Honey I Shrunk the Bags
He came from a long line of scientists. Conversations at home went from the invention of light to the discovery of penicillin.
On Sundays, they would read the Evolution of Physics and The Voyage of the Beagle. He had grown up to understand that he was expected to invent or discover something. Everyone in his family had and, as it turned out, the apple hadn’t fallen too far from the tree, as they say.
He felt comfortable surrounded by chemicals and thought that he never looked as good as when he was in his white lab coat and had his thick rimmed glasses on. He would stare at formulas for hours and always carry his books in his father’s leather bag. It had been passed down for generations in his family. As soon as you graduated, you received a title from the government and the weight of the family’s pride disguised as a leather bag.
For years now he had been working on a formula to reduce the effects that time had on skin. Not really in humans but more in order to preserve the iconic leather bag for eternity.
He added some sulfates, changed the dose and read the minusculous words that were on the red spined book until his eyes were sore, but he still hadn’t managed to get it right.
On a Friday night, he gave up. He took off his glasses, squeezed tightly between his eyebrows and couldn’t help but fall asleep on the coach.
His head had been spinning in circles just like the record he had bought in Russia when he went to visit the house of his favourite composer, Sergei Rachmaninoff. His Piano Concerto No. 2, always gave him goosebumps.
While he was in the arms of Morpheus, the clouds that had been attempting to soak the streets unloaded with all their furry. The wind joined in and blew a whistling draught that was urgently trying to unlatch his window. Papers flew and test tubes fell. It almost seemed as if the emotional rollercoaster of the classical piece was drawn into life within the four walls.
The coffee-coloured liquid that was sheltered in one of the test tubes came running down the table with an impetuous speed. The leather bag absorbed every little bit of it like a kid with a straw that’s facing his last sip of milkshake.
Chemicals and leather joined and the bag puffed out a ball of green smoke that took over the room.
As soon as the tonearm from the record player retreated, so did the weather. The smoke was sucked out of the window.
He woke up, sighed, and cracked his neck from one side to the other. He then stood up to close the window when he saw the spilt test tube laying on the table. He followed the trace, widened his eyes and felt his mouth drop as far as gravity would take it when he looked at his father’s bag and discovered it had shrunk.
Damn! His family’s prized item had lost half of its size. How was he going to explain that?
Honey I Shrunk the Bags (2010)
Photo: Julien Pounchou
Text: Josephine A. M. Halpin
