Still Life

Once upon a time, a man lost his job. He was given notice that his next paycheck would be his last, and that next Monday he was expected to close himself down and vanish. After this was accomplished, he went home and sat in his kitchen, leaning against the table and sipping coffee and staring at the wall. It was several days before he realized that over in one corner was a little door, a munchkin door, wallpapered over except the hinges and latch.

Curious, he cut the wallpaper, unhooked the latch, and tugged the door open. He knelt on the floor and found himself face to face with an equally nonplussed duck. It wandered into his living room and settled down by the sofa.

The man looked again through the doorway and saw a large low room full of ducks. There seemed to be several dozen of them. He crawled through the door and found that there was just enough room inside for him to stand.

The room had no other entrances, neither in the walls nor the ceiling or floor. The floor was strewn with straw and cut grass, from which the ducks occasionally pecked grain or crickets, and of which they built nests to lay their eggs in. It was clean and well-lit.

After thinking about it for a while, the man crawled back out and went to work on his résumé. At dinner-time he went to the living room, apologized to the duck there, and took it out to the back yard, where he killed it. He ate duck for dinner, and lunch, and dinner, and two duck-eggs for breakfast.

During the weeks that followed, the man lived quite well. He went out on most days to go job-hunting, and for each meal ate duck or eggs. This, together with a small garden he kept, was enough to live on. After a while, though, he realized that there never seemed to be any fewer ducks in the room. He looked all around the outside of the house, and all through the crawl-space under it, but found no new doors. He searched the entire inside of the room, but found nothing other than the entrance to his kitchen.

One night, after killing and eating a duck as usual, he crawled into the room and sat in the corner to watch. He brought a bottle of water, an apple, a lamp, a radio, and a notebook. As the sun set outside, the light in the room grew dimmer, but the man turned on the lamp. The ducks blinked at him, but settled down after a time despite the brightness. The man became hungry and ate his apple; he became thirsty and drank some of his water. He counted the ducks each half hour and wrote down the same tally in his notebook. He grew tired, and turned on the radio to keep himself awake. The corner, which had been uncomfortable to begin with, was now hurting his back. The man stood and stretched and paced the length of the room, being careful not to step on the ducks as he went.

When morning came and no new ducks had arrived, the man turned off his lamp and radio and gathered up all his supplies, but when he bent to crawl out, he found that he had grown wings.

It took several tries, but finally the man managed to tuck his wings tightly against himself and work his way through the door. Then he went out to the front porch and took off into the sky, leaving himself standing there staring upward.

The man watched until he was only a tiny speck away up in the blue, then turned and went back into the kitchen. He sat at the table and sipped coffee, staring at the wall, for a very long time.

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