The Lamplighter of My Left Ear

I woke up inside a refrigerator. Not metaphorically. A literal one. There was a tiny man reading a newspaper next to the eggs, and he said, “You’re late for your appointment with the Moon Council.”

I nodded politely and exited through the crisper drawer.

Outside, my apartment was gone. Replaced by a giant vending machine that only sold existential dread and orange soda. I pressed B2 and got both. I drank the dread first. It tasted like Tuesdays.

I walked down the sidewalk, which was made of soup. Chicken noodle. Every time I stepped, my socks got warmer. “Good for circulation,” said a pigeon wearing a necktie. He handed me a business card. It simply read:
"Gregory Featherstein – Professional Disbeliever"
I kept it. One never knows.

A man with a television for a head interviewed me on the corner.
“What’s it like having seven minds in a one-bedroom skull?” he asked.
“Cramped,” I said. “But at least the rent is stable.”
A laugh track played. I didn’t find it funny, but the laugh track didn’t care.

I turned to Carl, who had emerged from my left ear like a majestic yet slightly damp paper swan. Carl is a philosopher. Or a toothbrush. It changes hourly.
“We are late for the revolution,” he muttered, eyes made of billiard balls. “The ducks are unionizing.”

“Again?” I sighed.

Grizly floated beside me, a dense black fog that only I could see, unless you’re reading this, in which case: hi. Grizly speaks in riddles, but today he only hummed elevator music and smelled faintly of burnt toast and regret.

We boarded the Number 4 Hallucination, which took us straight to the Moon. The Council greeted us wearing upside-down crowns and oven mitts.
“You stand accused of thinking too loudly,” said the Chairperson, who was a golden retriever in a judge’s robe.

“I plead reality,” I said.

The courtroom gasped.

Carl translated, “He means not guilty.”

“I mean both,” I whispered.

Suddenly, the walls peeled away like fruit roll-ups, revealing the inner working of everything: gears of memory, cogs of sensation, flickering reels of maybe-this-is-real.

I sat alone in a hospital chair.
Or I was walking through a city that never ended.
Or I was both.
Or neither.

Nurse Evelyn brought me tea. It was good.
The tea said nothing. It didn’t have to. I understood.