Haha I'm a chick magnet… Do we have cosmic flood insurance?
It's time to stop this mindless discrimination once and for all!
Basement dwellers are people too.
I have dwelled… dwelled? Dweln? I have dwellen in Germany's basement since the mid-nineties. That's right! I didn't immediately dwell down here after the Fall of the Wall. The Fallll? I had a house in the East, so it wasn't like I was going to move out right away. And when I did move out, Germany had a different house in Bonn closer to the center.
Bonn was his heart until '91, when Berlin was declared capital of a unified government. I think we could hear each other's heartbeats for like a month after that happened. He considered moving to Berlin, but he was kind of a hermit about it. Berlin is his childhood home, and yet he said the Rhine had enchanted him or some shit. I swear this place has creepy little mushroom trolls that crawl in people's ears, and I'm going to catch one in our house one day.
At the time, it was quite a fad among our kind to settle in suburbia, and Germany, mimicking tyke that he is, bought this place in the neighborhood I have dubbed the Pentacle Tentacle, 'cause we're immortal. We have a guest room upstairs, but I complained about wanting more space for personalization, and after several arguments ranging from petty to arm-wrestling, I claimed the basement as my Prussian vampire lair.
It's a finished basement, mind you. I happen to live with one of the greatest engineering minds in modern history. He designed the sharp-edged shelving concept, the hidden closet space for storage, and the wet bar with black-and-white marble countertop. We have one of those big old sectionals that can be reshaped to fit any space. It holds up to three grown men lying head to heel. My "bad friends," as Germany calls them, like to come over for movie night and fall asleep on it. One of these days, our sleepover activity is going to be growing abs with my powers, but France is the biggest gossip girl in Europe, and he'd spill my secret in minutes with his rapid-tapping fingers.
Germany's not big on aesthetics. (When he has one, it's accidental.) So Italy was the man with the plan for giving the basement the awesome vibe it deserves. It's the lighting that does it. Dim yellow lighting manages to capture the whole "creepy basement filled with ancient magical artifacts feel" in a place that's steeped with glass-cleaner fumes. "Umber!" Italy kept screeching. "I need umber shades and ombré! Germany likes ombré!"
I guess Germany likes ombré, and I like it well enough, too. All the gradients in our basement keep it from looking like a beehive with so much yellow light.
My proudest Pickelhaube adorns the toilet tank in my bathroom, and the plain cream shower curtain is always folded at the corners. My towel-folding skills have been honed from years of experience! I have a cabinet full of perfectly folded and rolled-up towels sorted by size and color. It is a ritual I will take to the grave… when I visit my fallen soldiers, you jokesters.
My room is THE awesomest place in the house. I wanted to mix my own Prussian blue paint for it, but Italy said dark colors make rooms look small — no good for an expansive ego like mine! So it's painted a soft cream that's easy on the eyes. Depending on the lighting, it either looks cozy and homey, or like hospital walls, or even like a secret sanctum, where I can plan my antics in peace.
It's not a castle, but I have my rich-person duvet from the 18th century and my chest full of fruit gummies, and isn't that all a tall, handsome 800-some bachelor needs?
But right now I'm not in my room. Well, kind of, but not.
When a person, even a nation, dreams, his consciousness ascends to a plane called the Anticanon. Everything that absolutely doesn't exist exists there. It's the realm of thoughts and fancy. Pure imagination that hasn't yet manifested into reality. You have an idea for a story, but haven't written it down? The Anticanon knows. You have a fantasy, but it's too ludicrous to tell anyone about? The Anticanon still knows.
When I dream, my whole body ascends and phases into the Anticanon. I actually am in my dreams, hazy edges, weirdness and all, but I'll save details for another time.
I'm dreaming about my beloved pet Gilbird. He's a canary, but sometimes he's so fluffy, he looks like a baby chicken. He sits on my finger and sings an unearthly melody, like if a flute were combined with the most innocent of cheeps. I'm floating in a rainbow-colored starfield, with infinity on all sides, so the reverb is incredible. His song echoes off into the nebulae and puffs them up like cosmic cotton candy — most delicious thing that doesn't exist.
Then I think to myself, what if there was an entire choir of baby chickens with Gilbird as their maestro? And because I'm literally swimming in my own thoughts, the whole world shimmers, and a pile of chicks spills from nothingness into an arc before my precious pet. They straighten themselves and begin peeping an avian rendition of a hymn, but that's a bit boring for my Prussian tastes. I summon a hundred more and assemble them into a combined chorale, then direct them to orbit around my body like a system of downy yellow planets while Gilbird conducts from my head. Their chirping harmonizes and melts into a melody that makes my heart soar. It's driving. It's emotional. It's minor-key melancholy that rises and ascends and bursts into ironclad joy!
My soul's true song!
Then a dog barks upstairs, Blackie, I think, and I wake up.
My body clunks on the mattress as I fall out of the fold in the universe. My feet are all cold and tingly, and my head is aching. I try to sit up, but something is squirming around on my stomach. Scrabbling and wiggling.
My eyes widen. My torso is undulating beneath my shirt, almost the same way it does when I try to give myself abs. Lumps are rising and falling against each other, with the feeling of little claws scraping at the skin.
Carefully, I reach out to touch the mutation and am surprised to find that it's chirping! I lift the shirt, and a dozen chicks spill out! It's not just my shirt, either. Squirming against my body are dozens more, peeping and fluffing their little wings.
"Crap. I brought you guys back with me. I'm quite the chick magnet, aren't I? Oh well, you'll poof out of existence when I stop thinking about you."
But it's very hard to stop thinking about chicks when they're covering every surface in my bedroom. They're packed together on the carpet, scampering around on my desk, nestling in the fruit gummy chest and nuzzling their way into my hamper. I see poofy wings and tiny beaks poking out every place I look. Yellow, black, brown, and white. There must be hundreds of them! Were there really that many in the dream? I scratch my head in wonder.
Something plops onto my shoulder and peeps. It's a chick, fluffier than the others. I smile at it before another plops onto the other shoulder. Then one hits me in the head, and three more pelt my back from behind. Ten of them rain down on me from somewhere above my head, chirping and wiggling.
I look to the ceiling. The air is still shimmering and billowing like a curtain, and when I realize this, a few more hundred chicks spill out the cosmic fold and onto my bed. With my mind no longer at ease, their singing devolves into a cacophony of high-pitched chirps, like my ears are being kissed a hundred times every second. The reverb in my bedroom is terrible, so the echo is painful in my head.
I push myself and carefully try to wade through the little guys. They may not be real, but I still don't want to crush them! A healthy cataract of fuzz still pours from my ceiling. My heart starts to race. Will their poop be real? I'll be butter knifed for sure if it is! It'll take me hours to clean!
They're piling up now, falling all over each other as their fluffy girth swells up my legs. I realize they're multiplying exponentially. I'm knee-deep in cuteness when I finally reach the door and turn the handle. I see Germany's stern expression on the other side before a tidal wave of chicks slams against my back and the two of us flow across the basement floor. My head hits the sectional and I groan.
The chicks accelerate. They scatter out into the basement, creating so much down that Italy would scream to see hardwood. I see a half dozen pop into existence right on the bar counter. Flailing my arms through the flood of soft bodies, I try to at least get to my knees. Germany's next to me, almost completely buried and struggling to lift himself out.
"I thought you were taking a nap! Not committing antics!"
"It's not an antic! They're spilling out of my imagination! I can't stop them!"
Germany strains to turn his head. His lips are sticky with feathers, and only his cold eyes are visible under the squirming yellow mass. "Aren't you all-powerful?"
"They'll disappear if I stop thinking about them!"
"Then stop!"
"But they're everywhere!"
I falter. My bedroom door is torn from its hinges as a massive blob of chicks squeezes over the threshold to melt into a new wave of flooding. Germany finally figures out how to stand, and we're both up to our chests. He wades through, reaching out to grab my hand, but a fuzzy rope grows all up his arm and consumes it.
The downy pool around my body starts to bubble. I feel more and more bodies pressing in on me from all sides. My legs grow stiff. My chest is constricted. A chick pops up out of the mass and pecks at my lips, as if asking me to open them so it can dive inside. I strain to keep my jaw clamped, but the tickling wings are too much. My eyes are watering. My stomach is clenching and quivering.
Dammit, my basement is flooded with chicks, and I want to laugh so bad!
"Stop thinking about them for one second!" Germany yells, though his voice is muffled.
I'm the chick magnet, so more of them are swirling and sloshing around me than him, but he's buried up to his nose and sneezing. The ear-splitting scream of chirping has died and dulled to an ear-splitting drone, as if we're bouncing up and down on a poultry truck. I let myself go. I'm sinking. The chicks consume me! I'm drowning in fluff, and I'll never come back up! I see a river pushing its way up the stairs. The TV is cracking. The shampoo bottle falls in my shower, and I see a few chicks floating through the air in rainbow bubbles. I'm laughing and laughing. It feels like my own body is covered in down! I'm so soft and cuddly! I imagine a chick suit would get me lots of compliments!
But it's not to last. Gilbird, my room's refugee, finally takes an opening and darts through a ring of chicks. A fluffy arm chases him around hte room, but he heroically flies loops around the crushing waves and dodges beak and butt to take his perch on my head. I smile up at him, suddenly realizing he's not a chick, but a fully-grown canary.
There's a deafening POP, and the flood of chicks all poofs and dissolves into dust. A yellow cloud of mist snakes back into my room, where I presume it coalesces and rises back into the warp. Germany and I fall to the floor, marveling at the strange tingling on our skin leftover from so many feathers rubbing against it.
"See? My powers can be fun!" I laugh. "I bet I could do the same thing with dogs for you."
"I'd rather not see dogs explode into dust."
"They just exploded 'cause they're pretend! It's imagination dust! Never lasts long in the real world. So… will you admit it now?"
"What? That your powers are fun? No. They're a nuisance. After supper you can clean this mess."
Germany says there's a mess when imaginary chicks don't make real messes. I let him have his victory.
"So, chicks from other worlds really dig me, eh?"
~N~
He made puns for days afterward.
Updated by Syntax-N May 24th, 2020. Reposters cursed.