Letter to Eugene

Dear Eugene,

I am writing to you while my instant ramen cools on the stove. I have been wondering for some time now why they say that it is “instant” when in fact it is not. Anyway, I will try not to get off track here. I am sorry for not returning your messages lately, but I have been very busy with final school matters and I’ve also decided, after our last conversation, to maintain my employment in the bee fields of the Widow Llewellyn. But may I say, that even if you were to choose the microwave option of cooking this so-called instant ramen, it would still require several minutes, not to mention having your hands scalded by the hot bowl when you remove it from the device. Plastic bowls and wares are not as hot as ceramic, but I once watched an episode of Oprah in which a rather handsome gentleman who claimed himself a doctor, by the name of Mehmet Oz, warned that one musn’t heat food in plastic containers as plastic matter can leak, unbeknownst to the naked eye, into the food and cause cancer! Unnerved at this news, I immediately removed my Kenmore TrueCookPlus model microwave from the kitchen counter, and threw it in the corner of the room where it still to this day remains, along with the dents in the wall.

Anyway, in addition to my academic and employment schedules, I have to admit that I’ve been ignoring you on purpose. To be quite honest, you don’t seem at ease in the head. It’s been about a month since we last socialized in person, yet, some nights there is a carriage that rolls by playing the Take That song, “Back For Good,” which I saw was at the top of your “Top 25 Most Played” playlist on your iPod once when you weren’t looking. (Quite troubling.) When I manage to get to a window to look out, the carriage is already out of view. Considering the demographic of my village, this type of “music,” as you people tend to call it, is quite rare. If this is you, please stop. This is quite a tragic situation if you ask me – terribly, terribly tragic, and rather an annoyance to me and especially my neighbor, the Baron Hayworth, who suffers from horrendous panic attacks and as a result, goes entire nights without sleeping. On the nights in which the carriage passes, he has those such nights.

Another reason why I have been avoiding your communications is because, the first time that we went for tea, you were unfamiliar with the comedian Will Ferrell’s infamous “Cowbell” skit on the television emission, Saturday Night Live. Now, I do not consider knowledge of the trivial things that popular culture has to offer the ultimate degree of sophistication, but I do consider it a rough assessment of how sheltered and oppressed one is by something like say, an overbearing mother, or spending one’s entire life in suburbia and believing that blasting post-…And Justice For All Metallica from a horse-drawn carriage is the ultimate, “rebel thing” to do.

In summation, you are a very nice person, Eugene, but you are not an honest person. I don’t accuse you of being a petty thief – rather, I feel you are dishonest to who you truly are. You are also quite naive, as demonstrated by your inability to see through the contemptible ruse of that street urchin that one night, and, with the heavens watching, I and others witnessed you fork over nearly half of your week’s wages to the filthy little urchin!

Yours sincerely,
Agatha

Chapter One: Lady Rhonwen

Lady Rhonwen could never understand her distaste for her brother-in-law, Nicholin Ranlyn, of the southside Ranlyns, not to be confused with the great House of Ranlynd, the family to which a more than respectable amount of estates in the central Midlands, middle Highlands, and central Lowlands belong. Long before her sister was to be betrothed to Mr. Ranlyn, she always found herself overcome with a sense of repulsion whenever he entered the room. This feeling could be best described as that of when one feels to vomit and defecate, both at the same time — a most unfortunate predicament to find oneself in, needless to say, especially at social get-togethers where such an encounter would most definitely come to pass. It wasn’t that Mr. Ranlyn wore upon his face a hideous human flesh mask of disproportionality or some rare illness of the skin in its most advanced stages — rather, I cannot yet enlighten you as to the cause of Lady Rhonwen’s predicament as I am afraid that our poor Lady does not yet know herself. I do, however, have my theories.

During the most recent encounter, Lady Rhonwen was in attendance at the marriage ceremony of the Honorable Magnus Wrightwyn and the rather young, and blonde, Jasmine Stratton. The new Mrs. Wrightwyn was forty, I repeat, 40 years, Mr. Wrightwyn’s junior, and had a questionable past. She was not from the area, nor from any of the areas even remotely nearby. She had arrived, as if out of the cold air of the bogs, or perhaps out of a mass of mysterious smoke, donning no more than a bikini and a rather stunning mink stole, with beads of perspiration barely clinging to her fair, round bosoms, whilst straddling the front hood of a 1952 Bentley R-Type Continental…

So, after the ceremony, the guests had gathered in the dining hall to engage in the consumption of the wedding cake. It was a mountain of a cake and required a group of five attendants spread around its perimeter to serve the guests. After two hours had passed, the cake so large, it barely looked like it had been touched, Mr. Wrightwyn excused the contingent of cake attendants and left a young boy, Reginald, the blind son of the chauffeur, on watch at the massive heap of pastry and sugar. This was her chance, decided Lady Rhonwen, and she took to the cake as quickly as possible, attempting to maintain her nonchalantness by pretending to text on her phone. Once at the cake, the intelligent lady made demand of the blind chauffeur’s son to take leave of his duties for just a spell, and to go do it somewhere else. The young man taps his walking stick in front of him as he exits the room. Finally, Lady Rhonwen picks up the large knife and cuts herself… a slice from the enormous mass, and places it on a dish. Just as the sweet frosting was about to touch down on her tongue, the young, blonde Mrs. Wrightwyn walks up to the cake.

“What a marvelous achievement this which stands before me,” Mrs. Wrightwyn declares, avoiding eye-contact with Lady Rhonwen. “I must say, I’ve never seen anything quite like it in even the wildest of dreams,” emphasizing “wildest” and throwing her head back, causing her blonde hair to fly up in the air and then land upon her back and shoulders. “I’d just die if I don’t have a slice of this pie.”

“It’s a cake, actually,” Lady Rhonwen says.

“Yeah? Well then, I’d just die if I don’t have a slice of this cake. How about you?”

“Well, I was just about to —”

Mrs. Wrightwyn digs her hand into the sugary heap and smears it across the face of a shocked Lady Rhonwen, the surprise so great that she forgets that she is holding the dish of cake in her hand and she drops it, and it shatters on the polished wood. Suddenly, the two women begin making out, smashing and spreading cake and frosting between their faces, the frosting having an exfoliating effect which was to both of the women’s liking.

(To Be Continued)