[clockaddict]

And this, written maybe a year and a half ago, tidied today.

A Pen a Mite

This thing that I am holding is a pen. I know it is a pen because it has ink and a point with which to write. Yes, I know this is a pen, but I am not wholly unsuspicious. I have called such devices pens for as long as I can remember, but perhaps those devices that I have known as pens for so long are not really pens at all but something else entirely. So what may this be?
Now that I think about it, I haven’t the faintest idea. This thing has many constituent parts and I must identify them before I can call this a pen. And before even that, I must determine that my senses perceive the parts as they really are. I cannot see any way past this, so I ask my assistant:
“Is this a pen?”
He looks up from his beakers and test tubes and says that it is.
I am satisfied before it occurs to me that he is suffering from the same perceptual distortions that have led me to call this thing a pen all these years, and that this thing here is not the pen that he and I perceive but something else entirely.
“You are wrong,” I tell my assistant. “I thought this was a pen, too, but we are mistaken.”
“I see. I feared this. Have you a hypothesis?”
“It is something else entirely is all I can say for certain.”
“Did you check it for mites?”
“Of course I checked it for mites, I’m not an amateur, Dawson!”
“Even the best of us can miss a mite, sir.”
“I’ve never missed a mite in all my years in this business here!”
“Are you sure, sir? Mites are very small, easy to miss.”
This throws me for a loop. “Mites? Small? What are you on about, Dawson?”
“Here. Look.” Dawson shows me a picture of a mite.
I pause, confused. “…well, that is very small, isn’t it?”
“It’s small, sir.”
I realize now that the things that I have known as mites all these years are not mites at all. I stare bewildered at Dawson. Is he indeed Dawson?
“Are you Dawson?”
Someone had asked that.
“Yes, sir.”
I do not believe him, me, whoever it was. I do not believe that I am or am not Dawson. I do not believe that mites are not mites or that this thing is a pen.
“Goddamnit, Dawson, whoever you are, tell me straight! Is this a pen?” I hold it before his eyes.
“Why, that’s a mite, sir.”
I feel rage and terror flood into me. No, no, that doesn’t make sense, a mite… Dawson is toying with me! Dawson has answers, and he is withholding them for the sheer mockery of it! A pen a mite, it makes no sense!
I lunge at Dawson, hands out for the throat, but he sidesteps and brings one of his beakers down over my head. His latest brew seeps into the cuts in my scalp and everything begins to taste of pennies. Dawson grabs my ankles and starts to pull me toward the butchery in the back.
“Dawson, no!” I manage. I try to kick him away but my legs do not respond.
“What I should’ve done a long time ago, sir.”
Things pixelate. I can no longer distinguish Dawson from the surroundings. A bodiless force drags me toward the butchery.
“I’m taking this business over, sir,” the voice rings out from nowhere. “But first I must get rid of the incompetent fool who’s been running it into the ground all these years.”
It is sad to hear these things said, but I forgive the voice. I forgive the force that pulls me toward the butchery.
“You see, I’ve been waiting a long time for this.” The voice shifts frequencies rapidly, speeds up and slows down with no perceptible pattern. “Waiting, perfecting my alchemies, watching you fumble this business into bankruptcy!”
An eternal pause.
“You have failed the company, sir.”
Everything becomes clear and I see from a distance my head thud to the floor between Dawson’s feet. I watch him bring the machete to each of my limbs, fit me into a trash bag and tie it. I watch him take his carriage out to the sea, onto the waves, and drop me into the water. I watch him return to headquarters and run the business right.
It is good to see the business do well.