text: Ok so this is actually a story I wrote in my dream, then remembered almost perfectly when I woke up. Which is probably why it begins and ends so weirdly. Trenchant and Leboeuf were not friends. Every day in the market they would attempt to kill each other. One day Trenchant was returning to his home from the market over the downs. He was not alert, for he and Leboeuf had never before met on these downs. This day happened to be the first time they met here. Leboeuf sighted Trenchant on the ridge of a grassy hill and thought to himself, “I will follow him home, and kill him where he abides.” Leboeuf followed him until he saw him entering a very small blue house. With a little laugh he drew out a thick rope from his pocket which was blue to match. Advancing, he knocked on the door. Trenchant answered the door and said in a low voice, “My wife’s just had the foot.” Which in their locality was a euphemism for, “My wife’s just given birth.” To this Leboeuf responded by grappling the blue rope about the thick neck of Trenchant. After Leboeuf had squeezed sufficiently to kill Trenchant, Trenchant’s maid shot an arrow at Leboeuf, which pierced deep through his neck. Leboeuf fell backwards to the point where the distance between his buttocks and the point where the arrow protruded from the back of his neck multiplied by itself, in addition to the distance between the point at which the arrow protruded from the back of his neck and the tip of the arrow head multiplied by itself were together equal to the distance between the tip of the arrow head and his buttocks, as the ant crawls, multiplied by itself. “Of course!” cried Trenchant’s wife. “Because A 2 + B 2 = C 2 !” For the maid had indeed shot the arrow so that it pierced his neck at a perfect right angle to his body, or perfectly parallel to the ground, for Leboeuf had good posture, even in death. “Now,” said the maid, “we must take the square root of the final distance.” “No! Fool!” said Trenchant’s wife. “You have not learned to prioritize effectively! First we must name the newborn baby, then we must find out who these men were.” “One of them was your husband.” said the maid. “Shut up!” said Trenchant’s wife. “You know perfectly well I had no idea who he was. Anyway, it’s a pity this baby is a girl, otherwise I could name her after her father.” “You could name your next baby after his father, if he is a boy,” said the maid. “My NEXT BABY?!” thundered Trenchant’s wife. “SIMPLETON! FOOL! By that time I will have forgotten my husband’s name! I am beginning to do so already!” “No you won’t.” thought the very small baby boy inside her, smugly. “I will remind you by kicking in morse code every so often.” For she was again pregnant, not knowingly. “Anyway,” said Trenchant’s wife, I will name this baby Jessa, after myself.” “But that isn’t your name,” argued the maid, whose name was Jessa. “What of it?” scorned Trenchant’s wife. At this point, since Trenchant, other than his ghost, is no longer much of a character, we may stop calling this woman Trenchant’s wife and begin to call her Jessebecca, even though this was not her name. This is because, as Jessebecca might say, we must prioritize effectively, and it is more important to continue the story than to try and remember her real name, although Jessebecca herself would perhaps disagree on that point. But the name has now suddenly been remembered! We will still, however, call her Jessebecca. Some may point out that it would be quicker to say the four words: her name was (insert name here) than to make a long digression explaining why we would not call her by her real name. They would be wrong. It is not so. For one thing, “insert name here” is three words, bringing the total number not to four, but to six. So shut up, your point is rendered null. “Now that we have named the child, we must find out who these men were. Let us ride to the market and ask.” Said Jessebecca, absent mindedly plopping the baby Jessa into a pan, placing the pan on the stove, and turning on the fire. “The horses are ready, we could go at once.” Said the maid, turning off the fire, and putting Jessa in the cradle, rivalling her mistress in absent midedness. As Jessebecca and her maid were riding to the market, Jessebecca fell off her horse and lay there, face down. The maid, thinking she was dead, was about to pile her onto her own horse. But suddenly Jessebecca sat up violently and said, “I think I am pregnant, and what’s more, I think my baby is trying to communicate with me. For I am a great believer in morse code, though I do not understand a word of it.” At this point, the maid gave an awkward laugh, for she was decidedly not a believer in morse code, though she happened to understand every word of it. The maid Jessa, with this thought on her mind, “I better get used to liking morse code, for it is clearly the language of my superiors,” and this word on her lip, “Let me feel your tummy,” Now advanced toward her mistress.