{"id":7218,"date":"2010-04-06T06:45:28","date_gmt":"2010-04-06T10:45:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?page_id=7218"},"modified":"2024-01-23T13:09:12","modified_gmt":"2024-01-23T18:09:12","slug":"three-minute-fiction-diorama","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/three-minute-fiction-diorama\/","title":{"rendered":"Three-Minute Fiction: “Diorama”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\n[copyright 2010 by John E. Simpson]<\/em><\/p>\n

W<\/span>ebster had passed the drugstore every morning and afternoon of nearly every weekday for twenty years, on the cross-street to and from the office. He’d been inside often, to that very corner, where the magazines were racked. So he knew: no table stood there, with no chair alongside. And on the non-existent chair, at the non-existent table, could therefore sit no moderately attractive middle-aged woman in pinstriped business garb, poring over the classifieds in an imaginary newspaper.<\/p>\n

\n

But facts were facts, even impossible ones. The tableau existed exactly that way \u2013 and had for four days now.<\/p>\n

He could glimpse it only from a certain angle, from the corners of his eyes as he walked past or stood with the window to his left. To that point, he could see only the reflected sidewalk, the street, rushing pedestrians, parked cars, a steaming manhole. Beyond that point, turning to face the window, he saw the expected, the familiar, the known<\/em>: hints of a mirrored street scene, but mostly the aisles of first-aid supplies and candy bars, greeting cards, the scuffed beige linoleum tiles and fluorescent lighting.<\/p>\n

But at just the right angle, he saw her plainly. And always the same: her black-going-gray hair knotted into a croissant at the back of her head. A cardboard cup of coffee. Round, black-rimmed eyeglasses. The cramped type in the narrow columns of the page. An index fingertip moving down the columns as her lips counted silent cadence.<\/p>\n

The fingertip: that, of the entire fantastic scene, fascinated him most. The nail had been painted in some brilliant red hue, but about half its polish had flaked away. That ragged unfinished patch, oddly, was the one bit of the composition which struck him as absurd.<\/p>\n

He’d been wondering about that fingernail. He intended to examine it more closely this morning.<\/p>\n

He approached the window. He pictured the moment. He’d be standing there, brow furrowed, staring down at her hand, the implausibly gone<\/em> polish. She would feel his gaze. The finger suddenly motionless, she would look up over the tops of her glasses, and her absurdly hazel eyes would—<\/p>\n

But she was not seated at the table this morning. Oh, the table itself: yes, that was there. The chair. The classifieds. But no woman.<\/p>\n

Stunned, Webster stopped, backed up. An express courier rammed into him, said christ’s sake!<\/em> and moved on.<\/p>\n

She was gone<\/em>. He moved closer, maybe in the aisle—<\/p>\n

But here the angle was all wrong. The table, chair, and newspaper vanished. A shaved-headed guy on the other side of the window was flexing the tattoos of his biceps as he thumbed through a bodybuilding magazine. Webster knew that if he hesitated a split-second longer the guy would look up, catch him standing there, and then, well, something unpleasant would follow.<\/p>\n

He backed up again, returned to the proper angle. Yes. The table and chair, the paper. Still no woman…<\/p>\n

He suddenly thought of that fingernail again. How the absence of the paint had crystallized the unreal, focused it, made it all real.<\/p>\n

Inside Webster’s head, something went tick<\/em>.<\/p>\n

He still saw both scenes. But the universe in which the table, chair, and paper existed suddenly seemed to have swapped identities with the street scene: those non-existent objects had taken on weight that the real world could not sustain. The real world had gone translucent, as if viewed through<\/em> a window, and the table stood here before him. Yet if that were so, then (tick<\/em>)—<\/p>\n

Webster turned around.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[copyright 2010 by John E. Simpson] Webster had passed the drugstore every morning and afternoon of nearly every weekday for twenty years, on the cross-street to and from the office. He’d been inside often, to that very corner, where the magazines were racked. So he knew: no table stood there, with no chair alongside. And […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-7218","page","type-page","status-publish","entry"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P6kZSG-1Sq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7218"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26929,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7218\/revisions\/26929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}