Pamela rested calmly in her humble skytrain seat, staring out at the swirling whirling clouds and tracing the locket in her palm. She was thanking the chickens that Jebediah had seen fit to leave her to her own devices, for had he sat with her they undoubtedly would’ve talked, which would’ve required her to assert the mental labor necessary to understand him. She already had a headache from that morning, and one layer of mental fatigue was more than enough. Or was the headache from the fact that she’d only drank creamer that morning?

SHHK

The doors to the skytrain box slid open as a stately old man with an embellished goatee and a shimmering cane with a silver horse head on top shuffled in, lifting his top hat in a cordial manner.

“Hello there. Mind if I pop a squat?”

Pamela shrugged, staring at his reflection in the window. He sat down across from her, sighing in elderly agony as multiple joints cracked unpleasantly in the process.

“Sure is beautiful out there, is it not?”

Pamela nodded, transfixed by the clouds and only a little nauseated by the skytrain’s bobbing and wobbling.

“Is this your first time on a skytrain?”

Pamela nodded.

“You, erm, you, well, you do speak, don’t you?”

“What? Yes, of course I speak!” Pamela godded her head around and glared with vitrol, immediately feeling vindicated when she noticed the old man’s incredibly wrinkly eyelids. Indeed, they drooped so much it was as if they’d been holding up the weight of the entire world.

“Glad to hear it. You know, I haven’t been on a skytrain myself since I was a wee lad of about forty. Not much older than you must be, eh?”

Pamela was seriously considering reaching across the table and slapping this old man with all the strength and vigor of a twenty seven year old, only to sigh and resign herself to staring back out at the clouds. Far off in the distance she could’ve sworn she saw a chicken soaring around. It looked big and white enough to be a cloud itself, of course, but Pamela knew as well as anyone that clouds couldn’t breathe fire as this chicken was.

“Beautiful,” she whispered to herself.

“Anywhatnowfor, way back when, I was studying an emerging field of magick called ‘Transphotoglimation.’ Ever heard of it?”

Pamela’s eyes darted back to the old man. She squinted, then shook her head.

“Lovely. Were I a little younger, say about sixty, I might’ve been upset that you didn’t know much about something I devoted a decent chunk of my life to. But ever since I reached the ripe old age of seventy eight about a decade ago I find I just don’t really give a cluck. That’s something you have to look forward to, young lady.”

Pamela huffed. Twenty minutes outside of her mother’s house and already someone else was insulting her apparent age and calling her a young lady all within the same breath. How exhausting.

“Well, since you don’t seem to know anything about Transphotoglimation, I really ought to clue you in. No use in remaining ignorant, now, is there? Hah!

“Now this all started for me when I was getting my Guru’s degree in Magick Theory at the Diagonal Insitute in the lower-rich end of WestEastern Caldonia. Surely you’ve heard of it.”

Pamela had heard of it.

“I was searching for a subject for my thesis. I’d, admittedly, been spending much more time chatting up the pretty ladies in my class than researching much of anything. And binge drinking alone to fill in the gaps, as it were.”

Pamela smiled a smile that she’d long ago concocted to hide bile bubbling in her esophagus.

“So I walk in to the Perpendicular Library and the people don’t even recognize me, on account of being such a wayward student. Ah, yes, I really was a mess. Anywhatnowfor, I showed them my ID and they finally let me on in. I remember both of the people at that front desk were quite cute, themselves.”

Pamela rolled her eyes and stared out the window.

“Now, before I go any further, do you know anything about happenstancity?”

Pamela shook her head, watching yet another chicken soaring through the air. This one had just taken a rather large shit, some of which was just kind of flapping around attached to its feathery buttocks.

“My my, what are they teaching you children these days? Why you practically don’t know anything!”

Pamela glared at the man with the tempestuousness of a cat whose favorite toy had been given to a dog.

“Only kidding, of course. In fact I hadn’t even heard of happenstancity back when I experienced this. Happenstancity is when something happens that could only have happened if, indeed, it happened. Erm, confusing enough?”

Pamela squinted at the man as if her eyelids could pick the lock that was the meaning of his last sentence.

“That is to say, happenstancity is a happening wherein something happens, and, erm, when that thing happens, it brings another thing to happen, in a way that brings forth an utter connectedness in the happeningness of the things that have henceforth happened.”

Pamela nodded slowly, trying to appear as if she understood.

“Anywhatnowfor. It is only now in my more advanced age that I have become increasingly aware of the fact that the gears of happenstancity were indeed turning in my favor that day. You’ll see what I mean.

“For not but a moment after I passed by the cute library attendants, stealing more than a couple glances at their pleasant kiesters in the process, than did some enormous nerd run into me like a lemming on stilts. I say enormous, the nerd was actually a little shorter than me, and I’m already fairly short. Though I was a bit taller before I became a hunched old bore, but still.

“So the nerd was writhing around on the ground among their papers like a newborn ferret in a heap of trash. And there I was, leaning over them, smelling their stink breath. The nerd stuttered out one weak word to me before seizing up and then going limp, undoubtedly dying of either a sudden heart attack or a brain aneurysm or undiagnosed nerdiosistism. And do you know what word that was that the nerd said to me?”

“Transphotoglimation?” Pamela sighed with a sardonic tone, then immediately gasped at the fact that she’d somehow remembered something this old bore had told her.

“No! Topeka!”

“Ahh,” Pamela nodded in understanding, as ‘Topeka’ was the common exclamation to denote that someone had discovered something. Unrelatedly, there was a city in Southern EastNorthWest Caldonia called Eureka.

“I immediately did what anyone would do, which was search the nerd’s pockets. All I found there were some disappointing breath mints that were, it goes without saying, completely ineffective. However, then, as happenstancity clearly intended, I noticed the nerd’s mess of papers. Why, they’d nearly written an entire thesis on something I’d never even heard of! Not that I paid too much attention in class mind you—that is, attention to anything other than my classmates’ heaving bossoms—but still, I had at least partially heard of most Magick Theory concepts, and Transphotoglimation was definiteively not one of them.

“Before the fantasy EMTs could arrive to survey the scene I snatched up every one of that nerd’s papers and stuffed them in my incredibly masculine satchel. Did you know it even had a lion and a tiger on it, so that everybody knew how far it was from a purse? I loved that satchel. Shame it got nicked on the side of the street one day by that scary lady. Oh I remember how loud I screamed. So many people rushed over to console me. I got some phone numbers that day, but I never called them. Erm, excrete me, where were we?

“Ah yes. So I stuffed all the nerd’s papers in my satchel and scuttled on out of that cock forsaken place called the library, never again having to set foot inside, for the aforementioned nerd had apparently written their entire thesis. So really all I had to do was skim it, present my key points, and scratch out their name in place of my own.

“My professor was absolutely thrilled, said it was my best twerk, said they’d thought I was only studying the other students and not at all studying the class, but then clearly they’d gotten me all wrong. Needless to say my professor was so impressed we ended up going on a date or two, though we didn’t really hit it off as honestly I’m quite stupid.”

“Intriguing,” Pamela sighed, chewing on the end of her pen for a moment, “Say, was that the whole story?”

“What? Yes, of course it was. What else is there to tell?”

“Well, you never exactly explained what Transphotoglimation was, sirrah.”

“Shit! Did I not do that? Well do forgive me.”

They sat there in stabbing silence for a couple minutes.

“Um, sirrah?” Pamela started.

“What?!”

“Would you mind telling me what Transphotoglimation is?”

“Excrete me? Telling you what now?”

“Would you mind telling me what Transphotoglimation is, sirrah?”

“Oh, of course! Now it all started for me when I was getting my Guru’s degree at—”

“No, no, you already told me that part.”

“Oh! So you already know what Transphotoglimation is?”

“No.”

“Okay. Well, it all started—”

“You don’t need to tell me the whole story. You went to the library, you stole the papers from the nerd, you went on dates with your professor but it didn’t go anywhere.”

“I see. But did I tell you about happenstancity?”

“Yes.”

“Well how in the cluck could I have told you all those things and missed out on explaining Transphotoglimation to you?"

“I don’t know, sirrah. But I’m interested in hearing what it is.”

“Very well. Happenstancity is when something happens, which leads to another things happening—but it’s not just cause and effect, no, no no. Cause and effect applies a logic, whereas happenstancity applies a happenstancedness, which is much more lofty and related to the intrinsic happenability of any given happening.”

“Um, I was asking about Transphotoglimation, not happenstancity. You already…explained…happenstancity to me, sirrah.”

“Oh! Very well. It all started for me back when I was getting my Guru’s degree—”

“No, no, you already told me that part.”

“Very well. Happenstancity happens to happen when there is something happening that relates in a way to something else happening, and when that happening happens to happen it happens to effect the way in which another happening will happen, resulting in the happening that already happened relating to another thing happening in a way that indicates that what happened indeed did happen to effect the happening that happened to happen.”

“You don’t remember what Transphotoglimation is, do you?”

“What? Of course I do! Why, I wrote my thesis on it! It all started for me back in my ripe old forties, when I was getting my Guru’s degree—”

SHHK

“Hello there. Can I get you two anything to eat or drink?”

It was a well-groomed and well-starched skytrain attendant.

“Can I get a mimosa?” the old man tipped his hat in greeting, “Hold the orange juice though, I’m allergic.”

The attendant nodded, and turned to Pamela. “Anything for you, misirrah?”

Pamela thought about it for a moment. “You know what?”

“No,” replied the attendant politely.

“Well, I’ll have a brandy. Put it on Jebediah’s tab,” Pamela smiled.

“Excellent. Shall we put the mimosa hold the orange juice on Jebediah’s tab, as well?”

“Why not.”

“Oh my, no, there’s no need for that. In fact,” the old man stood up from his seat with a pained sigh, a million joints cracking, “I’m going to be spending the next two hours in the lavatory, so you can just bring my drink to me there.”

The attendant nodded and waited for the man to sloth out of the skytrain booth before themself exiting, leaving Pamela alone to stare out the window.

Pamela set her pen down. Then, she looked down. She’d apparently been scribbling something on a napkin. That something, depending on which angle you turned it, either looked like wrinkly old male genitals, or the face of the old man she’d just talked to. Pamela felt a strange tingling in her scalp. It was as if looking at the contours of this penis-face portrait was imparting some knowledge onto her. She felt soft flashes of cold shiver through her skin. Then she remembered her entire conversation with the old man, down to the last detail, even the snakelike fashion in which he had described happenstancity in many different meandering ways. It was as if this old man dong, which could also have been a face, were a perfect dictation of their conversation.

Thoroughly perplexed by this bizarre discovery, Pamela shoved the napkin in her pocket and took a few deep breaths.

SHHK

“Your brandy, misirrah.”

Pamela accepted the brandy with a smile.

SHHK

She took a liesurely sip, then briefly glanced out the window. The shadow-clad form that had visited her last night was clinging to it like a spider monkey.

“AAAGH!” Pamela screamed, sloshing some of her brandy out of the glass and all over her trousers. “Oh cockhamnit.”

She looked back out the window, then did a triple take. The shadowy figure was gone.

“Cluck’s sake,” Pamela sighed, sipping her brandy, “I need to get more sleep.”