TOAST STORY.

You can’t find the toast. Where could it be, besides the toaster? But you’ve checked the two slots, their orange-hot wires cooling. The toaster might’ve propelled the two slices high into the kitchen, clipping off cupboards or refrigerator. If so, there would be a circumference of outcomes, and you’ve checked, and you’ve found no seven grain organic, with spelt. You stand there dumbly bearing condiments: butter, salt, preserves. Those were your final two pieces of bread. You return the butter and preserves to the refrigerator. Maybe it’s better to face the world with salt, coarse salt. Should you scatter coarse salt about you, while screaming wordlessly? The sun has tumbled off the edge of the earth, and all colors of lights, a wasteful pointillism, kindle across the city. There must be 1,000 breads—5,000 breads!—within walking distance. Knowing what you know, who’d bring a new bread into this kitchen? The toast—is toast. Its mysterious disappearance powers a certain vigilance on your part, unable to sally-forth from the domicile. Out the window, the night has deepened, the color of a dark wooden-brown piano, its sounds not unlike piano keys banged every few moments. Have you overlooked something? The toast could’ve lobbed behind the stove, in that crack between stove and wall, where a mouse chews the wood every few midnights. If the toast landed there, the mouse soon enough will discover its good fortune, there, where small fires kindle and rage at intervals more predictable than the spontaneous delivery of sustenance.

Too domestic? Seeking intrigue? Click on A TALE OF FIVE MILITANTS.