Greetings, Readers! As can be expected, I am running behind. Again. Thankfully, the writing is going well, but the drawings for this week are as of yet unfinished. I’ll upload them as soon as I finish them. While writing is easily done at any time, I need special preparation to do drawing. Thanks again so much for keeping up with my blog. Please stay tuned this month for special updates to the blog in the next few upcoming weeks.
-BW
Tannenbaum walked into his kitchen, a clinical research report paper in his hand. Without looking, he filled the coffee maker with water and a scoop full of dark roast coffee. He sat at his table, engrossed in his paper while waiting the until the coffee machine beeped. When it did, he picked up the coffeepot and poured the brown brew onto his counter. As it ran down the front of his cabinets, he wondered what could have gone wrong. He went through the same routine every single morning, and this had never happened before. Was there something wrong in his processes? Had he forgotten or missed a step? He knew this was impossible. Had any variables changed? Taking a quick look at the counter, he saw the brown ring that normally sat beneath his mug. When he made his coffee each morning, his mug was always there. In fact, when he finished his morning coffee, he placed the mug in the exact same spot so he would know where to find it the next morning. Where was it now?
“Quin!” Tannenbaum yelled.
In a moment, Quin appeared the the doorway. He was eating something.
“Yes, dear fellow?” Quin said. “Good morning to you.”
“Where is my coffee mug?” Tannenbaum asked.
Quin took a bite from his food. It was a celery stick smeared with peanut butter.
“I borrowed it.”
“I surmised as much, Quin. Where is it now?”
“I washed it out and put it in the sink to dry. There it is.” Quin said, pointing it out to him. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”
It had been a hard week. Tannenbaum had always seen his house as a place to come home to, when the world and its disorganized inefficiencies became too much, Tannenbaum could retreat home to the refuge of his home, to plan his next attack against the world to fix it. The entirety of his home had been arranged and decorated according to his exacting tastes. This is not to say that Tannenbaum was finicky, or fastidious about his decorations. He simply disliked anything obtrusive or garish to distract from his introspective life.
Then Quin moved in.
At first his changes in the routine of Tannenbaum’s house were unobtrusive. Then Tannenbaum began to notice things moving around the house and becoming misplaced. Little things, like pillows, toilet paper, and his coffee mug. These things, as small as they are, are unsettling. In Tannenbaum’s mind, it was as if his home, which had so long been his friend, was turning against him. Had his house joined Quin’s side?
Quin left the room, leaving Tannenbaum alone. He looked down again at the brown ring on the counter where his mug usually sits. It was now in the sink, just where Quin had said it was. Why had Quin taken this mug in particular? Tannenbaum opened the cabinet door to see all of the black matching mugs sitting in their quiet rows like soldiers. He never used those mugs. Not that there was anything wrong with them, just that he didn’t use them. The only mug he ever used was the one he had brought back with him from the hospital by mistake. In an instant, Tannenbaum realized that his mug was the only one that looked like it wasn’t a museum piece.
Thanks again for reading! Come again soon!
themadhairman 