Monday, June 2, 2008

Instant cure for the summer nap sweaty sad-mouth syndrome

Gavin Mastersons eyes are stuck. His mouth is dry and foul. His body is covered in a film of afternoon summer nap, it is sweat, he is not well. Temporarily not well, curable for certain. His eyelids peel off their protectorate. His mouth snaps and closes, sucking and pulling half breaths. His tongue too tepid, too salty, too unnatural to speak. His shoulders walk for him. They navigate out of the bedroom, his left shoulder, his right shoulder, they feel the walls and bounce and bang him from the bedroom to the kitchen.
His body is sour.

There is a one foot tall glass cabinet on the floor of his kitchen. It sits under a tall slender oaken end table, upon which rests a coffee maker. There is no table cloth or cover to hang down over the legs of the table. The view of this glass cabinet and its contents is not obstructed.

Gavin Masterson sits on the floor. Looking into his glass cabinet, his eyes open widest and he opens the door. There is a very tiny tree in the cabinet. A cool air prickles itself over his arms and his face and this refreshment begins. He picks from the tree. He picks grapes from the tree in the cabinet. He eats the grapes.

They snap inside of his mouth. Instantly revived and refreshed he snaps down again and again on the grapes, his hands move faster, pulling picking, snapping, mouthing, chewing. He hears the sound of rice shaken in steel bowls as the grapes mash and shatter juice and heal. His throat declares it's savior, his teeth no longer acrid, his eyes open wide, and the film over his body is gone, his body no longer sour.

Gavin Masterson closes the cabinet on the tree. The cabinet hums and within seconds the tree has sprouted new fruit. They new purple blossoms blink into life and bow the mini vine ever so slightly. "There will not always be such a refreshment," Gavin Masterson mutters as he heads to check the messages from friends who only call when he sleeps. "We must use it while we can I suppose."




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