You see, when I was a little boy, just about tall enough to open doors without standing on my toes, I had a little pet monkey and we played on our front porch. I lived in a tropical country back then, mind you, and monkeys were allowed there. It, or he, was a brown tree monkey called Chair who did everything with his tail. We played around on the front porch wich was made out of sand because it was in a tropical country and they don’t really have porches made out of porch, but that’s all right because trees don’t really grow out of porch, but they do out of sand. And trees we had and trees is what Chair and I played in. Except that I couldn’t really climb as well as Chair so all I did was throw little rocks or twigs at him that I found on the ground and he’d throw them back. I’d always try to knock him out of the tree but never succeeded. The relevance of this will become clear later.

When I was a little older, around the time my puberty started coming out of the closet through various parts of my skin, I had a friend. His name was Bobby and he was brown and I liked the way he talked. Like a parrot with a lisp with a chronic pinch its nuts. I met him at school, and even though we both lived in the same tropical country it was as if he came from an entirely different world. Which he didn’t because his parents just lived seventeen streets away from my street, but were probably as rich as the president of our country. It was in his street that I first got my eyes laid on the mother of all lawns; the Motherlawn. Greener than the greenest oak trees flourishing in the peak of a wet summer, bigger than a football field and as clean cut as a marine before his medal of honour award. The relevance of this well become clear, later.

It was when I met my first lawnmower I began to see the shape of the puzzle that was, well, taking shape. It was when I applied for a job at one of the houses resident at Bobby’s street, at Mrs. Wheeler’s place. She didn’t have a man because he died, and they never had children. She didn’t have a particularly good job but she and her husband both came from one of those rich countries so they were able to afford a place like theirs. Not quite like Bobby’s, yet it had a lawn worthy of the hiring of a fourteen year old kid with a lawnmower.

Now Bobby didn’t have a pet monkey and he quite liked Chair. He used to bother me about borrowing the monkey but I didn’t think you could lend each other pets out like that, but when I went to Mrs. Wheeler’s place to mow the lawn Bobby walked along and took Chair with us, or him, and that was a reasonable compromise.

Bobby’s parents wouldn’t let Bobby keep a pet in or around the house, no matter the size of the immense green lawn. So Bobby had to play with Chair at Mrs. Wheelers field. And more pieces of the puzzle gathered around on my table but I didn’t really see any reason for trying to solve the damn thing.

Back to my first lawnmower. It was a greenish brownish thing, like a really tiny tractor you would’ve made fun of had it really been a tractor. Look at that tiny tractor, you’d say laughing, and then someone would point out that it’s not a tractor, it’s a lawnmower, just in time before you could make the next comment; that teeny tiny tractor is barely big enough to mow my lawn. I digress, back to the tale of how others came to take heed of me and how the lawnmower changed the opacity of my soul.

It wasn’t the first time that I noticed the sound, nor the second. It was at the third time, which was I guess a month later since I started mowing, I took out the lawnmower and started at the edge of Mrs. Wheeler’s field. Bobby was playing with Chair with his own made up game of ‘Grow A Little Temper’, which consisted of Bobby tying up the monkey to the tree and him throwing sticks at him at a specific (and quite reasonable) distance. At around four to five hits Bobby would untie Chair and run away as fast as he could, for the temper of Chair had grown to berserk-like heights. Bobby was around his third hit when I heard it.

It wasn’t a growl yet it growled. There was no howl, yet I heard it. There wasn’t a voice yet I heard it speak. Go there, it said. Go there now. And it wasn’t that it not said it because I most definitely heard it, even though it was this non-voice that was saying it, if you catch my drifting off a bit here.

Where? I responded, too flabbergasted to think who the hell I was speaking to. After I said that I at first thought I was going crazy. Why am I talking to myself? I said.
You are not talking to yourself, and another thing you aren’t doing is going where I told you to go.
I heard it again. I looked around to see the source.
Yes. Over there.
The voice must’ve thought I was looking around to see where I was supposed to be going.
The destination didn’t look too traitorous, and not having seen a trap in my life I decided to go to the desired spot. It was just a few metres away from where I was, this non-spot, this place of grass between grass, that wouldn’t even have been a place, would never even want to have been a place, had it not been a destination. I drove to the spot and asked, do you want me to go on the spot, or next to it?
On it.
Silently I did it’s bidding. I looked over my shoulder to see how Chair and Bobby were faring. I guess Bobby was still at it’s fourth hit because Chair was still screeching and trying frantically to jump up and down.
To be honest, I believe I quite liked the spot. The view on it was just right, from the house to the trees, to Bobby and Chair to the road and the houses on the opposite end of the brown street, everything was in balance. As if this spot was carefully chosen by a higher entity who’s sole idea of meaning was found in nice compositions.
Then I saw Bobby untying Chair and running away and ruining the composition I had.
The voice said: he’s ruining the composition. And I said, oh, so you’re looking at the same thing?
He answered: aren’t you going to do something about it. And I kind of laughed, and I said what do you want me to do? Run him over?
Then the lawnmower started driving itself. I couldn’t steer, brake or gas. It was a lawnmower that couldn’t be controlled. It went straight to Chair and Bobby and I shouted: take heed!

That’s it. The end.

NUMMER 1