Local Celebrity

Standing in line at an ancient, brown pharmacy to spend what he wrongly believes is the last of his money on dental adhesive; he notices that the three magazines behind the counter each have his face featured prominently on the covers, exploding with floating cartoon bubbles with text in an unknowable language. Beneath the UPC are translated footnotes, but they are small in size and he doesn’t think to check his pocket for his reading glasses, which doesn’t matter because they’re not there yet.

He’s understandably unsettled as he has the vague feeling that magazines covers in this foreign land also serve as Wanted Posters (the static white background and bland photographic composition likely aided this misperception) and he has no memory of any wrongdoings. Without knowing it, his face distorts to seamlessly match the expression of crippling fear and horror displayed almost identically on each of the magazine covers.

His dentures almost fall out of his mouth.

Fortunately for him, soon after seeing these images his synapses fire backwards in an unsuccessful attempt at triggering a “fight or flight” response and he immediately forgets what his own face looks like and his fear is replaced with equally crippling sympathy for this poor bastard who obviously has no clue what he’s done wrong to warrant the Wanted Poster.

For no good reason, he pretends to have an extended coughing fit which is roundly ignored by the other pharmacy patrons.

The cause of his sudden celebrity is that the local media and a significant percentage of the population believe that he has literally fallen from the sky out of nowhere and from an unknowable distance, without sustaining any noticeable bodily harm.

Half of the media (and therefore half of the general population) believe him to be an angel sent from heaven and the other half, an aged Superhero with an outdated slapstick theme. A few others just think they're watching a movie.

The details of his miracle descent vary wildly in the media, but it is largely believed that he violently crashed to the earth mere feet from a science teacher who is attempting (with limited success, largely due to a severe speech impediment) to demonstrate to her uninterested students the dynamics behind water currents using a fountain in front of a train station.

The interviewed students all agree that this incident was “really cool” and that the man “just got up and went into the old haunted drug store” and that their teacher is “really weird”. One went so far as to call her “dumb”.

Fortunately for him, he makes it back to his room before being recognized; albeit without the dental adhesive which he dropped during a second coughing fit staged at the pharmacy exit.

By the time he leaves his room later in the afternoon any news of his ordeal is quickly replaced by a sensationalized piece on an elderly couple that walked around their house without speaking to each other for so long that they transformed into animated Fig Newtons.

His glasses finally fall into the fountain (long after any remaining crowd staring in wonder at the cartoonish indentation his body left in the earth has dispersed) and are back in his inside coat pocket, along with his wallet which will prove to be all too useful in the coming days.

His daughter (who made the wallet in shop class) is in the train station and even she doesn’t know why yet.