The Drought

I was sitting in the caking sun with a checkers board spread glamorously across my knees, and with a bent-backed thesaurus flapping at eye level from a music stand, when my steam ran out and left me with the bill. Removing it from my lips, I rose to catch a glimpse of my fleeing companion, who had, I might add, only half-heated the water, which I and he intended to be tea only moments before, and which, after the transformation occurred, we intended to drink and eventually flush away. But I was too sluggish in my reaction and had no chance of catching an explanation. After sighing and tut-tutting a few times, I decided to pay a visit to the well round the back to see how things were getting on.

On arrival, I was shocked and awed by the discovery that the well was empty; no longer was there the refreshing gush of water, or the distorted reflection of a face giggling back at you, to be replaced by bare foundations and uncertain echoes. Indeed so distraught was I over this revelation, that I simply could not make anything for the rest of the day. Thus I went to bed severely undernourished.

I inevitably awoke and found myself one day closer to my day of dying, which I had estimated on my extended bedside calendar in grim red strokes. As I unloaded my bladder into a basin, I began to think about this empty well of mine, and how I would go about filling it. One possibility splashed from the basin onto my feet but the mere thought of it sent me into sickness, so I let it go unharmed. Another made itself apparent over breakfast and was much less demanding, but because of a strict word limit imposed by the task master, and already exceeded by myself, I never got around to doing it. I shouted "Ho Hum!" to the heavens instead.