Orvan Im woke up to find that he was alive.

Orvan was plenty shocked. What did alive people do? He tried a doorknob. It turned. That was unexpected. So it was with other phenomena which habitually alive people take for granted: a lamp, a power mower, a pie.

He took a stroll along a garden path. There was a shovel. Also a snail. The sunlight scattered itself along the water. A bird squeaked.

It was time to try the activities alive people like to do. Eating. Bad idea. Orvan nearly died. Sleeping. He couldn’t get the hang of it. Sex. It went OK. The Volkswagen didn’t seem to mind.

Backwards along the penultimate glissando of the floating mind. A coin toss, and things can change. Plaster girandoles paled in the moonlight. Orvan Im read Jane Eyre, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Assholes, Macbeth, The Sun Also Rises, The Tibetan Book of the Dead.

What to do? Whom to share it with? The sky stretched on for several multiples of forever. In the beet cellar, a rattle and a hiss. A pair of tiny fingers grasped the windowsill, whitened, and let go.

Orvan Im stood on the edge of just now, and peered down endlessly into the shadows of forgetting. There is wisdom in the next life, he thought; on the other hand, there is ham in this one.