The oblangle

The journalist approached and I took him under my wing. Down the stairs I ushered him and into the gloom of the cellar. Theatrically I switched on the lights, and beyond us bloomed the marvels of my collection.

There, in every direction around us (the stairs were spiralled, centralised) lay my amassment. Demijohns in every direction, the world’s largest accumulation of them (unverified), demijohns, demijohns, everywhere demijohns. Demijohns in every shape (jugged) and size (a gallon, by the british reckoning) a demijohn can be. Glistening there, pristine, empty, polished, uncobwebbed. Perfect and beautiful, in shape, in word, indeed in deed.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” I said at last.

“What’s that?” he said, and pointed out among them.

“What’s what?”

“In that jar there?”

“They are not jars, they are demijohns.” And then, conceding: “It is a type of jar.”

“But in the jar?”

“There is nothing in the jar. There is nothing in any of these jars. I would not allow it.”

Yet I followed his finger (pointed at demijohn #4) and looked as hard and as far as my black eyes could manage (3 feet). There was, it seemed, something to his claims. A lump, inside. A mass of sorts, a shape. A shape I could not recognise.

I crossed to it and examined it in greater detail, tapping occasionally on the glass, looking first one way then the next, then the first way once more. This shape was not quite triangular, not fully oblongated. It was a mystery to me.

“It’s a heart,” he said. “That’s disgusting.”

This… thing, this oblangle, intrigued me. I tipped the demijohn onto the ground, and let it shatter at our feet.

“What are you doing?”

“Retrieving the oblangle from within.”

“But you’ve destroyed the jar.”

“I have,” I said, and swept my wing expansively around the room. “…many more.”

“Why are you showing me all this, anyway?”

“What else would I show you?”

“I’m here to hear your new album?”

“My what? Who are you? Where are you from? What are your doing here? I thought you were from Glassenware Monthly.”

“I’m from the NME.”

I squawked and screamed and pecked at his face and soon he retreated towards the surface whence from he came. I picked the oblangle from the floor, swallowed it in one lump. Wiped the blood from my beak, scampered back up the stairs.