The Reichstag is on Fire

The man in the hat awoke from a deep pleasing sleep. On this day, however, he awoke too quickly, his head lagging behind his body, his feet hitting the floor before his head could consider the distance between the floor and his feet. Tumbling he hit the floor. This brought to mind the Boyars who were the sworn enemies of the Sobrenadars who were in cahoots with the Balizars who were in cahoots with the Flotar, the parquet floor harder than tenth grade arithmetic. Franciszek Andrzej Bobola Biberstein-Starowieyski sits admiring the robin’s egg blue sky, the day’s newspaper spread out on his lap like a Chinese fan. At that very moment a screaming comes across the robin’s egg blue sky, the men and woman of Novaya Zemlya running for cover. Franciszek Andrzej Bobola Biberstein-Starowieyski opens the newspaper to the horoscopes and reads: “on this day, the 58th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar, the sky fell screaming for the first time, the horizon a banshee hootenanny”. He reads on, “there are 307 days remaining until the end of the year (308 in leap years)”. In the business pages he reads “…the German parliament, the Reichstag, is set on fire…two men, later identified as Ameca and Jalisco, both sporting newsboy caps, are seen fleeing the sight, the littlest, Ameca, laughing like a well-fed hyena. Placing the newspaper on the bench beside him, its pages thumbed black, Franciszek Andrzej Bobola Biberstein-Starowieyski marvels at the robin’s egg blue sky, a screaming filling his thoughts with other times and other places.