Andrew's Elixir

Silverware Showdown

Things were definitely beginning to look up.  I drove home with the windows down as I breathed in the cool evening air.  If freedom had a taste, I would declare that to be one of its many flavors.  The pink haze of twilight radiated through the sky, and although the glare of the westward sun made it a little difficult to see, I only saw it as added adventure: like the sun was my destination.

My girlfriend of two years recently broke up with me on account of her finding another guy.  Some hurtful things were said and a lot of confusion took place.  Needless to say I was more than crushed.  The emptiness left in my apartment was excruciatingly painful, and everything imaginable reminded me of her.  I felt like my life tore at the seams; I couldn’t maintain a stable diet, I slept very little or not at all, and nearly everything that could go wrong did.  I felt like dying, let’s face it.

However, it appeared I began to find some relief.  Although painful memories enjoyed sprouting up in my mind, I was finding it easier to feel joyful amidst it all, thanks to the fantastic day I had today.  For the past fourteen months at my new job, I worked tirelessly in what seemed to be a vain attempt to climb its socioeconomic ladder. Today I finally got promoted to a new position by my boss, who congratulated my work ethic with great enthusiasm; I found a $100 bill while walking to my car, and then an old friend whom I’ve been trying to contact for years gave me a phone call.

I smiled to myself, realizing that everything was going to be alright after all.  I pulled into the driveway for my apartment and killed the engine, then I went down the stairs to my basement apartment.  I turned on my stereo and jammed out to some music for a bit; I love to feel disconnected from the world, to live vicariously though someone with a similar situation through a sort of semi-ironic sonic lense.

Then the phone rang.  I paused the music and went to answer it.  All I could hear was someone crying indistinguishable words on the other end; it was a tad alarming as I couldn’t figure out who it was.  Eventually they managed to say: “I’m sorry...”

I tried to ask them to wait, but before I could finish they hung up.  I just kinda froze there, unsure of how to resume my night.  I went to the fridge to get something to calm my nerves.  When I opened the door the light flicked uncharacteristically for a moment.  It’s like one of those things that you wouldn’t really pay any attention to on any other evening, but when it coincides with another weird event it doesn’t help with the nerves; worse yet, it’s not worthy of being investigated or categorized as terribly unusual.

Nevertheless, I had this generic orange soda brand that I may or may not have had a slight addiction to.  I unscrewed the cap and poured some into the glass that I got out of the freezer because an ice cold glass is way ‘cooler’ than ice cubes. I laughed at myself for a moment; I have a terrible sense of humor that only I find amusing most of the time.

Then right as the sweet taste of orange met my tongue, all the lights went out.  The call actually set me on edge pretty bad, so this made my heart panic a tad bit at first.  My mind was racing through possible strategies to the solution as well as plaguing myself with a few horrifying possibilities as to what caused the sudden loss of power.

I walked into the hall, halfway expecting to be stabbed, but quickly dismissed myself as irrational; that was, until I definitely heard something in the kitchen.  It sounded like a few plates fell to the floor.

Armed with a pencil and a drumstick, I carefully crept around the corner.  The faucet was on and the sink began to overflow onto the floor.  I was  pretty frightened now, as I realized this was probably a clever distraction devised to prevent me from noticing the intruder.  Although, what seemed to be clever at first became sheer brilliance when I saw the silver glint of several flat objects flowing from the sink waterfall.

I looked around the corner and checked the ceiling ninjas, ya know? then went closer.  To my astonishment, they were fish!  I looked and my question of “Who plugged the drain?” was answered with another question: “Why are fish swimming out of my clearly not-plugged drain and spilling onto my kitchen floor?”  It appeared nobody was present to answer my question.  I looked in the dining room briefly, which was also lit by an intense moonlight the fell through the windows.  That was my third question: “It was 5:00 P.M. about an hour ago… So why is it so late now?”  I heard another sound in the living room… freakishly: drumming.

I quickly presented myself to the doorway and had my mouth subsequently drop.  I saw drumsticks playing the drums without a drummer!  I thought about asking the.. drumsticks what was going on, but that didn’t really make sense so I came to the conclusion that I was at a loss for words yet again.

Suddenly though, I decided that I should record all of this; then either way I’d have a video to show people that I’m not insane… or how I died.  I carefully made my way toward my room.  The drums didn’t seem to mind too much.  I tried to turn my camera on, but it laughed at me and displayed a tongue stuck out toward me on the screen.  I dropped it in alarm, and it made a shrieking sound and somehow scurried under my bed.  I looked up toward the doorway and saw a spoon standing upright, as if it were staring me down.

I heard a voice from nowhere: “You ain’t gonna let him look at ya like that are ya?  Look, he’s gonna try to fight ya, so you’re gonna need a weapon.  Use me: I’ve been itchin’ to beat this punk for seven years now.”

I turned and saw a fork standing beside me.  “Come on man!” it insisted.  

“How am I supposed to fight it?” I said, clearly losing all sense of logic considering I was speaking with my silverware.

        “Just beat him with me; he needs a good beatdown.” The aggressive fork demanded.

I would have otherwise ignored the fork, but the spoon charged at me and began to smack my leg with unusual force.  I obeyed the fork and began to fight it back.

That went on longer than I’d like to admit, until eventually the spoon began to scurry away, to which the fork said something along the lines of: “Yea, you better run Charlie!  And I don’t wanna hear none of this ‘I can hold liquids’ crap ever again, you hear?!  Punk… ”

I ran out to the living room again and found that my guitar had joined in with the drums.  I was quite displeased by this.  I ran up the stairs to try to get the heck out of there, but was met by lo and behold, a talking door who kept taunting me for ‘not knowing the password to my own house’.  It also tried to bite me when I attempted a brute force attack.

Frantic, I ran downstairs and tried some windows but they were locked.  I was trapped in my house, fish were now flowing into my living room from a sink waterfall, my instruments were able to play better without me, and my camera rejected me.  I felt it was only natural for me to try to take pleasure amidst it all by drinking some more of my soda which I set down earlier.

As I lifted the glass to my mouth, the fish screamed things like “Don’t drink it!”, “Stay away from that stuff!”, “You’ll kill yourself!”, “Holy crap, is that soda?  Dude..”. and “The moment you drink that is the moment you see fish fly.. toward your face.”

Glad that I could at least have some say in the matter, I decided to defy the fish who apparently thought my house was the center of a moonlight rave party, and drink the sweetly carbonated beverage.  Though when I did, I saw a flash of light explode from everything, and everything was back to the way it was when I first arrived at home.