Probe

On many occasions I find a piece of life missing, or misplaced, or slightly askew from where I expect it to be. Socks are the best example, perhaps, and even that can seem sinister. Where did those keys go? How on earth did that book arrive there?

And then there are the less physical--but even more disturbing--juxtapositions of one’s own consciousness. Did I not already take care of that bill? Or: I would have stood up to that fiend ten years ago. Or even this: what did it feel like to hold her waist?

I take little comfort in the notion that we all experience these little offsets. Indeed, the familiarity is nearly proof of insidious forces at work.

The events of the past two days have convinced me: I am either mad, or live in a world filled with such treachery that I shudder to imagine the architects responsible for the illusion of our common lives. For when both physicality and one’s own mind conspire to allow visions of another world, how can one find normalcy again?

I awoke yesterday at six-thirty as usual to begin my work day and week at the refinery. I am forty-two, a bachelor by fate if not choice, and so there is no one to substantiate my tale. But I will show you evidence soon enough.

So innocently it started, but strange! Before crawling from my bed I happened to turn my head toward the closet. The dawn was just beginning to throw a subtle cyan light on to the floor by the window, and there I observed a tiny blue Robin’s egg standing upright in the middle of my bedroom.

At first I supposed that somehow a hapless bird had found her way into my room at night, and in a panic of entrapment deposited the fruits of her creation near my bed. However, the window was not open, and a quick survey of the room revealed no feathered mother.

And then a thought fluttered into my head which tapped the first crack in the shell of my sanity. It is a wooden floor, you see, and the egg was standing upright, lengthwise, a feat of balance impossible without a pillow of salt or some other means of support.

I leapt from my bed and pressed near to the floor over the little egg. With my eye level to the boards, I could not see any means of nurture against the gravity which should have rolled the egg over. Still it stood.

What is the essence of fear? A situation we do not understand, cannot control or predict? Something out of order. At that point I had not fear, but only a thrill, an amazement, a child-like curiosity for such a novel presentation.

I reached to pluck it from the cold floor, wondering if so lonely a statue could still be viable. Underneath the floor had no dimple or defect, and while touching the egg another disagreeable facet formed in my groggy mind.

It felt warm but heavy, like lead.

Like Gold! No bigger than the tip of my thumb, but the weight of an apple. No! A melon!

I swung the strange little egg over to my reading lamp, and held it up against the bulb.

Opaque as stone, there was no shadow of a yolk.