Vacation Day

Sandra’s gaze darted to the white rectangle on the table. An object out of place, though, truly, what is ‘in place’. Everything in some sense is out of place in a sense. Nothing belongs together initially, until it is deemed to by people, or perhaps the universe. And if so, does it now belong together?

Anyhow, that white envelope was really—really—out of place; it was white, upon a dark oak table.

As she opened the envelope with shaky hands, she blinked a few times in a desperate attempt to chase the sleepiness out of her eyes and mind and focus her vision.

She began to read it letter by letter.

Her brows furrowed as each consecutive word dug itself into her heart like knives. Not just burrowing into it but twisting and turning. It was a breakup letter.

Sandra’s lips curled downward as she read on. First–she lost her job, and now–her partner.

A single thought bobbled up in her mind, “Gods, I’d kill for a bagel right now,” she spoke her mind out loud.

“Hey, I didn’t say that,” she protested, but her mind decided not to engage in a futile argument.

Sandra let out a long, exhausted sigh; simultaneously, something changed in the world. The entire house bubbled up a little as though taking a deep breath, then the front door blew open as the house let out a long exaggerated sigh.

Sandra’s eyebrow twitched as the letter, too, let out a soft sigh and then began to unletter itself.

The words loosened, some letters fell on top of the others a line below, others yawned and sleepily began to step back and unwrite themselves. Each retracting into the white nothingness, one curve at a time. A letter ‘a’ fell off the paper, likely screaming ‘aaa’, but it was alone. Sandra dropped the letter, blinking hard. Another sigh; the house shuddered from the chill, and then sneezed.

“Bless you,” she mumbled, watching the letter continue to unletter itself; paper fell apart on the table into fibers, but her thoughts did not change “Bagel would be lovely right about now. Ah, to hells with this world. I’ll go get a bagel.”

Unbeknownst to her, hells did not, in fact, desire this world, but chaos did. As Sandra shuffled toward the front door, which had remained wide open after the house sighed and sneezed, she heard something clatter, yes, clatter, like a sack of bones thrown against a wall; which, in a sense, it was.

A moment later—a hooded, shadow-veiled figure stumbled out of her coat closet, obviously hungover. It dropped a pair of tiny rumba shakers onto the floor. The figure froze. Sandra also froze, for a moment she felt as though she had frozen literally; a wave of cold washed over her like a tsunami. It was a bone-chilling encounter. She watched the figure; it watched her back. The figure reached out to her with a boney hand. It took a step closer, it’s boney foot landing on one of the shakers. Its’ ankle rolled.

The bones clattered against the wall with a soft thud, followed by a deep, deathly groan.

“UGGHHH! SORRY!”

The cloaked and shadow-veiled figure, commonly known as death to many, threw the rest of his body against the wall.

“WRONG… ADDRESS! THIS JOB IS HARD! DEATH IS ON VACATION, AND I—AM HUNG OVER”

Sandra’s eyes widened just long enough to reach over and grab her coat before the figure hunched over and began to vomit all over her wall. Though, as one might suspect, a skeleton hasn’t much to vomit with, so what came out was a stream of darkness that dissolved into nothing.

Sandra clutched her coat against her body.

“You are, hungover?”

She queried curiously.

“NO! I AM KEVIN! KEVIN WHO IS HUNG OVER!”

Sandra nodded slowly.

“Uhum, need a hand?”

Kevin raised his hand in protest, shaking a finger–

“NO! YES! IS THIS THE PLACE WHERE THE REALITY IS MALFUNCTIONING?” he asked.

“Not a clue. Don’t care either, I’m just going to get a bagel,” Sandra replied calmly.

Kevin raised his cloaked head, staring deep into Sandra’s eyes.

“OH! GOOD! PLEASE DO NOT DIE ON THE WAY! I HAVE NO CLUE WHAT TO DO WITH THE DEAD—IT IS—EMBARRASSING WHEN THEY ASK ME TO GUIDE THEM AND I JUST POINT SOMEWHERE.”

Sandra stepped past him nonchalantly, “Noted! Will do my best. Good uh, luck.”

Somewhere far far away, an unknown amount of time in the past, or perhaps the future, who knows, but he does not, and neither does he cares.

On the warm beaches of Aloha, a dark-cloaked figure was dancing ‘cha cha’ with a group of drunk tourists. Sun shone brightly on his cloak as he, death himself, enjoyed his vacation.

Sandra casually stepped out onto the snowy street. Her house let out another soft sigh; it did not enjoy being left alone with Kevin, who was promptly barfing all over its pristine walls. Sandra waved her hand, she did not care what her house thought, nor how disappointed it may have been being left alone and unattended, with a hungover death substitute. Sandra, in fact, cared little about anything else in this world at this point. She had lost her job, her partner, and a bit of her sanity due to an encounter with the grim reaper, and now she only craved a bagel.

The morning was almost everything one would expect of a winter’s morning.

It was: snowy, white, bright, windy, but something was off. Something crucial was missing—the cold, the most important part of a winter morning, well, one of. Sandra glanced around; mild confusion expressed on her face—the cold was apparently also on vacation today. The wind howled through the alleys, lifted the loose snow and angrily tossed it into Sandra’s face.

“Nice to see that at least someone isn’t sleeping,” Sandra mumbled softly, wiping the snow off her face and watching the individual snowflakes melt on her hands in warmth. They weren’t cold, in fact, they looked pretty confused themselves, resting lazily on her hands before remembering they had to melt.

As if a new order was given, the snow that lined the street began to steam, not melt into a puddle, but steam, and evaporate entirely. It was as if reality realized that it was wrong and then decided to make things worse instead of better.

Gentle fog settled on the town. Sandra blinked, confused, and then simply shrugged.

“Well, okay then. Fine. Be weird, I don’t care, I’m still getting that damned bagel.”

The lamppost beside her offered a sympathetic flicker, as if encouraging her on her uneasy quest. Like a short man with a magic ring on an adventure to burn it in the heart of a volcano, she was set on her goal, and nothing would stop her. She walked past a group of kids who had built a snowman and kindly wrapped a scarf around its neck. The snowman was sweating. It gave her a weary nod as it reached up for its forehead with a twig that was its arm, to, rather unsuccessfully, wipe the sweat off.

As she reached the corner of the street, the weather updated itself with a playful chime. A notification message played throughout the world like a badly spoken airport boarding announcement.

“DEAR CITIZENS [STATIC] PEOPLE AND EVERYBODY [STATIC] ELSE! WINTERPATCH ONE-POINT-NINE-ISBEINGDEPLOYED! TEMPERATURES MAYVARY! PLEASE EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED!”

Sandra ignored it, because of course she did. At this point—no glitch in the matrix, and no reality patch, could stop her.

To her surprise, as she turned the corner, the street that she was meant to turn onto was gone, replaced by a lush field of greenery. Flowers, grass, bushes, and all of it were brimming with life; animals roamed around the lush greenery. At the end of the field, she could see a familiar road sign. Her goal was almost within reach; she just needed to get to the sign and turn left; the bakery would be just halfway up the following street.

Sandra marched onwards through the field with the confidence of an army general, backed by a legion of loyal troops! Each step she took reverberated with tactical precision, being careful so as not to trip while traversing the overgrowth.

“Slow is steady, and steady is fast,” Sandra chanted to herself as she walked through the overgrowth. Before her, in the slight opening, exactly that scene unfolded. A tortoise slowly walked the racetrack like a tank sat on its course, unbudging and unwilling to change course. Each step it took sent a tremor through the earth, at least for the ants that were trying to carry leaves around the tortoise; it was a tremor. Ahead of the tortoise, and now behind it, and now ahead of it again, was a bunny, sprinting laps through the racetrack, passing the tortoise over and over again.

The scene of that tale was all kinds of out of place and wrong. First of all, in that tale, the bunny gets confident, falls asleep, and the tortoise wins. Secondly, there sat Kevin, on the side of the track, fiddling with sticks, trying to craft a make-shift headstone by the looks of it. It was so out of place that Sandra felt compelled to intervene just this once.

S.H.: Hmm, perhaps Sandra needs to try and do something

S.H.: Perhaps instead of a bagel she goes and gets a cake instead! or even bakes one

T.E.: the bagel wraiths destroyed the bakery and now there are

Sandra stumbled through the tall grass toward the unbelievable scene she was observing. The tortoise continued on its track, unyielding like a great tank in a war of unprecedented scale; a beast of armor and resolve. The bunny continued running laps through the circle as if it owned it, and in fact, it probably did, judging by the very expensive watch on its leg.

“Stop right there,” Sandra called out. The rabbit came to a halt.

Its paws, like tires on asphalt. The tortoise came to a halt like a great beast of unimaginable power. As if it bore upon its shell the weight of an entire world; and perhaps it did, but that is a story for another time.

The great tortoise glanced up at Sandra. A bone-chilling groan echoed through the valley.

“AAGH! YOU MADE ME MESS UP!”

Kevin said in the monotone calmness of a drunkard who was still too hungover to actually express any emotions.

Sandra pulled her foot out of the vines that clung to her, stumbling out of the overgrowth, she planted her hand on a boney shoulder, leaning heavily on it.

Kevin looked up at her with upset eye sockets.

“Don’t worry, you won’t be needing that, hopefully… Who’s it for anyways?”

Sandra asked.

Kevin looked down at the broken twigs, “THE TORTOISE! IT IS SO SLOW, IT DIES!”

Sandra let out a chortle, “No! That’s absolutely not how the tale goes…”

Kevin tried his best to express confusion through a blink. Though, it had proven absurdly difficult for him to blink without eyes, eyelids, or skin for that matter. In a futile attempt, he made the gentle glow inside his eye sockets dim and then reignite.

She grinned.

“Alright, first of all! We need stakes.”

The bunny glanced at her in haste, “Steak?”

Sandra ignored him, and the fact that the bunny was speaking, at this point, did not prove all that shocking to her.

“Stakes! The winner gets a—CAKE!”

Sandra proclaimed. The bunny stared at her, perplexed by her proposition, but amused simultaneously. Sandra nodded. Kevin also nodded, bemused; he too

decided to partake in this race for the cake. And as the reality heard her plea, out of thin air, her wish was conjured in the shape of a cake. A massive wedding cake, wearing a bow tie, and a monocle. It sat on a small pedestal at the finish line, like a prize to be acquired.

Except it hardly agreed with that idea.

“Why am I herrrr?” groaned the cake.

“TO BE MINE!”

Kevin replied without a second thought. His echoed, bone-chilling voice propagated through the valley, sending every blade of grass shivering.

“Like hell I am ya scrawny bugger, I’ll sooner walk the plank than be yerrs.”

Kevin raised his hand in protest, but then did not protest. There, in the wind, stood a boney figure, dressed in a black cloak, with his finger raised in protest, and no words to follow.

“Yeah well the cake’s mine anyways, I ran three laps while ya’ll were yapping,” the bunny commented, leaning back against the finish pole, snacking on a carrot.

“YE BLASTER FURRY SON OF A BISCUIT! THAT IS FOUL PLAY AND NAY I SAY! NAY!”

The cake shouted.

The bunny shrugged, “My track my rules.”

The cake protested, “YOU SKIPPED THE SIGNAL! YOU RAN AHEAD! PENALTY! YOU LITTLE CARROT-MUNCHING SCOURGE! YOU PLAGUE OF THE FIELDS! YOU LONG-EARRED OVERSIZED MOUSE!”

And that was the last we heard of the cake. Said words

offended the prestigious rabbit who never knew loss in his life. He leapt at the creamy, spongy, foulmouthed cake with the fury of the Spartan warriors.

“Ohhh no,” Sandra groaned, but then paused. Watching the chaos unfold as bunny buried his paw in the spongy cream cake. She knelt and whispered, and the armored beast began his march.

Like a titan loyal only to the emperor, he would not stop until he crossed the finish line.

And so the tale was corrected; bunny, distracted by a savage battle against a foul-mouthed cake, was too distracted to hear the sound of a horn, signaling the start of the race. The tortoise, slow and steady, marched the track and crossed the finish line as a victor.

And death, well, he was still off somewhere on the warm islands, basking in the sunlight and savoring a pina colada on the beach. UV rays gentle tickled his white and shine bones as he raised his robe higher.

“TANNING IS GREAT,” said the death while a masseuse proceeded to rub his shoulder-bones.

Behind her angry shouts could be heard.

“YA WANT A PIECE OF ME LAD!??? COME AND TAKE A BITE YA FLUFF BALL!”

Now that that chaos was behind her, and she faced a dilemma. The sign at the end of this street, valley, something, pointed left, then right, then up and then down, then it spun in a circle like a wheel of fortune.

She watched it, unfazed by the events unfolding before her. As the arrow spun around, having an obvious existential crisis, it stopped at last, pointing straight up.

Sandra glanced up with disappointment.

“No, I don’t think they will…”

The arrow slumped, spun slowly down and pointed straight down, sadness obvious in its motions.

What shall she do? Try to cheer the arrow up? Go left? Go right? Go up!? Or perhaps, go down?

S.H.: Life is hard when you're a roulette wheel, everyone blames you for their bad luck

D.M.: always go down!

L.L.: When in doubt always go down.

S.H.: Sideways!

F.M.: go forward and back and forward and back XD

V.M.: Ya'll never played minecraft and it shows..

D.M.: great minds leona

C.C.: forward!

N.N.: left gang!

V.M.: Wow nobody is trying to cheer the poor arrow up

V.M.: poor thing is destined to point down i guess.. Scarlet HrothLouisoix: He wants you to dig straight down to bedrock

V.M.: Oh exciting!

L.N.: we go up to the heavens

F.M.: uuuh treasure? o0'

V.M.: lol

S.H.: Dont worry about digging into lava, it wont happen trust

T.E.: in fairness I hate minecraft lol

A.K.: cheer the arrow

F.M.: yay… arrow… ig

Sandra stepped past the depressed arrow.

“What a downer,” she mocked it.

“And what a world. Even directions decided to clock out early today.”

She walked for a while, stepping into a dark, dank alley; her gaze drifted up. Wind howled through the alley, blowing the fog away at last.

Off in the distance, on the horizon towards where the wind traveled, she could see her city. Her boring, plain city. It was mundane, as mundane as an average skyline would look, except for the tallest building that bent side to side as if tickled by the wind.

She could almost see it laughing hysterically, begging for the wind to stop. It did not collapse, nor did it look structurally unsound. Rather, the opposite; It looked perfectly normal, all things considered, except it seemed as though someone replaced the steel beams with jello and the concrete with rubber. It danced side to side like a certain famous female singer who made a lot of money shaking her hips. For a moment, Sandra felt a hint of jealousy—the skyscraper showed off the elasticity of her yoga instructor. It bent so far back that it almost touched the building behind it, then sprang back up and hunched over, likely laughing again.

“Death is on vacation, cold is probably on sick leave, directions clocked out, and architecture is drunk—delightful,” Sandra grumbled.

The skyscraper, off in the distance, paused, as though it heard her. It seemingly turned, then slowly bowed at her, like an actor after their show at a circus, and then twanged back into its stance amongst other buildings—tall, sturdy, and only occasionally wobbling around in the wind.

At last, she could see her goal. The bakery stood halfway up this street. She rejoiced. Her eyes welled up ever so slightly. There it was, not far from. The wind blew past her, carrying along the fragrance of freshly baked goods. Her stomach growled; hunger, like a blazing flame, lit within her.

She hurried toward the bakery.

As Sandra approached it, she rejoiced yet again. The bakery looked surprisingly ordinary. Considering how out of place everything had been thus far, she couldn’t be happier to see something ordinary and simple. As Sandra pushed the door open, the doorbell greeted her with a single, loud

“Ding.”

As she stepped through the threshold, the doorbell let out an exhausted wheeze, followed by a sickly sneeze, “Ghhhkkk, CHOOO.”

The door trembled in the frame, embarrassed by the bell’s behavior.

“Honestly, same…”

Sandra mumbled as she patted the door softly, closing it gently behind herself.

The bakery welcomed her with a delicious scent of fresh bread, buns, and bagels. Her mouth

watered instantly at the mere thought of putting a warm, fresh bagel in her mouth. Though the scenery before her was almost disappointing. Employees calmly kneaded the dough, preparing it for baking. Pulled out new batches from the ovens and lined the display case with fresh goods.

It was too normal, at first. Then she began to notice the small things; the clock on the wall was running backwards, the hour hand ticked like seconds, in the reverse direction.

The menu board was a strategic war-map, where prices battled to death. Slice of cake, at 7. 99 led a cavalry charge against the fresh bun’s 4. 20 price army.

On the windowsill, a Kolobok was scraping up some flour dust to grow bigger as it continued to roll down it, slowly, but steadily, plotting its escape.

(Kolobok is a dough-ball that escaped from the baker, a classic Russian fairy-tale.)

Croissant lay on the cutting board, a sword protruded from its chest, as a mouse-knight stood victorious atop it, posing for a photoshoot.

“Morning! Sandra! What can I get you?”

Spoke a jolly-voiced baker who was wiping his hands on a towel as he approached the till. His smile looked menacing, almost threatening.

Sandra gave him a weary smile.

“Uh, a bagel. A normal, simple, plain, bagel.”

The baker flinched, as if he was asked to commit an unspeakable crime.

“Plain!?” he double checked.

“As plain as they get,” Sandra reassured him that he heard her right the first time.

“Ah, yes—uhm, one moment yes sure. Uh, the oven is being recalibrated, give us a minute.”

Sandra squinted at the oven that looked relatively normal, except now she noticed a wizard with a wrench sitting atop it, fiddling with wires.

“Oh, I see,” she replied.

“Uh, and these ones?”

Sandra queried, tapping the glass case.

“They look pretty ordinary.”

The moment she tapped on the glass, one of the croissants flinched, and the other stabbed itself with a bread knife. One of the bagels hid under another. And one, a single thing that did not react and remained normal, though it wasn’t a plain bagel; this one had seeds on it.

Sandra pointed at it, “That one?”

“OH well, this one isn’t plain, you see?”

“But is it normal?”

Sandra queried. The baked squinted at it, “Seems normal? But it’s not,” he began but she interrupted him.

“THAT ONE! THE NORMAL ONE!”

At last, in her trembling hands, wrapped in a napkin, she held her saving grace—a normal, seed bagel. It tastes like everything she had hoped for. Normal.

It was, in fact, a normal bagel, and it was everything she could have wished for on this abnormal morning.

THE END