THE POSSIBLE EVENTS OF YESTERMORROW, IT MAY HAVE HAPPENED, I MIGHT PROMISE
by
Shome Dasgupta

Not too long ago, near the distant future, during the time of minor fusion and great anachronism, I was at McDonalds, where I saw a lady from the Middle Ages, who will be dressed in a dirty pink gown and wearing bare feet; she will have long brown hair, the kind that hits her mid-knee, shiny, like Pert Plus, and she will have the perfect crooked teeth, the kind that makes you or me want to run your or my tongue across, to feel the indentions and grooves and nooks of the soul; I was ordering some hash browns, orange juice, pancakes, sausage biscuits, and eggs and bacon for breakfast because I wasn’t too hungry, but hungry enough to eat only half the morning menu; I looked at her, and she didn’t look at me, and I said,
“you’re not from around this time are you,” and she will turn to me and will politely reply,
“sir, I am not…I am a bit lost and cannot find the right time;”
her skin will be pale, a solid pale, which reminded me of the moon on a windy night, and I replied to her reply,
“would you like a muffin;”
and as she will say yes or no, a ghastly, ghostly, ghost-looking ghost saunters in with bloodshot blue eyes and wrists as thin as a strand from a horse’s mane and shoves itself between the Middle Ages lady and me and starts bellowing the Latin alphabet; I knew it was the Latin alphabet because I had failed the class two years from ago, and the unfamiliarity seemed quite similar to this phantom’s groaning;
“I think it would like a muffin,” I said to the cashier-register persona, “but my Latin is a bit rustic;”
the mumbler stared at me, and then at the lady from the Centered Ages and handed a tomahawk to her;
“that’s not a muffin,” I told her, and she will say,
“I see,” and the blue-red-eyed specter floats out through the drive-thru window;
“so what will this be,” the lady will ask, and I said,
“It’s like a boomerang, but it doesn’t comeback and deadlier;”
the register-cashier one came back with the muffin, and I paid for it with the Stock Exchange and handed her the muffin;
“that’s a muffin,” I said, and she will smile and look left and right like she will cross the road, and she will smell the dawn’s delightful little nourishment, and I saw the aroma filling her nostrils, pass her throat, and into her lungs, and it was like watching a movie of Van Gogh painting a Picasso drawing;
“so where are you,” I asked and she will reply,
“I’m looking for a bus stop so I can get to the Gettysburg Address…I hear it’s the best address to visit;”
I hopped down and up, and said,
“you’re in luck, ‘tis (I say ‘tis because I was trying to sound like I was from her time) just down the road from there;”
“great,” she will say and she will run off out through the door, without saying anything else, but leaving a trail of crumbs from the muffin, like she will be from some kind of fairy tale;
“I love you,” I shouted, but she will be gone before you and I knew it…; there is, was, or will not be any point to this account, and I was sorry to waste or save your time, but I would just like to say that I wished you could have seen her teeth; they are the aphrodisiacs made of bent calciums calling my lips.

SHELFLIFEMAGAZINE ARCHIVES: issue #002