by Steve Gergley
On Canada Day, my wife and I performed a play on our front lawn. We wrote the play last fall, taking turns scribbling esoteric lines of dialogue each night within the magical window of time between 2:57 a.m. and 3:04 a.m. Despite the premiere date of our play, it pertains to neither the nation on earth called Canada, nor the time of the day known as the day. Instead, it is about the glorious region of the east called New Jersey, and the mysterious time of the day known as the night.
For the next 67 days, my wife and I regurgitated onto the grass the shimmering, durian-sharp, black-tar dialogue borne of our tomatoflesh brainfolds. But none of the 667 people we invited attended a single performance. So we trudged to the heart of the city and commenced bi-hourly performances of our play in front of a bagel shop on 14th street called The Boiled Torus.
Fifteen and one-third days dissolved into air. 17,854 pedestrians scrabbled by without a glance. Reckless and chubby sky-vermin screamed past our ears at top speed.
On the morning of the sixteenth day, a trio of malevolent street performers harangued us from a rickety scaffold and winged granite-firm chunks of hardtack at our wet and vulnerable tooth-caverns. In response, we sprinted back home in a wheezing frenzy and incinerated our horrific drama in a lumpy ceramic mixing bowl we acquired 51 months ago at a midnight flea market in the forest.
My wife and I have not returned to the city in 60 years. Our communication has devolved into a rudimentary language of guttural clicks and honks. Both the time of the day known as the day, and the nation on earth known as Canada, have become our mortal enemies.
Steve Gergley is the author of a bunch of books and a lot of weird writings of an indeterminate nature. His new novel, Stone Cells, will be published by Translucent Eyes Press on August 28th, 2026. He tweets @GergleySteve. His fiction can be found at: https://stevegergleyauthor.wordpress.com/. He’s also the editor of scaffold literary magazine.