Not There
I was not there. There was a sign on the door pointing out my absence. My dwelling was only apparently asleep, not lurking but waiting. The club-footed table was slightly out of focus, as contrasted with the haggard chair‘s razor-sharp outline. The big chest in the corner was abiding, its immense keyhole gazing more alert than ever. The little oven seemed intimidated by the imposing portliness of the cabinet beside it.
On the first day dust, falling in slightly skewed trajectories right out of the air, accumulated itself into irregularly but not randomly distributed heaps which rested on the horizontal surfaces, then flattened, crawled towards each other, merged, not entirely centered, on the floor, becoming a black, at first dull but then, in the further course of the solidification, increasingly shiny sphere, which rolled around, awkwardly at first, then seemed to have made a decision and disappeared with a short electric buzz. Just an elongated, arrow-like stain remained in its spot.
On the second day a non-geometric form resublimated at the tip of the arrow, made out of a worrying, obviously living, but equally obviously non-organic substance. After finishing the phase transition, the form began strutting or crawling or driving around the table, on barely, or at least only shortly existing legs or arms or wheels, inquisitively looking or listening or fumbling around with sensory organs which grew here and there, rapidly sprouting and atrophying again, moving the chair multiple times, its position seemingly causing discomfort, then climbing or flowing or flying onto it, jumping or rolling or mounting onto the table from there. Once on the table, the form finally became geometric, namely cylindrical, and rigidified as a white, porous column the size of a loaf of bread.
On the third day three figures exited the cabinet and positioned themselves around the table, contemplatively gazing at the object in the middle. The woman, her body a zigzag, unstable and pendent, her face distorted by euphoria, withdrew a small knife from a case hanging around her neck, looked at it benevolently, longer than necessary, and then cut into the white cylinder with a single, continuous, infinitely complex movement, so that it inexplicably fell apart into several small, absolutely regular and similar dice. The man, more wide than tall, rectangular but slightly rounded at the corners and ledges, his expression betraying gushing ennui, then placed the pieces on a plate which he seemed to have produced from somewhere behind his back. The child, of uncertain sex, overall uncertain, vague, inchoate, asked first her then him for permission with a glance, exhaled in spurts, for a long time, too long for such a diminutive body, and then devoured its meal, methodical, silent, terrifying, after which all three returned into the cabinet, leaving only the empty plate and a slight metallic odour.
After a while I emerged from the chest, blinked, for the first time in three days, stretched my arms, joggled my legs, made several ungainly steps, stood at length at the table, put my hand on the plate, felt its cold, smooth surface, comprehending that I still wasn’t there and never again would be.