A narcoleptic spongebob spun his checkered cannon furiously, lobbing explosive hexene-filled potatoes and asparagus at the broken ceiling. Hair salons, shops, and people were pounded by the flaming food, caught in a conflagration that threatened to decimate the city of Sparta. A young child advanced through the broken frames, clutching a tattered red hat with chipped fingernails, while a reverend screeched shattered verses at a filthy sky ruined by the evil spongebob.
This was exactly the kind of story my younger sister used to relish, all toothy-faced smiles and atrocious giggles. What might seem like intangible nonsense to any reasonable person was sure to be a vicarious adventure in the mind of a child. With that mind, my sister wove tapestries in her mind, skilled as any architect. There, in her magical delusion, she lived out lifetimes and timelines. She built worlds and tore them down to oblivion. She made kings of beggars and beggars of kings. She was the creator, the seer. Like the ancient gods of Sparta, she was Zeus.
But then there came the day when almighty Zeus fell back down to mother earth. And all the god’s creations froze mid-frame, petrified as if by Medusa, clammy and glossy-eyed and dead dead dead, like toys, like a child’s loved ones, who could not live without.