Ahh yes," Bartholomew chuckled. "The memories..."
"AND! I'm almost one hundred percent certain that you bewitch yourself into my dreams and make it look like a sitcom, you know, where you're sitting cross-legged on a stool in high suede pants and a striped blouse and suddenly you look at me and say something stupid and confusing like 'Krystal would just CRACK HER CHINA if she knew this' followed by a cheesy, knowing smile. And I wake up mad because I never find out what those people 'would want to know'. These dreams are terrifying and I feel personally assaulted." I glare at him.
"I'm sure I have no idea what you're little brain is concerned about. Trust me, Kurtus, I have a trillion other things to be doing than wear suede in your dreams."
"I'm Cerri."
"However..." he looked at me thoughtfully, tapping his chin. "I will need to invade your dreams on the ninth of June. You have a big day on the tenth, yes? And I feel personally involved."
"You're not," I assured him. "I have nothing that day."
"You have a test."
"Yes."
"A test of courage! Of endurance! Of releasing potential!"
"Possibly."
"So! Let us play a game!" and he whipped out a large orange box of Mad Tent from his jacket. And his eyes were twinkling, his face set in concentration as he read the five-foot-long rule-book, his knees poking holes in it, his body tensed with eagerness and excitement. I sighed and took off the lid.
Or maybe I didn't.
