Grett Binchleaf, a man who was of the firm opinion that if god had truly intended man to work and be active, he wouldn't have made it so damn exhausting, was located in his detective bureau, heavily involved in a bunch of sitting. It was hot, so hot that Grett had even considered moving and living in his refrigerator, were it not for the ghastly smell inside. Also, he wouldn't fit. Also, he hadn't gotten up in three months.
He was in a state of semi-wake-semi-sleepness, the kind you develop when you don't get up for three months. "I'll tell you what I think", he mumbled in his sleep, almost-but-not-completely incomprehensibly.
The immobility hadn't done Grett much good. He had now become so fat, his belly could have been able to completely conceal a small sperm whale. He had also developed nasty acne of the sort that tends to spontaneously erupt like volcanoes, covering his whole face in white slime. This slime was in turn being vaporised by the extreme heat from the outside and his various airborne toxic events from the inside, leaving marks and craters where they had run and giving his face a look similar to the surface of the moon, only in colour. The bags under his eyes had become so heavy and swollen that they started to seriously diminish his eyesight - even when he was awake. In fact, Grett had become so ugly that upon looking at him, you would start wondering whether he was some sort of reverse Dorian Gray and kept a really beautiful painting of himself hidden in the attic.
Grett drifted from quarter-awake to half-awake state and yawned with his mouth - and with the deep crease in his belly. He then lifted his arms, like a person who has just taken a very refreshing nap, only a lot more slowly. Suddenly, a loud CLANK startled him! He opened his eyes as far as he could and saw that he had knocked a glass to the ground of his office, its content spilling over the floor.
"Oh, cruckers", he said, struggling to remember whether the five second rule also applied to orange juice.
"Mr. Binchleaf!" said a voice.
"What? Who? Where? Why? Which? Whale?" squealed Grett. He looked up and saw the voice! There was a man attached to it! He was large, big and tall, wore a very strange hat with a sort of attached drill and he was standing in front of Grett.
"Mr. Binchleaf!" repeated the man, unnecessarily.
"Who the flippin flunk are you?"
"I came in here an hour ago because I need your help", said the man. He was speaking in a strong authentic Swahili accent. "You said, you would happily take the case, but you would first have to finish investigating another case - in your dreams. Then I said, wow, a detective falling asleep in front of a client, that's not something you see every day. Then you said - in your sleep - that something you do see every day is your own extrementitious matter vaporising in the heat."
"Really?" Grett pulled out his notebook from between two especially pronounced wrinkles in his stomach and pretended to make notes. "And what happened then? Spare no details."
"This is not what I came here for! I don't want you to investigate yourself falling asleep."
"You're right, that would be rubbish", agreed Grett. "Especially because I already solved that case in Grett Binchleaf and the Adventure of the Mislaid Sleeping Pills."
The man seemed annoyed. So much so he could have passed as a member of the Ohio Young Democrats.
"I need you to investigate a paradox."
"I don't do medical detecting."
"No, a paradox! Something that doesn't make sense."
"Oh, all right, that sounds more like it's up my balls park. Tell me more, you old bum."
"You know, a paradox, two pieces of information that are both taken to be true, but seemingly contradict each other. It seems you have quite a history for this kind of thing."
"You mean that one time when I had some money but no wallet to put it in, so I had to buy a wallet, but to buy one I had to give away the money I had, so I ended up with a wallet and nothing to put in the wallet?"
"I am not sure that is a paradox", said the man.
"You mean that one time when I gave my door open rendering device to a Roman and he used it to free me from the prison cube I was in so I could go back in time and give the door open rendering device to the Roman?"
"This sounds oddly familiar", said the Swahili man, reminding the reader that he spoke in an accent.
"Yes, the professor stole that one from me, bloody bastard."
"And yes, that's about it - more or less… I need you to solve-"
The man paused for effect. Unfortunately, he paused for slightly too long and Grett started snoring again.
Will Grett ever wake up again and even possibly almost get up from his chair?
Is the extreme heat some kind of plot point or is it only there to explain where all of Grett's excrements went?
What in the world is a "hat with a sort of attached drill"?
Come in and find out in the exciting second and final part of
GRETT BINCHLEAF AND THE ADVENTURE OF ALMOST GETTING UP FROM THE CHAIR