JOHN'S SOUL

     One day John was picking his nose when he got hold of something that felt like it was part booger and part snot, felt as he pulled it out like he was emptying the entire space behind his eyes, felt like it would never stop. Then he felt a final throb, heard a pop and it all came out with a plop onto his desktop. At first it was a shapeless blob not any larger than a small tomato. But as he watched in disbelief . . . it grew, becoming translucent as it expanded. Very quickly it took on the size and shape of a large cat, transparent as glass. John blinked his eyes and looked again. It was now as big as a cow and had the opacity of a soap bubble. When it filled the entire room, he just sat there in the middle. It was thin as air but he could tell it was there by the way it sometimes would shimmer. "I'm inside an invisible hole," he muttered as he realized that what he'd just extracted was his soul.

     He decided he could more calmly consider this phenomenon if he could escape it for a while. With a self-congratulatory secret smile he slipped out the door and slammed it behind him. But the shimmer oozed out through the crack below the door panel like the ocean pouring through the Suez Canal. It filled the hall and proceeded ahead of him as he ran down the stairs. He opened the door to the street and his soul stretched out to everywhere. It raced to the horizon. It engulfed the sky. John scratched his head and uttered a sigh which didn't immediately disappear, but came back like an echo to his ears.

     He hadn't walked a block when he saw a kid in his early teens discarding onto the sidewalk an empty plastic bag from which he'd been eating jelly beans. "Hey!" said John, tapping the boy on the shoulder, "Hope you don't take this as a reprimand from someone who's older. But since we both have to live inside my soul, I'd appreciate it if you didn't litter." The youngster's eyes grew wide with fright. He turned and ran till he was out of sight. As John slowly walked away, he made a mental note to be more careful about what he might say.

     He began to notice that cars and trucks were emitting fumes, that poisonous gasses were passing out of smokestacks in cloudy plumes, that there were reports on the news about chemical warfare and nuclear bombs, that children were crying and so were their moms, that people were angry and tense, that the population of his soul was extremely dense, that forests and entire species were being decimated. No one except for him appreciated that it was his soul they were all dwelling within. It was unbearable.

     So he didn't linger. He exhaled till he could tell he was on the verge of death. Then he plugged his right nostril with an index finger and inhaled a breath so prolonged that it sucked his soul right back to where it belonged: out of sight and out of mind.

     By Samuel Beast