Some creative writing I did for SUSAN HAMILTON’S TECHNOLOGY CONCERN, some months ago.

Let’s say you’re reading this at night. You’ve poured yourself into the warm folds of your old couch for a decidedly langorious night of Netflix binging Master of None.

Aziz is around for 5 minutes before –

┌────────────────────────┐
│                        │█
│ ━━━━━━━━00000━━━━━━━━━ │█
│ ━━━━━━000000000━━━━━━━ │█
│ ━━━━0000000000000━━━━━ │█
│ ━━━000000000000000━━━━ │█  BZZZZZZZZZRT!
│ ━━━━0000000000000━━━━━ │█
│ ━━━━━━000000000━━━━━━━ │█
│ ━━━━━━━━00000━━━━━━━━━ │█
│                        │█
│┌──────┐┌──────┐┌──────┐│█
││ Talk ││Listen││ Open ││█
│└──────┘└──────┘└──────┘│█
└────────────────────────┘█
 ██████████████████████████

You lift yourself up to answer it. The effort is Herculean. You’ll tell your grandkids about it someday.

“Hello?”

“Hi, it’s UPS.”

“Okay.”

You hold the Open button for a moment, let go and turn back to –

BZZZZZZZZZRT!

“Yeah?”

“Actually, I need you to come down and sign for this.”

Hesistating over the talk button, you eventually reply, “Okay.”

You get dressed and slump downstairs, where you’re greeted by an anxious looking woman with little resemblance and no relation to Susan Hamilton.

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 .░░▒▒▒▒▒\
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 ) ` ' ),-`
  \^_,  \,
    ,(\,/ )`-.

“Hi”, she sounds mousier than she did over the intercom. You notice the brown leather handbag over her shoulder, but no package.

“Hi, You’ve got a package or something for me?”

“Nope.”

Some time passes.

“What?”

“Sorry, I lied to get you down here.”

“Huh?”

“I’m here to take you to Night-Time Only Cereal”

“Huh?”, you’re understandably confused and annoyed. “Listen, I’m not really buying anything, so yeah… I’m… gonna go now. Cya.”

“Just a second!”, she exclaims as she grabs your hand. This is pretty awkward. “This is my job so just go with it. I know it’s awkward, but stuff like this always is.”

“Stuff like what?”, you move to pull your arm away, but you’re wrenched in place. Despite being in no way related to Susan Hamilton, she’s surprisingly strong.

“Your name is on my list.” She lets go of your hand. “So I’d like you to come with me. By the way, do you know what the best thing about cereal is?”

“Cereal? Like the breakfast food?” She nods. “I dunno, it tastes good? or something?” You need to wrap this up and get out of here.

With a smirk she replies, “Everyone says that, but no one thinks about the things that happen around you when you’re eating it. Cereal is innocence. Saturday morning cartoons, the breakfast table, getting ready for school, sunlight pouring in over your glass of OJ. Back then everything was okay. You were okay.”

“Sure, I’m okay now thanks.”

”?”

” “

“Come on.”, She turns, gently opens the front door and glides through it. Her heels click smartly with each step away from you. The door stays mostly open behind her.

Do you go with her?

      ┏━━━━━━━━━━┓
      ┃◔◔◔◔◔◔◔◔◔◔┃
      ┃◔◔◔◔◔◔◔◔◔◔┃
●_●   ┃◔◔◔◔◔◔◔◔◔◔┃ 　༼••༽
      ┃◔◔◔◔◔◔◔◔◔◔┃
      ┃◔◔◔◔◔◔◔◔◔◔┃
      ┃◔◔◔◔◔◔◔◔◔◔┃
      ┗━━━━━━━━━━┛

Continued in part 2, or not.