square

A faucet drips through space and time. It divides the relative and the cognitive perceptions of the outermost layer between two quiet realms. Beyond those, no one knows.  To think beyond two layers, they say, is immaterial. To attempt to form a functioning thought above the number two is impractical and defiant to rational thought.

This was time for now.

“Michael,” he replied, lifting a silver spoon to the other man. The other man nodded sternly, quietly and allowed Michael to pass through the wooden threshold and into the first apartment. The other man followed close behind.

The gate lay in gross chunks all over the floor. Michael took a knee after stepping behind a blue counter, after saying in passing “look at this” and after noticing the small object on the floor.

“Congratulations,” the other man said.

“I found the gate’s eye piece,” holding the small object up to his eye and peering through it.  The world became wider to Michael from that moment forward. From then on the walls took on an unfamiliar tilt, although still a wild green, tilted and bent in ludicrous directions and never in formal straight ups and downs. Light danced as it normally did away from its object and towards the eye but as Michael knew through digestive reading the eyepiece impaired the link between light and thought thus creating a new perception of surrounding reality. That was why the chair in the left corner of the room looked as though it was closer than it did in his left eye.

“I don’t want to make your day any worse, Michael, with your wife’s death just this morning,” the other man ended his statement, which began, “would you quit fooling around?”

“What?”

“What?”

Michael turns to see the other man inspecting a circular plate. Once the eyepiece is removed, Michael will notice that the plate is not actually circular but rather square.

“Do you know whose house this was?” the other man jaunted.

“What did you say about my wife?”

“It was yours –erm, sorry, I guess it still is yours. Why did you tell me your name when you first entered? I didn’t quite understand that.”

“I apologize. I didn’t mean to offend you. Do I know you?”

The other man smiles a particular smile but hides his true demeanor in his tongue. If Michael had bent the light through the eyepiece to any degree, he still wouldn’t have noticed the other man massage his index finger with his thumb inside his left pocket. This, unbeknownst to Michael was a physical manifestation of a process of thought currently articulating inside the other man’s head. How could one know what was going on in the other man’s head?

“Can I ask you a question?” Michael asked.

“It’s possible.”

“Could you reach over there and turn off that dripping faucet? It’s driving me so insane that I can barely make out the room.”

“You blame the faucet alone?”

“Where do you say the problem lies?”

“In your material perception,” the other man grinned, pointing to the eyepiece.

“Oh man,” Michael replied, “I forgot I still was looking through it.”

“That’s alright. And I don’t mind turning off the faucet.”

“Let’s correct my perception at the same time, shall we?”

“On two.”

“One.”

“Two.”

Michael removed his eyepiece at the same time the other man cranked the faucet.

“Ah,” Michael sighed in relief, “order restored. Did you know that that plate is not circular? I didn’t until this very moment. The one you were holding.”

“The one you will hold.”

Michael picks up the square plate, “yes.” He looks at the design.

“Should we check it for fingerprints?” the other man said, while crossing the room and sitting in the chair.

“We will probably only find our own. You took it out of the cupboard, right? I remember eating off this plate.”

“I took it from the shelf.”

“Then would it really have any importance to the case at hand?”

“Isn’t that plate what’s literally at hand?”

“Two different meanings.”

“I suppose. But we can’t rule out the possibility that the killer took the plate from the cupboard, ate your wife off of it, then cleaned the plate and put it back in the cupboard, can we?”

“Why do you think the killer ate my wife?”

“Well, because I don’t see the body anywhere. And I’m never wrong. And you have blood on your cheek.”

“But we haven’t checked all of the other rooms. She could be in one of them.”

“Alive?”

“No, you said she was dead.”

“True. I think we are on to something.”

“You think?” replied Michael precisely during another thumb to index finger massage in the left pocket of the other man. “Also, that chair seems farther then it appeared in my right eye”.

And thus ended the investigation of the murder of Michael’s wife.