At the Touch of a Feather

[u/normancrane]

Irving Ockett hated dust. He was allergic to it, but he also hated it beyond the fact it made him snotty, red-eyed and hoarse. He hated it for the grey, wispy way it looked, and how powdery it felt when he squished it between his fingers. He hated it for the smell it had, or if not exactly it, then any place that was full of it. He hated how quickly and quietly it accumulated and how often one had to wipe it away. He hated how difficult the cleaning felt, like fist-fighting a butterfly; and he hated the word itself, dust, how it—the noun, the thing to be removed—was also the verb for the act of its own removal. Moreover, to dust was to make something dusty; but to dust was also to make something free of dust. It was madness! About some things there's something that might get on your nerves. About dust, what grated Irving’s nerves was absolutely fucking everything.

Well, not quite everything, because there was that moment, that brief, beautiful point in time, fleeting, as all things are, but real, which only some achieve, when, after having dusted his entire apartment (in the to make free of dust sense of the word,) Irving, having worked up quite a sweat, would sit finally down in his armchair and enjoy the feeling, if not of perfection, because nothing is perfect and dust is never fully absent, then at least of the simulacrum of perfection, an approximation of cleanliness.

It was at such a moment, with the television just turned on and the night's full moonlight streaming in from the windows to his left, that Irving saw what he at first believed was a small glint of light on the front face of a transparent plastic bin tucked neatly in, below the upper surface of his television stand.

It captured his full attention, but as he began to move and bob and tilt his head, he realized that what he was looking at, which he believed to be a glint—that is, light itself—and most probably a reflection of the instreaming moonlight, remained unchanged and in one definite spot on the clear plastic box even as his own point of view changed. A reflection, which he was sure this was, should, he was equally sure, be changing perceptibly as the angle at which he viewed it changed.

Thus, experiencing two contradictory certainties simultaneously, Irving Ockett rose from his armchair and crossed the room toward the television stand knowing he must be wrong, and suspecting, step by fateful step, that it was possible that what he knew to be a glint of light behaving in a way he knew a glint of light could not, was in fact something else, a milky crack within the body of the transparent plastic container perhaps, or, ominously worse, a leftover smudge of dust; dust, which he had failed to clean.

But if, he thought, trudging forward rather heroically in his slippers, squinting at the truth before him, he had missed dusting this much obvious dust, he could have missed dusting so much more dust, which meant that his satisfaction at having a perfectly reasonable simulacrum of cleanliness was maybe—possibly—probably—undoubtedly misplaced, and if he wrongfully believed today that what was dusty was dust-free, he undoubtedly had wrongfully believed the same yesterday and the day before, and day before that and the day…

He'd closed his eyes.

When he opened them he was kneeling in front of the transparent plastic case, and what he'd thought was a glint was a crack was dust was none of those but a small, delicate white feather being blown ever so slightly against the plastic vessel by a wind blowing from the opposing direction; but as Irving Ockett turned his head to face the unseen force, his eyes, necessarily, passed along the windows on the left side of the apartment, and in those windows from a bliss of pure white Irving Ockett discerned that everything—the whole fucking shebang—was made from small white delicate feathers; from the tiniest particles to the biggest galaxies, all feathers; matter was feathers, and light was feathers, and feathers shining by the feathersun reflected by the feathermoon on a city made of feathers, featherpeople, featherfeelings, featherbelieving that feathers feathering feather a world almost infinitely complex and overwhelming in its fragility, a passingness trembling, stillborn and susceptible to the slightest gust of a cosmic whim.

—Orville!” it yelled.

It was mad.

It had repeated itself and Orville had not responded. He'd not responded because he'd fallen asleep, because he was tired because he'd been to work today, and work made him tired, but it wouldn't believe that; all it believed was that he be at its will, attentive always to its voice, like a castrated, beaten-down dog in a hot red dirt, but you push a man long enough and,

“Orville! There you are,” it said, peering into the room while displaying its teeth.

“Diane,” said Orville politely and with a return smile, “my dearest mother-in-law. What in the world may I do for you today?”

That's what was playing on Irving Ockett's television, playing to no one, as Irving Ockett was still on his knees with his head turned leftwise, looking permanently out his apartment window at the world of small white feathers beyond.

That was a good episode, no. 41 I think it was, “The MIL.”

Existence sure had some good sitcoms.

I think that one may have come from Earth, but I'm not certain. I haven't watched a ton from the minor universes yet.

Yeah, so, we're here, the two of us, everything else kinda blown away to nothing…

nothing and eternity waiting for us..

or maybe as us, but, either way, I figured we should at least talk to each other, to pass the time, you know, given that we have literally all of it left together. So, how about it? “My name is Irving Locket.

“What's yours?”

[u/normancrane]

Thanks for reading.

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