The Cupboard
Cupboards of old were proud solitary creatures, often seen roaming the wood and open field under the cheerful light of the summer sun. They would play in the day and sleep peacefully on hills under the stars at night. When it rained, often two cupboards could be seen taking shelter under each other in such a way that neither one would get wet. Such was a cupboards life in those young, far away days of the beginning.
Time moved, as time will, and people came to live in the land of the cupboards, building their houses and roads. Cupboards came to live with them, both for shelter and company as the life of a wild cupboard is both dangerous and lonely. This arrangement worked well for many generations, but the people always had a distrust for things different to themselves. The cupboards held a grand meeting and it was decided that for as long as they lived with people, they should keep still and quiet, so as not to cause fear.
Long years passed. The cupboards kept their silence and, apart for the odd rumor, people came to forgot the nature of cupboards and of their cousins, the hat racks.
Cindy had a nice red room. Her dolls were arranged in a row on a shelf above the fireplace, on the bed lay a bright blue quilt and there was a picture of a laughing clown on the wall near the door. The only thing in Cindy’s room that wasn’t colored brightly was her wardrobe. The wardrobe was a large flaking brown box that seemed to loom up to the ceiling. It was a frightening construction with pointy bits at the top and a door that had a habit of falling just a tiny bit open when the lights went out. Some nights she thought she could hear whispering coming from inside those doors.
In Cindy’s kitchen lived a number of colorful salad spoons. They often talked about how much they would like to move in to Sally’s room and how the wardrobe was just a waste of space. “Wardrobes shouldn’t talk” they said, and since salad spoons and little girls have a limited sense of irony, the whole issue of talking salad spoons was never brought up for examination.
It is in the nature of salad spoons to plot. Soup spoons tend to be much nicer, but then again, they get much more exercise nowadays, diet’s being what they are. And these salad spoons were mostly ornamental anyway, being a set of 4 pairs all in bright colors, given to Cindy by her Aunt as a Christmas present. In any case, they had a lot of time to themselves on the windowsill, so they set their minds to plotting.
read Froth on the Daydream by Boris Vian. I asked Havoc to type this for me – his excuse was no opposable thumbs………..