Unpredictably

I wanted to post this last week, when I wrote it, but I was waiting for my professor’s response to it.  The assignment was a response to The Time Machine for Pulp Fictions of the 1890s, and the professor- one of my favorites, incidentally- opened it up to any format.  Very late at night, unable to sleep after hammering out a proposal for a different class, and after nearly finishing Time Machine in one gulp, I started writing this in my head.  It’s silly, but it’s also the first piece of narrative fiction that I’ve even considered displaying for public consumption in something like seven years.

For those unfamiliar with the novel, Weena is the Time Traveler’s Eloi love interest, described throughout the novel as thoroughly childlike and naive to the point of idiocy, which, to be honest, seems to suggest a child molesterish side of H. G. Wells.

Anyway, here’s Weena’s Story:

 

It was obvious from the start that he was deranged.  I just didn’t realize that he was dangerous, as well.

Try to imagine this:  You’re going about your daily business at home, watching television, eating Cheetos out of the bag, when your front door opens and in waddles a strange four-year-old kid.  You’ve never seen him before in your life, but he’s so self-assured that you’re momentarily stunned, and he takes advantage of your transitory weakness by plopping himself down on your couch.  You try making small talk, asking how he came to be on your couch, and if there’s any place that he might rather be, or anyone that might miss him back home (there isn’t).  Then he starts criticizing you for eating Cheetos, suggesting condescendingly that his disinclination towards such behavior places him on a higher evolutionary rung than you.  He is astonished when you recoil from his physical affronts, and doesn’t seem to understand that tiny fists can still inflict pain.  He makes a few feeble, exaggerated attempts to understand your culture (“Cheee-tos!  Foood!!”) and then gives up, preferring to stare intently into his navel and occasionally babble about his inventions.  He’s obnoxious, but he’s too stupid to abandon in the wild, so you let him stay.  Oh, and then he systematically destroys everything that you love and winds up getting you killed by your cannibalistic neighbors.

I’m a little bitter.