3. Part of Your World
Part of Your World
A MAN
I was nothing, and then I was something.
I was plastic and particle, and then I was flesh and blood and bone.
Momentarily, I was magic. Then suddenly, I was man.
Not a magic man, though. I learned that the hard way as I stumbled straight off my pedestal and into, not through, a window. “Ow!” I cried, pressing one hand to my forehead and another to my nose, which had a new pleasing squish to it even as it throbbed.
Throbbed? I felt pain. I… felt .
The euphoria of feeling made me spring off the balls of my feet and come down with a dizzying crash. All around me, mannequins fell from their posed perches, collapsing on top of one another in a heap, followed swiftly by a decorated tree.
I stepped prudently through the crunch of colorful glass directly into a curtain that shielded me from what lay beyond.
Unused to limbs this long and fingers that moved, I groped helplessly at the soft velvet until I was completely cocooned in the fabric. Unseeing and unthinking (thought was so new to me!), I yanked as hard as I could.
Plastic rings rained down around me as I took yet another tumble, this time straight off the platform and into a circular rack of garments. Each poke and prod of falling zippers and hangers sent thrilling ripples through my body.
My body .
My body.
I was breathless with excitement over my new state of being. I shot up and spun around. The curtain draped around me like a weighted toga. My eyes, unable to keep time with the speed at which I flung myself, adjusted slowly.
I wasn’t sure how it happened but I was here. Here!
Where was here ?
A telling sign hung above a counter where a cash register sat lifeless. The sign read: ISLA’S ATTIC.
Slowly, the puzzle pieced itself together. A store. I was in a dark, empty store, and moments prior I stepped out of the display case where the mannequins were.
Mannequins. I had been a mannequin. That truth was easy to come by and even easier to accept.
In the back pocket of the corduroy flare pants fastened around my waist, I discovered a small red card. It glowed to the touch and was eminently readable even without the lights on. The typeface was tiny yet neat. It said:
Congratulations! Because of a wish, you are now human. You have until the midnight chime on New Year’s Eve to experience true human love or else you will turn back into a mannequin for good.
I turned the card over expecting further explanation, but all it said was:
Pass the other card on to Henry Aster .
I fished a second card out of my pocket, but this one was blank. At least it was to me.
Assuming these cards’ importance, I placed them back in my pocket for safekeeping and ventured toward the front door, only to find it locked.
I was trapped in a dark store in the middle of the night. I probably should’ve felt panic or fear, but instead, elation rose in my chest as I tested the limits of my form.
After shucking the cardigan and button-up shirt, I ran straight from one side of the store to the other.
I hurdled over boxes, careless of whatever I knocked over.
I pressed an odd button on a red square contraption that caught my attention.
The distinguished, disembodied voice of what sounded like an older woman swept through the room.
I went in search of her, ducking beneath clothing racks and tipping over book stacks, until other voices joined the aural mix.
There couldn’t be that many people hidden around the single room.
I was still on edge a bit until I found a rectangle with a mesh circle in it and placed my ear to it.
Speaker. The word leapt into my mind unannounced.
The sound from the speaker was overwhelmingly loud, but I didn’t mind, even as a ringing in my ear persisted for a while after I backed away.
I continued pushing the button, allowing the jolly song to loop. Each time the big, brassy band section came in, I picked up my knees and strutted around the room, adding a bounce or a wave or a kick. All of which brought a smile to my face and a lightness to my limbs.
When I grew tired and my mouth grew dry, I wandered into a second room off the main one.
In the corner by the second door was a flat black rectangle. Computer . Connected to it by a wire was a round pink object that when tapped made the “com-pu-ter” come to life. In the center of the screen there was a bar with the words: What would you like to know?
Using the clickable buttons below, I instinctually typed: how to be a human .
Up exploded hundreds of thousands of little lines of text and pictures and pop-ups. I selected one at random.
Six Steps to Being Human: A Quick Guide.
“Perfect,” I uttered to myself before clasping my hands over my mouth. My power of speech shocked me and delighted me in equal measure. I buzzed with excitement as I dove into the article that would become my checklist.
Step One: Basic Physical Needs Humans have baseline needs that must be met before moving on to more advanced steps. To survive, humans must satisfy the following:
Breathe oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide.
My transformation was murky, but I had a strange sense that I was stagnant before. The rise and fall of my chest beneath the white undershirt I still wore satisfied this first bullet point. I didn’t even need to do anything.
“Ha! Being a human is easy,” I said to the empty room, still tickled by the vibrations that shimmied up my throat and out my open mouth when I spoke.
Onward I read, hungry for knowledge.
Eat foods and drink water.
At this, my stomach growled. Clearly, I was hungry for something else, too.
Luckily, the page contained helpful images including a tiered triangle of food cartoons and a video of what drinking water looked like. I pushed away from the table and went in search of sustenance. “If I were food, where would I be?”
I jimmied open cabinets and checked under tables before finally keying in to a low hum that emanated from a waist-high black box with a handle on the front.
Refrigerator . A blast of cold air whipped out at me when I opened it.
The unpleasantness and the chills almost had me slamming it shut before I matched its inside contents with the drawings on the computer screen.
Anything that looked or smelled interesting I consumed voraciously. My tongue went on a joyride as I exposed it to various textures and flavors and in one instance a very salty, very yellow brick of mush that I spat out immediately. “Water,” I panted. “I think I need water.”
I found a bottle labeled SPRING WATER inside the refrigerator, which I gulped down, but when I reached the bottom a prickling dryness still coated the inside of my cheeks.
I bumbled around before remembering the image. I flipped up the silver handle above the sink and out poured a steady stream of water. Tilting my head unnaturally, I glugged back a half gallon or more.
Satiated, I returned to my checklist.
Get enough sleep.
“While scientists are still not completely sure what sleep’s purpose is, we do know that the healthiest high-performing humans get at least seven to eight hours a night,” I read off out loud.
As I did so, my breathing slowed. My eyes opened and closed with less frequency.
It was as if my brain was asking to be given a break.
But what if I went to sleep and never woke up?
Whoa, now there was a strange thought. And all my thoughts were so novel that registering the strangeness of this one came as even more of a shock. A displeasing pounding in my chest started up. Tightness pinched my skin all over like I was replasticizing.
I squeezed my hands a few times, which seemed to help keep my senses alert. So did a little more water from the tap. Gradually, the heat inside me subsided.
Though I had only been human for a few hours and didn’t want to miss a second of this exhilarating experience, it was my first night and I needed to make a solid start if this was going to last. Heeding the list’s advice was my best bet.
Everything would be fine.
Since there was no bed like the one in the picture to be found, I rearranged the chairs from the dinette into a straight line.
If I curled up into a ball on my side, I could just barely fit comfortably.
In the main shop, there was a quilt with many intricate patterns and colors sewn together and a pillow cross-stitched with Home Is Where the Wine Is to rest my head on.
I shut off all the lights that I’d turned on and situated myself. I expected something, anything to happen, but all I did was lie there cocooned by foreign noises and the soft quilt overtop of me. Was I doing this wrong? There was no way for me to tell, nobody to ask for guidance.
At some point, a hot gurgling spiraled up from my stomach and into my throat. I bleh -ed with my tongue a few times, trying to purge the sensation from my body, but no luck. The gross churning stayed—unpleasant in the moment yet elating in its newness.
I pressed one hand to my stomach and slipped the other under my heavy head and imagined what morning would be like. Light! Warmth! People!
Oh, the other people I was going to meet and see and talk to.
I simply couldn’t wait.
It was going to be the best day ever!