The Singe Rigmarole [ON HOLD]

Eloi - The Wardrobe Escape

I wasn’t expecting Mr Olivier to put me into a wardrobe.

It loomed over my feeble figure and I remember staring at it in such a stupor that I almost suffocated my own tail.

Despite the fact it intimidated me, it was grand craftsmanship. It seemed to me that it was carved from ebony and oak wood, varnished with honey oil and then cased in cow wax – sleek, thin wax made from the remnants of fatty tendons from cows’ hooves – before placed horizontally in a large furnace until the wax seeped into the wood, giving it an almighty stance against the rest of the matchsticks in this very room.  

This is the last key. It is quite the most unusual key that I have seen. This heavy bronze triangular key with a three carat diamond for unnecessary decoration glints a dull shine in the darkness of this damp wardrobe, providing me slight comfort in this dilemma. I’ve tried it and it opens the cage. However, getting out of the wardrobe is another matter. I can’t stand staying in this wardrobe any longer as it emits this terrible smell. Well, more like a melange of smells: cumquat, purple jelly, dead ferret, moth balls and decaying parchment from the book of hypotheticals.

But I’m determined. I want to go back to where I started: partying all night, sleeping all day and not having a single care in the world. I need that to live! But first I must plan how to escape from this wardrobe of worries. I heard that some carnival folk such as gypsies and other marketeers rely on the book of hypotheticals to give them answers by browsing random pages.

Let me ask you: You are travelling to an unknown part of the country by foot because you were too stupid to consider hitching a ride with a marketeer and you were too broke to buy a horse. All of a sudden, you collapse on the road, clutching your feet whilst howling in complete torment. It turns out that you have margarine toes – a fungal infection which transforms your toes to a sickly yellow colour and produces a very strong bacterial, buttery stench. In your provisions, you only have a small traveller’s purse of gold coins, saved for your destination and a loaf of bread, which is a well-known temporary remedy for margarine toes. Would you rather:  (a) Use all your money to be fully cured from margarine toes and being completely broke when you reach your destination or (b) Use the bread to temporarily cure your margarine toes and starve to death.

Of course, this hypothetical is useless.  I should keep searching:

Let me ask you:  You are somehow trapped in a wardrobe. It is dark and it smells dreadful. You have no useful tools with you to escape. You know that if you dared make a noise, you’ll be done for. All of a sudden, light appears through the doors and –

Oh, cross-eyed charlatan! The rest of the hypothetical, my only possible solution and answer has been washed away with the mid-September purple jelly downpour. The ink has been dripping off the page and onto the birdcage floor, leaving quite a black-grey sticky mess.  I shouldn’t be too surprised, even though I am. This edition was printed last year and during that time, materials had run out to make decent printing ink. The best kind of printing ink was black in colour with circular traces of silver and opal gleaming from it. For centuries, it was made by the same family that brought fig jam strudel to the kingdom. I remember it was made of an array of delicate items such as oatmeal, hypertonic mushrooms, black aqueous humour from cows’ eyeballs, threadbare arteries from dehydrated savage rabbits that lived on apples, green cucumbers, the rotting front teeth of lovesick teenage girls and almond blossoms.

But wait, the ink is eating through the bottom the cage and is gradually consuming the floor of the wardrobe. This means I can squeeze through the hole, crawl out from under the wardrobe and away I go.

No...no. Don’t tell me he is back already. The wardrobe door is opening quite slowly. It could not be Mr Olivier – his brutish nature would be to open it rapidly and roll his eyes at me like I was a royal shoe shiner who just spat on his shoes to clean them. I am sitting here in frozen fear because I do not know who this fiend is. I am certain it would be the innkeeper; that specky innkeeper with the ravenous look in his eyes and the large feet.

And by Joe, I am right...however...

Léo?!

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