Or is This Only What the Other You is Dreaming? // John Gabriel Adkins

On the show floor of the Latest Gadget Expo, we had glass toast in twelve colors -- one for each day of the month. Which is to say that we had wheat toast made of glass, translucent and inserted into toasters, and it was mint green, rainbow raspberry, vanilla swirl and at least nine other colors. You couldn't eat it, because it was decorative and not for eating, which everyone understood for the most part.

An investor with Bebrin & Co. took us for a slow ride down a river road that night, after the show (which had been a hit for the most part). And the moon hit the river's chop-surf while a folk songman sat on the roof singing a song that made us cry because it was so beautiful -- a melody that had always been preparing to exist, only now pulled into being. It was so perfect that we couldn't remember it afterward, but we knew it would come back to us, because it was so perfect.

When we got back to the hotel, the porter and busboy guided us out back, next to the oval wading pool in the moonlight, and we were tied to the tacky Tiki decorations, our arms bound around behind them, because a certain dishwasher had staged a coup and commandeered the whole building and grounds. In our sentence we were told that glass toast only served to confuse the plain man of the land, the noble worker who had no desire for colorful toaster ornaments. The firing squad was drunk and missed every shot.

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John Gabriel Adkins is a Pushcart-nominated writer of anti-stories, microfiction and other oddities, and is a member of the Still Eating Oranges arts collective. His work has appeared (or is forthcoming) in Squawk Back, SPANK the CARP, The Drabble, Sick Lit Magazine, The Bitchin' Kitsch, Five 2 One and more.