found drama

So much noise from the condo below us.  So much screaming.  They must have a million voices down there.  A million droning groans.  A million zombie renters.  Quick!  Lock the doors!  Bar them!  Barricade!  But no sooner does the deadbolt turn then we notice the cat has slipped out.  They’ll eat him!  Instead, they come up themselves, banging on the door, holding the car aloft.  They indignantly point out that we shouldn’t let our cat come down there; that the dog may eat him.  It seems useless to comment on the noise.

We open the door a crack to let the cat back in — careful all the while that it may be a ruse.  Then once the feline is safely through the door and the deadbolt once again locked, we jump out the window into some future-proofed turn of the century Libya.  A Victorian-era British army colonel is our guide; his red coat is open to the heat, his pith helmet doffed ever so slightly.  No one gets in or out of this Libya; clockwork automata guard the borders, hiding half-buried in the sand or else along the cliffs of the shore.  From the quarterdeck, he challenges us by repeating the statement that no one has ever set foot on that Libyan shore.

I leap from the ship, rebounding off the surface of the water like a skipped stone.  Bouncing this way several times, I am able to catapult myself up high enough — out of range of the automata’s projectiles — to bounce just over the walls at the shore’s cliffs.  I bounce down into the center of that port town then quickly turn and bound back, skipping across the Mediterranean until I’ve come to rest in the city square of Leipzig.

About Rob Friesel