The Last Day of Langley Collyer - Chapter 1

The cure had begun to take effect: Homer's blindness was no match for the daily regiment of 100 oranges and black bread. Small wonder. His affliction was no more mysterious than the machinations of the outside world bent on infiltration of our perimeters and, once inside, forced adherence to various principles of determinism and weight loss which I've only been too proud to eschew these past years even if the efforts required for our continued security have surpassed even previous estimations but are quite commensurate with the persistence of their provocations as laid bare more by the silences between than the shouts that come ringing through our halls admonishing us to "smell the topiary" or "flush the grundles" or "sniff the dandies" or any number of countless exhortations designed for no purpose but to make me question my convictions; but I will not; I must not for were we to surrender at this point the bureaus and legions would have little choice but to try us for the highest brand of treason and treachery - they'd probably force us into educational programs designed to make us forget the powers of the life force just within once it's awoken with fragrance. Which brings me back to where I started: Homer. A fool would treat his affliction as if it were merely one sensory faculty affected. Such a simplistic view of the world belongs in the schoolyards or the docks. No, just as it takes two eyes to perceive depth, it takes all the senses together to behold the manifold mystery of our day. Things are only rightly understood when taste and smell are in concert, when touch and smell waltz, and when hearing and smell twirl. It was this folly that engendered Homer's compromised state. Homer had been relying too heavily on his eyes, had thought the world can simply be seen. Well it can't and if it could be known through a single sense it would surely be smell. That's where the oranges come in; there is no object in this world that is such a delight to each of the senses jointly and severally and there is nothing so uniformly disappointing to each of the sense as black bread. Why is it black any way? The point is this: through the systematic derangement and rearrangement of the all-sense scheme as executed through this repeated excitement and disappointment of the senses, Homer's senses could begin to work as a team again with the captain taking his post at the olfactory watchtower. It's already begun to work. I just need a few more weeks to allow its proper course but they advance daily. Will Homer's cure first afford me the reinforcement I so desperately need in our defense? Or will they overtake us and pound us into the submission of scolded children through campaigns to compromise heightened senses of smell or at least heightened awareness thereof? Or will these booby traps I've rigged throughout the newspaper piles spell victory for us once and for all? The answer is out there curling through the air like the aroma of ham or broccoli.

He’d learned what lessons he could and his success was manifest as the zombies he was trying to organize spent most of their time vomiting in their seats in the auditorium. You’re dreaming again she heard him say, I didn’t actually just do that it was just a dream. But he’d known better. And he wasted no time by first testing his reality with candy corn and plums. Day after day and night after night he’d felt that his days were coming two at a time and his nights in threes. We’ve been promised new knobs and I want to know when we’re getting them an angry older tenant inquired from the back as loud as she could but only half loud enough to rise above the din of zombie ministrations. A portly fellow cum zombie turned as she spoke and ran for her with an alacrity he likely never knew in his alive life but was quickly turned away by auxiliary police who’d been contracted for just such services and who by all available criteria had performed it well even as some of the tenants had suggested that they were in league with the zombies. The local magistrate continued his speech by noting that he had been in touch with the very highest echelons of some local agencies and he could assure them that progress was a-coming. With patience, he admonished us, mountains can crumble and the towering incompetency and cronyism that had run the city long enough would be on its way out with just such inaction on the part of those in attendance. His thoughts drifted back to the race he watched earlier in the day. As the fleet-footed participants passed it was strange custom to offer the athletes presents. Almost invariably the runners would refuse prompting the offeror of the gift to keep it. Thus the gifts had become more wrapped items sought by the would-be benefactor for their own sake. And so it was that when an athlete did accept the gift it would often times be kitchen implements or brassieres. And before long the custom had become to hurl undergarments and rolling pins at the passing crowd because it is often those traditions for which there can simply be no explanation that stand the rigors of time while those which seem to be informed by principles of middling measure fall off. Such were his thoughts anyway when the zombie running for him was felled after being pelted with a frying pan by a tenant whose plea for functional salad crisper drawers for all refrigerators had hardly skipped a beat.