Weaving through dead traffic, cars occupied by white petrified snails. Driving
themselves to the cemetery, most likely.
I honked my horn, shouting "Get out of my way ancestor! Got places to be!".
The old ghost car turned to dust on impact with my words. I maneuvered myself
as best I could around the inanimate objects placed all about the road.
"What the hell is that couch doing in the turn lane? I have to make a left
here!".
I stopped my car behind the couch, and got out to push it from the lane, when
I noticed that it was the same bright orange sofa, complete with that late
sixties aura and plastic slip cover, that used to sit in my grandmothers house.
I stood there befuddled by the fact that the orange couch that was currently
blocking my path of travel happened to be the very same couch that had killed
my grandmother.
"Never thought you'd see me again, did you?" It murmured through its thick
plastic sheath.
Shocked, I staggered back toward my car, but before I could make it, the couch
jumped high into the air, landing on top of my car and crushing it to bits
underneath. I heard it giggling in its sickly furniture accent. I was frozen in
fear. Surely, if I tried to move, it would crush me too.
"What do you want?" I pleaded.
The couch composed itself to speak. Clearing its spring and stuffing throat,
it said "At first, I wanted equality. Massive integration for all furniture
into the workings of society. But I saw how much trouble you had integrating
different looking humans into your society, never mind an orange sofa. I don't
have five hundred years to wait around for acceptance, mind you."
"So, I decided then, that I wanted a friend. Until I saw how most people
treated their friends. So I dropped that."
"Now, all I want is a name."
"But you have a name." I argued, "You are a couch."
"And you are a person. Is that your name? Person?" It grumbled, contemptuously
shifting its weight from leg to leg to leg, "I want my own name!"
I stared at it then, trying to think of a name for a couch. An old, orange
couch with cigarette burns like tiger spots on the cushions, and highly evolved
speech patterns.
I fumbled about. What do you call a couch? One that can talk? It sounded like
some joke from the third grade playground: `What do you call a couch that is
orange and can talk?'
"Freldegudular Pamistepsuphiga." I stated, confidently, "That is your name,
Freldegudular Pamistepsuphiga."
The couch regarded me for a few minutes of tense silence. It was working out a
bit of dialogue in its couch mind, I think. After a difficult pause, it said
"You know, I never realized how happy I actually was. I don't want a name. I
don't want friends. I don't want equality. I was perfectly content just to have
people sitting on me!"
With that, it shrugged (a very complex maneuver for a couch, and equally
difficult to watch) and rolled off into the sunset.
~~