"I'm afraid its dead", he said. My eyes continued to stare blankly through the sockets of a face that wasn't much livelier than that of a neutered mutt. Slowly the weight of the statement settled onto my chest, like a heavy block of smooth black iron deflating an airbed. The smell of tough synthetic fabric hissing out from the nozzle filled my brain.
It had always been my strongest sense, the smell of a place or person predominantly defined my first impression , my own analysis being that it was due to its involuntary nature of registering and recovering images. The skin was a simpleton in this gathering of the elite - pain, carnal
pleasure, heat, comforting caress were all well defined and unambiguous,
unlike the gamut that the rest catered to. Looking at things, hearing people talk - they needed me to be alert and pay attention to detail. There was effort involved in thinking, remembering and responding. A smell on the other hand, just crept up the nostrils, turned the wheels, opened up drawers and stuffed the appropriate images, sounds and words into appropriate places in the head. Come the time to recover these and they were all retrieved with a faithfulness and effortless discipline that I was a stranger to. And so it came to be that one sunny afternoon in June, the smell of an airbed and a feeling of dull malaise were permanently bound in holy matrimony in the lofty chambers of my brain.
Having established this priceless little connection, I snapped back into the world. Something was dead. It was supposed to be a moment of sadness - yes I did feel a little dull and heavy under my bony chest, but I had reason to believe this was my default state of being lately. "Ok, what's dead?" I thought to myself. "Should I just ask? Maybe he wont hear me. Fuck it, I'll just have to do this the hard way." I grudgingly employed my other senses to survey the surroundings. My hands touched cold glass, and there was a slight breeze to my right descending onto me from somewhere above. There were shelves of glass on three of the four sides of the room, and some of the glass borrowed the white of the walls behind it. I wondered how the glass felt, going from colorless to colorless. Chiding myself on digressing, I cast aside the feelings of this said glass and went about my task of drinking in my surroundings. After I'd completed a full rotation about the axis of my body, my eyes came to rest on a bespectacled human on the other side of a counter. After some internal consultations, I settled with unmistakable clarity that this was in fact the bearer of the solemn news that had stirred my brain into action. In terms of action there wasn't much to talk about if you were an observer standing outside and peering at us through the white glass, which in itself could be an appallingly boring activity, apart from being impossible.
So momentarily things just stood there, with me the object of attention of this heralder of as yet unconfirmed sorrows and him being the cynosure of most of my senses. I felt the fingers of glorious, awkward silence move in to engulf us. "Say something" I urged myself. It started as a soft rumble in a far away valley, growing in strength every passing second. It floated over the mighty mountains and grew furry wings to waltz with the winds. And then with unprecedented fortitude and sweeping flair, it resounded into the heavens and beyond. "W-w-what?", I managed to blurt out. "is dead?". The human made a face that registered as perplexity. "This, sir - is dead" holding something out on his hand. "Your cell phone. I'm afraid I cant fix it."
I remember muttering an "Oh, ok.", before pocketing my dead cell phone and walking out of the store. I also remember being glad that it wasn't my parrot or cat or anything capable of living, that was now dead. It was a good thing that it was highly improbable - the event of having a dead pet without having a pet at all. Atleast Schrodinger had a cat, or maybe he never did and just used his neighbor's. But he was much worse off since his cat was both dead and alive, until of course you opened the box, but then you werent supposed to - that would spoil everything. The world greeted me with the din of locomotives and street vendors as I stepped outside while empathizing with Schrodinger's neighbor and the vexation caused by having a pet inside a box you weren't allowed to open.
And then like the falling of a guillotine blade, briskly and suddenly, my thoughts were cut short. There was the smell of fresh bread upon the air. I trotted on away towards the aroma as scenes of Tom, Jerry, Spike and Tyke burst into my head.
