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Furgleton, Late Winter
Glowing sunlight poured into the windows of Alexander
T. Chia’s (Al to his friends) quaint, blue house, glimmering against the blue
skin of one Fluffy the Cobrall. His headphones, clamped onto his hood (the closest
thing he had to ears), breezed out calm, Mystery Island music, and his sunglasses,
clasped on his nose, prevented the sun from damaging his eyes, which were closed
anyway.
The carpet he was stretched out on was a deep
scarlet, shot through with a swirling golden design. A few posters from some
famous rock concerts and nerdy lupology events covered with glass and enclosed
in frames hung on the walls, with reflective surfaces, transparent coverings,
and opaque paper. Furniture was scattered here and there. A bookshelf was packed
with books, the perfect blankness of the ceiling perturbed by a hanging light,
a chair or two in the opposite corner, around a clean table like seats on a
merry-go-round.
It was calm and quiet. If one stood close enough,
the faint sound of Fluffy’s music could be heard from his headphones. If one
stood close enough, they could feel the heat of the sun on their skin, or read
the titles of the books on the shelves.
The window was fairly large. It couldn’t be opened,
but it gave the room a constant sense of warmth, even when the scenery outside
was a little less then.
As for the scenery in the other end of the window,
melting snow blanketed the pristine streets of Furgleton, and the first few
indications of spring were rearing their ugly heads, coating the streets with
water that would later turn to ice, and then back into water again.
Few Chias dared to navigate the sidewalk, for
fear of falling face-first into the currently icy street. One of those few was
the Furgleton Post Mailchia, who had just committed the act of falling. As he
struggled to get back up, a Pteri in the tree above him decided to take flight.
The branch wobbled as the weight of the Pteri left, and a thick mound of wet
snow plummeted downward from it, smacking the Chia firmly on his head.
Grumbling about everything in general, the Mailchia’s
gloved and injured paws plucked up a letter in a gold-colored enveloped and
placed it back into his mailbag, then dusted as much of the wet, melted snow
off his flapped fur hat as they could. After carefully judging how slippery
the ground around him was, he jerkily got onto his feet, contemplating whether
or not it would be worth it to risk taking another step and probably landing
in the hospital. He wondered about quitting his job, ditching Furgleton, and
perhaps moving to a remote desert island, where he could enjoy warmer weather
and nicer people. Perhaps he could steal for a living instead.
He scratched his head on that, then took the
next step. He fell head over heels, this time far enough down the street to
start sliding downhill. With a bellow, he crashed into a trashcan, sending its
contents, along with the mail, splattering out into the road and onto two shocked
and appalled Chias, who then slipped and fell into the pile of trash.
There was a moment of utter confusion, consisting
of flying mail, thrashing bodies, and flinging garbage. The golden letter the
mailchia had dropped earlier landed perfectly on top of the purple’s one’s head,
held there by a wad of pink bubble gum. Finally, there was a sudden calm over
the melee. Milford scrambled onto his feet, shedding litter as he stepped away
from the garbage.
“GOODNESS!” The purple one screeched. He peeled
a banana peel from his face, his eyes wide with fury. “MARK! MARK!! TELL ME
THIS ISN’T HAPPENING! TELL ME THIS IS ALL A BITTER, BITTER LIE! A DREAM! A NIGHTMARE!
THE FURIOUS ILLUSIONS OF A VENGEFUL SORCERESS! TELL ME!”
“OH, BUT IT ISN’T, MILFORD!!” the green Chia
wailed, his hand caught in a partially empty soup can. “THIS IS LIFE! THIS IS
THE REALITY OF OUR EXISTENCE! GARBAGE!! OH, HOW THE FATES MOCK US IN OUR TIMES
OF JOY! WHY MUST THE ENDLESS CYCLE OF EMOTION COME CRASHING DOWN UPON US WHEN
ALL SEEMED CONTENT?! TELL ME THAT, MILFORD?!? DO YOU AGREE TO THIS POETIC JUSTICE?!”
Milford paused, then smacked him over the head.
“You moron! Get a grip on yourself!”
They turned, paused for that one moment that
people usually pause for after turning around, and went back the way they came,
shaking as they walked and left a trail of garbage in their wake. They tread
with more care than the Mailchia, each step deliberate and precise.
Milford chanced to put his hand on his head to
scratch an itch when it came in contact with the letter.
“Ah! A rogue piece of garbage, I’d say!” He
pulled it out of his hair and instantly felt the gum sticking it there.
“UGH!” Disgusted, Milford threw the letter upwards.
It twirled in the air briefly like a kite, the pulled gum making a decorative
tail for it, before landing, gum-side up, on Mark’s head.
“GAH!” Mark swatted it as though it were a fly,
sending it flying off onto the street. “Do be CAREFUL, Milford!”
“Careful? Careful about what?”
They moved on, arguing as they went. The letter
landed quietly on a patch of ice. There it sat, gum-side up, as though a pink
house on a big, golden lawn, resting on an icy island with a sea of running,
sludgy water around it. A newspaper clipping featuring a creepy-looking green
Lupe casually drifted past it on the water, giving it a nod before getting sucked
into a nearby gutter. A bird called from a distant tree. The sun shone. The
air was cold and still. The sparse clouds shifted quickly in the sky, and the
street remained eerily empty.
Then, the letter got run over by a bicycle carrying
an insane Halloween Chia and a small basket containing an unhappy looking Puppyblew.
A small generator connected to the wheel powered up a speaker hitched to the
back that played an odd, creepy little melody as she pedaled.
Doo doo doo do doo doooo doo, doo doo doo do
doo doooo doo…
“EHHH HEH HEH HEH HEH!”
The Halloween Chia careened down the icy street,
knocking over mailboxes and pedestrians as she went. The letter flapped unhappily
up and down with the wheel as she pedaled faster and faster, the song upping
in tempo and growing louder. The Puppyblew, eyes wide with horror, bailed from
the basket as she began losing control of the bike.
With a crash, she smashed into a tree in front
of Al’s lawn, and the music abruptly halted. The tire with the letter stuck
to it flew off her bike and crashed through the lovely parlor window. Fluffy
screeched in horror, scrabbling out of the way as the window he was sunbathing
with exploded into shards and a bent bike wheel landed where he had just been
sleeping.
He bunched up against the bookshelf, gasping
for breath. The tired rolled along for a bit, flashing the gold letter on each
rotation, and still weakly playing a slower version of the Halloween Chia’s
song, before wobbling to a stop in front of the door.
Al threw open the door to the parlor, smashing
the broken tire into the wall. He beamed brightly into the sunlit room.
“HEY, FLUFFY! GUESS WHAT? I...”
He paused, noting the ruined golden envelope
that was now lying on the floor in front of the doorway. He made an appreciative
noise, then picked it up and read address on the front.
“To Mr. Smith, 1970 Dixie Drive. Hm. Wrong address.”
Al tossed the letter into the trash bin nearby,
then produced another out of his labcoat pocket.
“I got a letter!” he yelled at the panting and
dazed Cobrall. “It’s from Cousin Snookie! It says he and the baby are doing
fine, and we should come over for dinner sometime! Isn’t that nice, Fluffy?”
Al hovered in the doorway for a moment, his blue
face coiled into a smile, his hand stretching upward to reach the taller doorknob.
He suddenly noted the broken glass. The expression fell.
“Oh, piffle. Fluffy, you really must be more
careful when you dance to that silly music of yours.”
Shaking his head, Al closed the door behind him,
revealing a large, tire-shaped hole in the wall. The wind howled through the
smashed window. Fluffy recollected himself. After a moment of thought, he picked
up his headphones and sunglasses, replaced them onto his hood and nose, and,
after dusting away the shattered glass, stretched out in the sunspot once more.
The sun was momentarily interrupted by a sparse cloud, which was quickly swept
away across the sky.
The End
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