“Forty?” She laughed as I stood at the check-out counter, the magazine cover warping and shimmering with new dimensions.
I looked to both sides. A raisin melted into her buggy. Another geezer fished out his arsenal of coupons.
She continued: “I was around for the inventions of the Victrola, the glockenspiel, and the double bassoon. I taught Cleopatra how to play her first lute. I removed B-sharp from humanity’s ears for their cruelty to the environment.
“Forty? Not forty by forty. Not even forty by forty by forty. I am the true bell tone of the universe in its first seconds of expansion–“
“Hey you, are you going to come to the counter or not?” The check-out clerk looked annoyed, her lips and name tag sagging in the same direction.
The magazine leapt from the holster and began to spin faster than a rotary saw, all before cleaving the clerk’s head from her body in one clean motion. The raisin behind me remained sunken into their buggy.
I left forty dollars on the conveyor belt and walked out with my groceries.
Keegan Shepherd 