Xlythe
Stories
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Github
Xlythe
Stories
|
Github
In the peculiar town of Ballyhoo, where the streets curled like question marks and the town clock ran counterclockwise, there lived a man named Percival. Percival had the distinct occupation of being the town’s reverse-engineer, which meant he took things that worked perfectly well and meticulously made them... not.
On a day that felt like Thursday but could have been a Monday in disguise, Percival set out to reverse-engineer a boat. This particular vessel was crafted so that when it finally touched water, it promptly sank. The townspeople applauded, for they had long held the suspicion that fish preferred their privacy and boats were a nuisance.
As Percival basked in his success, a chicken named Henrietta approached him, speaking in brisk clucks which Percival understood as an urgent request to reverse-engineer the process of laying eggs. By lunchtime, in a move that startled both the hen and basic biology, Henrietta was proudly sitting on a nest of omelets.
The afternoon brought a gentle breeze that carried the scent of lemons, though there wasn’t a lemon tree for miles. This was the work of Geraldine, the local air sculptor, who had a knack for carving scents out of the wind. Today, her masterpiece was 'Citrus Zephyr No. 5'.
Percival’s next client was the wind itself, which was tired of being aimless and sought a more structured career path. Percival listened, nodded, and introduced the wind to the world of corporate tax accounting, which the wind found thoroughly grounding until it realized it didn't care for numbers or suits and swept back into the open skies, leaving a flurry of spreadsheets in its wake.
As the sun set in a polka-dotted sky (thanks to Patricia's penchant for painting clouds), Percival sat by his upside-down fireplace, sipping a cup of hot ice cream. He mused over the day’s nonsensical productivity, finding a peculiar satisfaction in the unscripted chaos.
And so, in Ballyhoo, logic took a back seat, allowing the whimsical and the absurd to steer, a place where sense was nonsensical and the nonsensical made all the sense in the world.
To read the next story, please knit the plotline into a sweater, wear it during a full moon, and whisper the last word you read to a stray cat.