Something weird was happening to Magda’s nose. It was imperceptible… at first. She began to have trouble seeing the words while reading. The nose had always been her albatross—the elephant in the room—the shadow it cast darkening the words on the pages. Constantly in motion, the nose reinvented itself as if it had a mind of its own, until one day, its towering mass no longer resembled a nose at all, and books were merely props. But things got weirder still, when the walls started shifting and the flowers in the vase began to speak. Truth be told, from the time she was a child, she knew she didn’t belong in this world. The other children, those who called her such things as Polack and dirty Jew, dreamed in circles, whereas, she dreamed in cubes. She was an imposter in her own skin most days, and other days, she was nobody.
This morning, she hears chatter all around. Her coffee sits untouched and her eyes attempt to read through the shadow cast by the shark-tail her nose has become. It is a losing battle to immerse herself in words by Henryk Sienkiewicz; and she does what she always does, uses the book as a prop while she covertly views the goings on in the corner cafe. The patrons seated all around ignore her, and one waiflike creature carrying a cup of hot water with lemons doesn’t notice her, nearly sitting in her lap.
Magda, “Ahems,” and tears well up, threatening to spill, until the flowers in the vase whisper, “Psst! Hey buddy, you are a force to be reckoned with.”
A low rumble starts within the walls, building beneath the buzz of those bleary-eyed patrons fueling up on high-octane coffee before another grueling day of pencil-pushing, their noses not obstructive as they sip and read.
The rumble is overshadowed by coffee-talk, the eyes of those who push pencils dilating until the irises disappear, and the bee in Magda’s bonnet goes haywire (as it always does) when the frenzied pupils eventually find Magda’s nose and cruel laughter erupts.
At that precise second, the rumble crests and the cafe walls collapse in on themselves. There’s a collective clink as coffee cups are laid upon tables, and a crash as those tables list to the left and the caffeine-fueled captains of industry fly into blind panic, attempting to flee like rats from a sinking ship. And more panic still, when the coffee urn begins to bleed, filling the cafe with seawater. The shark that her nose has become thrusts its mighty tail, disconnecting from her face, and the words in Magda’s book suddenly brighten and the theme song from Jaws begins to play.
Ba-dum.
Ba-dum.
Ba-dum-ba-dum-ba-dum…
The flowers in the vase sing Marvin Gaye’s, “Let’s Get it On,” while the shark goes to work, turning seawater to swirling red froth, while Magda reads Sienkiewicz’s words (what dreadful misfortune awaited them), on full display for the first time since… she didn’t know when.
INSTANT NOODLES 