The Nose-Itcher

There were four chairs.

Tersake counted them again to be sure.

Four.

That matched the form.

Only there was a fifth in the room.

That wasn't allowed.

Not because five chairs were too many. But because the form said four and a seat that was not on a form could not exist administratively.

Yet there he was.

And on the fifth chair sat the Nose-Itcher.

For a Frisian he could be a wrotter. A toddler with an itch and a handkerchief that already contained everything.

For a Dutchman perhaps a fibber. A Pinocchio without wood.

To Sursirai, he was neither.

He was itching for the future.

Kwartsoog looked at the wall through his quartz eye.

“There's a door there.”

“There's a keyhole there,” Tersake said.

“It's the same on this side.”

Then something moved behind the keyhole.

First a point of a handkerchief appeared. Then a hand. Then a nose.

The rest of the man followed without the keyhole visibly widening.

He wasn't wearing a coat with inside pockets that didn't contain anything. He was carrying a handkerchief that had already contained everything.

“Are you the successor?” Tersake asked.

The man looked at him kindly.

'Bless you.'

Tersake wanted to say that he had not sneezed at all.

Then he sneezed.

A puff of dust came out of his form.

“What is your position?” he asked, when the future had settled down a bit.

'Nose-Itcher.'

'That's not a position.'

'You said that last time too,' said Notsnol.

Kwartsoog immediately put the Nose-Itcher on the map. Not where he stood, but where he would get through next time.

The duck adjusted her eclipse glasses.

For the first time she looked in exactly the right direction.

The light was burning at the top of the Tower of Enlightenment.

During the day.

It wasn't a lamp.

It was leftovers from us.

Dust from all the doors that weren't there yesterday. Thoughts that once disappeared into a handkerchief. Side roads that someone had swept away because they led nowhere.

The Nose-Itcher unfolded his handkerchief.

“This is the original,” he said.

Tersake looked at the crumpled piece of cloth.

“And Sursirai?”

The Nose-Itcher shook the handkerchief once.

A small house appeared outside. A little further on there is a path. Behind the tower a duck started to quack as if she had seen it all before.

“That,” said the Nose-Itcher, “is what fell out.”

In Sursirai everyone forgot to sneeze when the future came in. There was simply too much to look at.

That's why the Nose-Itcher said bless you in advance.

We don't sneeze so he says bless you.

He says bless you and so we have to sneeze.

That was not a contradiction.

That was how he irrradiated.

With three r's.

Behind Tersake, the fifth chair moved a little closer to the table.

The Nose-Itcher sat down, laid the handkerchief carefully on his knees, and looked around the room.

“There,” he said.

'Now it can begin.'

The quintology now consisted of five parts.

Nobody thought that was strange enough to make a form for it.

Dusty mess.