Waking for breakfast, I unfurl myself from layers of blankets and bedding, only to find a powerful melancholy awaiting me. I walk down the stairs, illuminated by the morning’s dawn and because of the bright new day’s promise of warming sunbeams I am tricked into a foolhardy optimism.
But my daydream falls falteringly when I am coldly (mind the linoleum floor) returned to lucidity and reminded of life’s futility. Our hero is already on the scene. I glare contemptuously for several seconds before casually accosting him into colloquial water-cooler type conversation.
“So, beautiful night, last. Go anywhere? Do anything? Anything at all?”
Stupid bastard didn’t know what hit him.
Silence
Occasionally I have the shadow of the doubt of a hunch of a gut feeling that my friend here is a ticking time bomb. Every morning I aggravate him as much as I please and his fuse burns that much lower. I’m not afraid of what he’ll do to me once the fuse runs out mind you, I’m so bored of his non-responsefullness that a murder attempt would brighten up my day. Put a spring in my step.
I’m pouring my coffee, allowing my unparalleled jape totally at his expense time to settle in. Once that one felt nice and at home I decided to gift him another. I was serenading his hatred.
“I saw a movie last night, curious as to what it was about?” I give my subject a sidelong glance. He knows what’s coming. His very essence is shaking, atoms vibrating with a quantum bloodlust.
“Well there’s this toaster you see, and this toaster has all these friends and can talk and think and feel. Anyway the toaster’s owner moves away, so this toaster, this tiny kitchen appliance with a giant heart charismatically rounds up all the other electronics and goes on a real page-turner, cinematically speaking.”
Oh if only you could see his face, livid. Absolutely livid.
“Anyhow, turns out the toaster has all sorts of character and determination up to here (gestures as high above my head as I can reach) and he has fun and the electronics have fun and the kid is reunited with the electronics and it has a happy ending.”
I turn over the victim trying to knock out some of the crumbs.
“What got me the most was how this toaster was so likeable, not like you. Plus he was always up for an adventure. The humans would find the toaster all kinds of places and just be weirded out. I mean, who leaves a toaster on the highway, toasters can’t just up and walk around can they?”(I whip around to add emphasis to my statement, also to see if he’s flipping me off, which I would be doing to him were I in his shoes right about now[a bit of coffee spills, is very hot, cannot show weakness in front of enemy{allow myself a momentary flinch, but get right back to the nitty gritty}])
I notice the sullenness of his frame; I had hit him where it counted. I had always been a little peeved that this toaster didn’t do anything like the toasters in the movies. I mean, sure, I knew Hollywood jazzed it up a lot, but this? What I had to live with every morning was a joke, a goddamned joke.
Here was a bottom of the line model if I ever saw one. He could Toast only two slices at a time, the minimum number that a toaster can, he has a painfully short extension cord, and visually his color was that of an aged photograph, he left toast unbrowned sometimes, other times burnt to a blackened crisp.
And don’t get me started on crumbs! Every inch of his disgusting innards are coated with a crumb lining. Turning him over and shaking him for upwards of 10 minutes 59 seconds does not even empty him of burnt bread kernels.
I doubt he could lead a single utensil on a quest, let alone half of my appliances in my kitchen. The eggbeater would eat him alive.
I had my fun though, enough was enough. This little guy was clearly hurting.
“Oh did you see the second one?” I warned myself in my head, this was really too far, “I think that the toaster goes to the Moon or Jupiter or something. Fancy that, just floating around in space, discovering things, charting the vastness of space, giant leap for man, and all that?”
I had done it now. He’ll probably hate me to the end of his life, insulting his dream of exploring the cosmos. All he wanted was to be an astronaut, who am I to judge or say he can’t do it. Whatever, I’m not feeling sorry for what I did.
He brought it on himself.
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