The Egg of the Cosmic Clown

Every once in a while, I wonder if I should let the strange parables from my mind spill onto paper. But are they even parables? Jesus had parables, like the Prodigal Son — the story of a man who asked for his inheritance before his father died. I’m not going to recount the entire story here; read that one for yourself.

The strange things that go bump in the night are moments of fantasy when my mind hovers between “I’m here, but I wasn’t a moment ago. I was somewhere else, a place I remember well yet feels so far away.” These are not parables but more like requiems, a mass for a dead person. After all, requiem is Latin for rest, to repose, as in rest in peace (RIP). Sometimes, I’m lucky enough to remember a dream so it can be laid on paper and preserved.

C.S. Lewis said it best:

“If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.”

Welcome to my mind, a world of dark parables — a requiem of the most colorful darkness of the blackest sky you can imagine. As for meaning, let’s wait and see. I’ll try to remember it when I wake up tomorrow. Until then, this is the deepest chasm of enlightenment I could recall.

Tommy’s gaze was focused on the fluttering subway sign as the letters blurred in the rush of the train. “Next Stop: 34th Street.” His usual stop. His usual commute. His usual life. Yet that prickling sensation, that sense of déjà vu, had him on edge. As the train lurched to a stop, he felt another jolt — a tingling sensation, a shock like static.

The world shifted, subtly at first. It was like a photograph developing, the image gradually coming into focus. All at once, the usual chaos of the subway platform seemed to amplify itself, with the sounds a notch louder, the faces a little more distorted, a little more wrong. The chipped paint on the brick wall seemed too brash, the pigeons all too plump, and their feathers almost too iridescent.

Tommy’s stomach twisted with a rising sense of unease. It was a feeling he had had before, this sense of jarring familiarity, and yet he couldn’t place it. It was something buried, locked away — in a memory, probably — but now it was back and clinging to him, with tendrils that slithered through his mind.

It wasn’t the scenery alone; the people, too, seemed out of a different world. There, expressionless, with his eyes stuck to a book on quantum physics, was Liam, his best friend and ever-present sarcastic-comment follower. His mother, always ready with freshly baked pecan pie at home, was now deep in discussion, gesturing excitedly with some stranger about wormholes and dark matter. The barista from his favorite coffee shop sat at his normal counter, speaking barely above the hum of the espresso machine as she sketched a swirling nebula using the end of her charcoal pencil — a girl who had always charmed him with quick-witted comments. It was as if everyone had exchanged personalities, abilities, and even the very substance of their being. The same faces, people, but playing roles from an absolutely different script. This was the warped version of reality that Tommy experienced, with everything familiar twisted as though he were gazing at it

through a funhouse mirror.

On his way home, everything vibrated with strange energy. The air seemed to be thicker; the streets pulsed with a low hum, like cosmic tremors that rattled one’s bones.

That odd box in the mailbox was the last straw in the coffin of his sanity. Plainly made of unpolished wood, it turned out to be unassuming, yet heavy — pressing upon the soul like a weight. Opening it, he felt a sudden chill go down his spine.

Inside, ensconced within a bed of fine, soft velvet, lay the glint of an iridescent egg. It pulsed with a soft, internal light, casting shifting shadows on the wall. It was mesmerizingly beautiful and utterly terrifying. It pulsed with an energy that seemed to seep into his very being, twisting and warping sense from sense.

Tommy picked it up. The egg felt warm, almost alive. He could feel a heartbeat in his hands, imitating his very own. What had begun as wonder began to twist into apprehension as a foreboding settled in his gut — a feeling that something terrible was going to happen, something inevitable.

He held it, and a flush of too much power came, exhilarating and terrifying like the promise it would shatter him to pieces or transform him. The egg seemed to whisper promises of untold knowledge, of power beyond a human’s understanding of reality.

Yet there was more to it, a dark undercurrent, sinister energy resonant beneath. It wasn’t just a conduit ball of an egg; it held a gate, a door leading to somewhere that did not belong in his world.

Shadows reached across the wall, writhing like serpents; forms shifted and contorted in a mad dance that seemed to hold all of reality inside. The egg pulsed brighter, spilling its acid light across the room into a kaleidoscope of mad colors.

One thing Tommy was certain of: this was no egg. But a seed — a spark, a portal — this was to a reality that infuriated logic itself, making mockery of every fiber of his being.

It was as though some irresistible force, wrenching at his gut, pulled him to touch the egg, to investigate whatever mystery was contained within. A scream, a voice from the depths of his very soul, shouted at him to stop. To run. To hide.

But it was too late.

As his finger came into contact with its smooth surface, the world seemed to explode in an absolute, blinding flash of light.

Tommy gasped, sitting up — his heart racing, hammering his chest. He was lying on his bed. Lavender from his pillow somehow comforted his thoughts, which spurted forward unrelentingly. Light existed in tender suffusion, bathing all with its soft tone. Sunlight streamed through the window.

He was home.

Or was he?

He sat up, his eyes scanning the room for something familiar to reassure him that all this was real, that the strange world he had experienced was all just a nightmare.

Something had gone wrong.

Everything in the room was the same, but the objects now looked different. The feel of his blanket, the smell of his favorite cologne, the heaviness of his bedside lamp — everything seemed a little off, a little changed.

He struggled to his feet, his legs trembling and his head spinning, and walked across to the window to look out over the city. It was familiar; there was something in the way buildings stood and light reflected off the glass that presently made his skin crawl.

It was the same, yet it wasn’t. Like a bad acid trip, a warped reflection of reality. Walking through a perfectly normal, idyllic world that was just the setting of a horror movie — everybody nice and normal, with inside their souls churning with madness.

He walked to the mirror; his reflection stared back at him. The same face, the same eyes, but something was different. A glint in his eyes, a flicker in his expression.

This wasn’t his reflection. This was some stranger in his skin.

And in his hand, he saw it. The egg. Pulsating with soft, internal light.

Tommy had just stepped out of Oz, this place that looked like a wholesome episode of Leave It to Beaver, where everywhere held the trappings of a nightmarish and distorted reality. And now, with that egg in his hand, he was entering a new kind of wonderland — into an inhuman whim, not fanciful escape, but a chilling, twisted nightmare.

Alice’s wonderland was a whimsical nightmare of playful, fantastic escape. Tommy’s wonderland was another thing altogether. It was a chilling, twisted reality in which the banal was sinister. It was a place where the very familiar was warped; where the ordinary had become dreadful.

It was a place where the cosmic clown was playing for keeps.

To be continued…