Martha adjusted her porcelain cup, carefully balancing a spoonful of warm rain where the Earl Grey tea ought to have been. Opposite her, Elgin sat peeling the skin off a ripening siesta.
‘I have decided that birth is merely an administrative error,’ Martha said, setting her spoon upon a floating saucer. ‘A bureaucratic slip where the void accidentally signs a lease.’
Elgin nodded, his fingers stained with the amber glow of the morning he was unravelling.
‘If birth is an error, then life is simply the tedious litigation that follows. We spend seventy odd years trying to settle out of court, arguing over the damages.’
A silver clock on the mantelpiece struck six, though its hands spun backwards, dissolving into a fine mist of copper dust. Outside their window, the pavement sloped upwards into a calm, infinite sea where fish with glowing lanterns debated the price of salt.
‘And what of love?’ Martha asked, leaning forward as her shadow detached itself from her chair to pour another splash of rain. ‘Is love not the evidence?’
‘Love is a localised paradox,’ Elgin replied, flicking a stray ray of sunlight onto the rug. ‘It is two people agreeing to share the same delusion until one of them forgets the script. It is lovely, of course, but entirely unsanitary.’
Martha laughed, a sound like yellow autumn leaves scraping across slate. She held up her palm, revealing a red velvet box. Inside rested a neatly folded piece of paper containing their eventual quiet demise.
‘Death, then, must be the only polite gesture left to us,’ she murmured, watching the paper gently flutter its paper wings. ‘The host finally dropping the hint that the party ended hours ago.’
‘Not quite,’ Elgin said, reaching across the table to touch her hand, his skin turning temporarily translucent beneath her knuckles. ‘The afterlife is the real insult. Imagine dying, expecting a well-earned rest, only to discover that you have been transferred to a different department with an even larger inbox.’
Martha closed the box, and the room softly folded itself into a single point of silence. Somewhere in the kitchen, the teapot went on brewing. It was, all things considered, a very satisfactory afternoon.
Love this ! 🩷