Mr.

Williams
Julian Ibarra

There was a confused look on Mr. Williams’ face. In his left hand there was a single
chopstick, and in his right, an old roll of blue painter’s tape. Mr. Williams had never been a man
of long pauses, but he stood there, nonetheless, curious as to what the two items were doing
within his grasp.
“My, my,” he muttered softly, placing the items on a decrepit brown table which had
collected both dust and apathy over the twenty years Mr. Williams had lived in the house. On
the table there lay a pair of scissors, a copy of ​In Dubious Battle​, a piece of string, an ant trap, a
bag of ​Lay’s ​(barbeque flavored), and a plastic doll that was Mrs. Williams’ favorite when she
was a child. The doll had a look of smug certainty on its face, which was odd, given certainty
could be found nowhere else around Mr. Williams--after all, he had no idea where the items on
the table were coming from.
Mr. Williams often felt like his life was a top: he’d figure out how to keep it spinning for a
while, but it would always become still after a while, or sometimes it would fall off a table
altogether.