Mr Smyth hates magical realism.

Mr Smyth hates magical realism.
#theinkwell

It should have been a typical day for Mr Smyth. In fact, it had been a typical week in a typical year. Nothing out of the ordinary had happened, and the slightly balding accountant was delighted with the mundanity of it all. On Mondays he would go to the grocery store and buy exactly enough produce for the week. On Tuesdays he would watch ‘Wheel of Fortune’ and he would call his aging mother. Mr Smyth would then enjoy staying back late at work on Wednesdays; he had a belief that if you worked until after 8pm, you would feel far more organised when you approached your desk on Thursday morning.

When Thursday had awoken itself again, Mr Smyth climbed from his lumbar supportive mattress feeling much the same as he had each day previously, for however long one could imagine. He took a sip of water from the glass on his dresser, and then something curious happened. Normally Mr Smyth would remain in silence, in consequence of living by himself, but today he sought to greet the world, with language he barely recognised, ‘Oh Marvellous Day! Bring on your feasts and bounties!’.

Mr Smyth paused, and furrowed his brow. The confusion on where those superfluous words came from led him to wonder. And it was this wonderment which caused him to take a second sip from his cup. His confusion turned into perplexation. Who was he? Sure, he was an accountment, and an excellent adventurer in the world of making implausible and slightly illegal deductions seem like a simple entitlement. But, beyond his brown ties and crisply ironed shirts, what was his reason for being?

And then he rose with a spring in his step and took the four steps to his wardrobe. It was Thursday and that meant wearing his dark grey trousers and white button through shirt. Curiously then, a yellow t-shirt seemed to unravel itself in his hands and jumped over his head. Mr Smyth would have cried out in curious disbelief at the shirt, but he was dumbfounded as a pair of Batman underpants began dancing up his legs, followed by a pair of orange shorts he hadn’t worn since 2003, on a weekend away in the wine country. And then, he did manage to form his words, ‘Oh colours, wrap me in your jovial ways!’. Mr Smyth was not used to addressing abstractions, and he knew the words were not his typical of his own, but he embraced them. He tucked his t-shirt in and felt a pang of hunger.

He then raced to the kitchen, not walked with a steady pace, but rushed in such a manner that he nearly tripped as he leapt down the corridor. He felt compelled to look beyond his window at the world beyond his small apartment. On reaching the kitchen, the window was opened, and with a volume that he would have called barbarous the day before, Mr Smyth yelled, ‘World of wonder and delight, where do you call my name?’. A parrot landed on his window sill, and presented him an envelope.

It was of course all quite absurd, but he took it from the small bird, and opened its contents. It was a cream coloured card, which read in a beautiful calligraphy, ‘Listen to the bird’. Mr Smyth looked back to the sill, and the bird began to speak, in an indistinguishable European accent, and pronouncing words with a slight lisp, ‘Mr Smyth, today was not the day you expected. It is time you seen the beauty of the world, to lose your breath and to smile. We can stand in the ocean or climb through the mountains.’ And then the bird paused for effect and gathered himself to begin again with a dramatic flair, ‘We can run through the streets and hunt treasures in the antique stores. We can see a live show and find a connection, and-‘.

As the bird was building to his crescendo, and his rhythm was increasing in pace and sophistication, he was cut off. The open window had been closed with a thud, with the parrot, who incidentally forgot to identify himself as Marco, narrowly avoiding fatal injury.

Mr Smyth clutched at his forehead and muttered, ‘That bird is right. Today is not typical’. For only the second time in his long career, Mr Smyth called his office to advise illness, stripped off his colourful garments and returned himself to bed. As Mr Smyth closed his eyes, little Marco flew back to his nest, tucked his red plumage beneath him and cried; he had come to understand that Mr Smyth would never truly see the colours of the world.

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Cover image created using free elements in CANVA.