And Now for a Little Something Weird

First I should tell you that when the pygmies drowned, no one wept.

The second thing I should tell you is, “once upon a time.” In a land far away, unburdened by such things as morals or justice, there lived a man. He was not a wise man, nor was he a man to be emulated by young children as they play at worldly things. He was just a man. One day, as he was walking his bologna, he fell into a pothole. Down, down, down he fell until he came out the other side. The new world was filled with stars and a moon that dripped honey onto his head and shiny new shoes. His bologna had been left on the world of raging chaos and therefore was spared the honey bath. Cursing, the man took off his bowler cap and flung it into the sky, where it joined the thousand satellites already circling close by. He kicked off his shoes and braced himself against a tree as he felt, what could only be described as emotion, sweep through his thorny soul. A kaleidoscope of spangly stars and glitter wonderlands filled his gray, oatmeal brain and he became an actual human.

At this point in the story we will give the man a name. His name is Quigley. Quigley paused a moment and pondered his situation. Here he was on the other side of the world, where honey dripped from the sky and where he felt sadness. A lonely-aching suffused his body and he yearned for company. For love. The love of something or someone other than bologna. Just as he was able to vocalize his need, from the ground popped a woman. When the sky honey fell on her face, she did not try to remove it. Instead, she threw back her head with a wild cry of joy and opened her mouth to better catch it. We don't have to name her. Her name was already Sadie.Wings of gossamer gold sprouted from her back and she took to the air, like she was born to it. As she passed over Quigley , she whispered one small thing that shook his new humanness to the very core. He knew that he would forever love her, though never see her again. When the next woman came, he made sure to grab her before she grew wings. They were married and lived happily…after a fashion.

Late at night, Quigley would tremble in his sleep and call out. His wife could never quite make out what he was whimpering. Eventually, as the decades marched on, he forgot to have nightmares. When his grandchildren came to visit, they would beg him to tell the story about the “other world where it did not rain so much as one drop of honey”. All his children and grandchildren had wings. “Grampa Quigley”, they would say. “What is the greatest truth of life?” Quigley’s children and grandchildren were wise and were to be emulated. Then he would tell them what Sadie had entrusted to him those many years ago as she careened through the clouds.What did she tell him, you ask?“ You smell like bologna. I don't like bologna." Also, there were pygmies.