This past Wednesday morning, while eating breakfast, it occurred to me that I might have experienced an episode while undertaking a predawn search for earthworms in the garden. As I filled in the second to last of nine holes of exhumed earth, a never before experienced feeling of grief flooded my night smock, followed shortly by an after current of hot and botheredness.
It came as a bit of a delayed reaction to the fact that I had yet to recover not even one night crawler, and I was closing in on the last deposit.
The outlook for the last of which was bleak.
As I turned to take on the expected fate of my now doomed recovery efforts, I realized that I was in another presence.
This would perhaps explain the mysterious shortcomings.
"Don't waste your time...They're off, carrying out my busy work."
I heard and felt these words in dolby surround, as if they came from my own inner mouth.
But these words were uttered from another mouth.
The mouth of a foreign looking man, whose composition I now have trouble recollecting. Distinct but separated details in his appearance refuse to coalesce in my memory.
I recall him being in many changing shades of blue.
He wore garments with irregular leathery patchwork.
I never looked him in the face; for some reason never felt inclined to.
Plus I just assumed it was more or less veiled by his draping hair or perhaps a dark fabric of sorts?
It didn't matter.
"And what busy work is that?" I replied
"Converting the masses." he preemptively retorted before I even verbalized my reply.
"I see...I guess my business is done here. I better fill in the last hole and wash up before sunrise."
"Yeah, it's probably not a bad idea." he said
So I did just that and as I walked back up the path to the shed to put my tools away, my feelings of doomed fate seemed to dissipate along with the dewey morning mist.
No earthworms today.