Chapter 1: Ungeheueres Ungeziefer
“For in misfortune, mortal men grow old more suddenly”
It was the same recurring dream which had visited Joseph for some years. He was walking down a broad and spacious road in the middle of the day with a green, 1000-lumen flashlight. A single, lonely, and very small nimbus cloud hung in the air, though not close enough to obstruct the blindingly bright rays of sunlight.
When he awoke, Joseph noticed something peculiar. He wasn’t able to make out the numbers on his alarm clock, which sat about 4 feet away from his bed on the floor. Rubbing his eyes, he noticed something even more peculiar; they were the hands of a decrepit old man near his face, and, still more peculiar, the hands were attached to the arms of a decrepit old man. Jumping out of the bed in bewilderment, he noticed, from his ankles straight up to his neck, a rigid stiffness, and he was hopelessly unable to straighten out his terribly hunched back. Walking to the mirror over the dresser, which was the only other piece of furniture in the room, stood a man of about 90, similar to his own appearance, though his thick black hair was thin and white, while his vibrant green eyes were slightly covered over by sagging skin.
Sitting down on his bed in astonishment, Joseph correctly concluded something rather bizarre had occurred to him overnight. Like all challenges that Joseph faced, he decided to tackle it systematically until the obstacle could be overcome. Our protagonist was a very high-performing bureaucrat, and every morning ordered his day by task from most difficult to least. Today, he ordered his tasks from what he felt was most likely to result in determination of his situation to the least. Though the exact contents of the list have been lost to time, the list looked something like this:
To-do list:
Make a cup of coffee (One cannot think with a caffeine headache)
Inquire of Artificial Intelligence
Research New England Journal of Medicine
Prayer
Meditation
Research Supernatural hypotheses
After a few moments of pensive deliberation, Joseph switched numbers six and four, then walked, or rather shuffled as old men are apt to do, out of the guest bedroom and towards the kitchen to brew his coffee. Passing through the living room, Joseph noticed, for the first time that weekend, the utter emptiness of the room, which caused his footsteps to echo slightly against the tall asbestos-filled walls. Pausing briefly to look at the hollowness, his mind was ushered back to a time when the walls were covered with bookshelves and filled with novels, encyclopedias, and biographies. He saw his younger sister sitting on their father's lap as he read the daily newspaper on a terribly tacky but heartwarming and nostalgic orange recliner. Suddenly, the phantom sound of a discordant piano chord in the nearby sitting room jarred him from his daydream. Going over to the sitting room, he noticed the antique family piano, which somehow decorated the room more languorously with its presence than if the room were completely empty. The relic was immersed in a thick film of dust. “Must have been my imagination,” thought Joseph. “Yes, that piano has long since been out of tune,” Joseph assured himself, and he continued his way toward the kitchen.
The single-story house sat at the bottom of a hill with large pine trees surrounding it on the front, right, and rear elevations. Overgrown bushes sprawled outward, spilling onto the sidewalk and partly blocking off the entrance to the front door. Algae grew unabated on the rear siding, where sunlight was sparse. Disconnected gutter ends allowed water to pool up at the corners of the house, attracting mosquitoes in the summer and killing the grass in the winter. The early morning sun rays peered through the branches of the large pine trees that stood in the front yard; the trees swaying in the wind caused the light to shimmer into the small double pane window of the kitchen with the appearance of a kaleidoscope.
Reaching into the cabinet, Joseph pulled out two shamrock-colored bags of coffee. Unable to tell which was decaf and which was drinkable, he brought the bags to the light emanating through the window, but the shifting shadows of the pine trees frustrated his efforts. Setting both bags down, he shuffled into the master bedroom and picked up an old and dusty pair of reading glasses that sat on an equally old and dusty copy of “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” which sat on a still more old and dusty, antique end table with the burgundy lead paint chipping off. Shuffling back into the kitchen, he brewed his pot of coffee, all the while contemplating his peculiar predicament in stoic silence.