Email: middleton.maddocks@protonmail.com
Instagram: @gm.say.it.back
NARRATOR
I feel robbed.
It is like the story of the thief. Who knocked on someone’s door one day asking for
shelter from a rainstorm. When he was asked why he was in the area he responded,
“Well
I had just robbed this ladies house and I ought to go back there and put things straight but
I was just letting her cool down a while.” The person, after entertaining the thief for some
time, asked “what have you done with the things you robbed”
He replied “unsure, they aren’t with me anymore anyhow, I also maybe doubt that I took
anything to begin with?’
The rain stopped and the thief left. Sometime later, longer than a day and less than a
week, the thief returned at the persons door. When asked why he was there he responded
“I went to return to that ladies house but, it seems it’s not the right time” The thief was let
in again. These visits became regular and longer as the pair found themselves well suited
conversational partners.
One day far after this tradition began the person looked around their house and found that
it was now completely and totally empty, apart from its furniture and basic amenities. In
fury, the person cast out the thief. After casting out the thief found the person themselves
having a strange reaction that left them staring out a window or their peephole awaiting
the thief return. When eventually they saw the thief pass by they went to them and said,
“My house is so cold, confusing and sad, come back and maybe it won’t feel so empty”
“I don’t want to sit in your empty house and drink tea and hear you cry about how empty
everything feels”
“Then give me back my things and I won’t be so unsettled”
“You had no things when I came”
“I did, I’m sure, I know I did”
“If you name them, I will give them back”
“Some were soft and big, and some were small and dusty, I showed you them they were
mine’
“List them?
“I have lost names, they in fact never had names, they were always there, they were
fixtures”
“This nonsense is wasting my time, if these things were so special you would name them,
care for them so no thief off the street would come and take them away?
I do sometimes imagine the conversations this odd pair had over that time, they come to
me at times quite vividly if not a touch obscurely. They often start somewhere and go
nowhere as real conversations often do. Or in fact this dialogue is sometimes the two
completely missing what the other is saying entirely.
