His eyes were fixed on the puddle that had suddenly appeared beneath his foot. It spread wider, slowly and slowly, and he knew that that didn’t make any sense because it hadn’t rained in weeks.
He turned his head to look around at the equally shocked faces of the others on the busy Monday street. Their movements had altered; the fast paced morning office crowd had now almost slowed down to a halt. Something was definitely wrong.
He moved towards the elderly woman to his left, who was clad in fuchsia from head to toe, and directed his question at her flabbergasted expression, ‘Excuse me, ma’am. What’s wrong?’ She simply replied, ‘My Poofy,’ in a dazed tone. ‘I’m sorry?’
She repeated but in a shriek this time, ‘My Poofy!’ and held out her arms, which were covered in a sticky white goo that was the remains of her beloved poodle, ‘He’s melted!’
This can’t be happening, he thought as he raced to his grandmother’s house. This just can’t be. He passed the melting spots around him in a sort of daze and wondered what each one once was- a tree? A car? A house? Or perhaps a person?
He burst open the front door and screamed out for the wise, old woman. He didn’t wait for an answer and followed his gut, which directed him towards the back door. He stepped on to the porch and saw his grandma swaying calmly on the rusted old family swing with her eyes fixed on to the bright blue sky. Without turning her gaze right to look at the entry of her sole grandson, she said, ‘I’m afraid that the day has come.’
He seemed to lose all muscle control as his knees buckled and he half-fell and half-sat on the porch floorboards. He turned his empty eyes to look at her and whimpered, ‘But I thought that we were doing well. We’ve been good, haven’t we?’
She simple nodded. He further questioned her, ‘We thought that changing ourselves for the better would end all this misery in our world…?’
‘Yes, we did.’
‘But then why is He abandoning us?’ asked he, baffled.
‘I’m afraid that that’s the problem. We have been good,’ replied she with a deep sigh.
Taken aback by this response, he muttered, ‘I don’t understand.’
She finally shifted her gaze from the melting blue sky and turned to look at him with a sad smile and said, ‘I think The Writer is simply bored of us.’
Stunned, he shot up to his feet and covered the few meters separating them briskly and asked her what she meant by that. She raised her melting right hand up to her eye level and replied solemnly, ‘I think he needs a new game.’
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