Are You Ready?
Matryoshka
Goodness. Where were we?
Ah yes – Bless You!
Bagley pauses for a moment, suspends his pen – then, with the air of someone who chooses ignorance over inconvenience, he picks up a fresh piece of thick writing paper and begins a new letter.
Bagley did not hear the sneeze.
That is to say, he did hear it, but he decided not to hear it, which is a rather different thing entirely.
Bagley is very skilled at ignoring inconvenient things. If Bagley were not a badger (and thank heavens he is), he might have made an excellent ostrich. He spends more time with his head in the sand – or in the clouds – than squarely on his shoulders.
So, Bagley continues with his writing. However, time has already begun to bend around the corners. That sort of thing happens when inanimate objects sneeze.
How much longer can you ignore the strangeness, Bagley?
What if I told you there was something tickling your foot?
Something is tickling Bagley’s foot.
He jerks his paw away, startled, but the tickling sensation persists, following his movement and making his fur prickle with unease.
He flails instinctively – and makes contact with something squishy. There’s a high pitched ‘eeeee!’ as a funny little thing flies from under the table and across Bagley’s floor like a deflating balloon.
Bagley stares, wide-eyed and frozen. The tips of his ears quiver with tension and an intense surprise.
There, where the carpet curls like an old and matting tongue, something shimmers subtly. It wavers slightly, like a trick of the light or a memory.
Curiosity taking over, Bagley leans over the table to have a look.
What is it, Bagley? …it looks like some sort of worm, dear reader…
Not a worm Bagley – or the soil – knows. This one has edges. It’s pixelated, like a relic from an unfinished video game. Unreadable code scrolls across its skin, glitched lines and garbled symbols, crawling like ants at a digital picnic.
Atop its head bobs a feather. A very large feather. A flumptious, flamboyant, narcissistically enormous feather far too grand for any self-respecting worm to wear.
Bagley stares.
This is, quite clearly, an unreasonable worm.
An unreasonable worm that has somehow wriggled its way into his lovely, letter-writing afternoon and had the audacity to tickle his foot with its flouncy headgear.
The worm is still.
Bagley gulps.
You’ve killed it, Bagley! What are you going to do!!?
Bagley panics. When Bagley panics, his nose twitches at twice its usual speed, and his eyes dart from side to side as if watching a very intense tennis match.
He edges forward, emerging slowly from behind the kitchen table. He tentatively approaches the prone body on his floor.
The worm looks up suddenly and stares straight into Bagley’s soul. Through him. Past fur, past skin, past story.
“’Lo,” it says, its voice like a loading screen. “You’ve been summoned.”
And with that –
**FWUMP**
The world sucks in its breath and swallows Bagley whole.
Thank goodness, dear reader; it was about time.
Are You Ready?
Editor: Lucy Cafiero
