Tea Pots Falling

• Matthias Eames, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2014

Ted Doyle is about to realise just how bad today is going to be. When he gains consciousness he will see that his current area of habitation is several thousand kilometres off the ground falling, with a tea pot. It’s going to be a bad day.

After traveling about a kilometre while screaming, Ted finally consulted the tea pot. “Why is there a tea pot?”
“This tea pot has a name you know!” The teapot brashly replied. After about 500 more metres of screaming Ted asked, “Who are you?”
“I’m Jim, your conscience”
“You’re a teapot”
“Translation; I look like a tea pot. You were thirsty when they grabbed you so now I’m a tea pot.”
“Wait what? Who put me out here?!”
“Why the gnomes of course. They were mad because you kept kicking them over in people’s gardens”
“So they threw me out of a plane!?”
“A blimp actually”
“Okay. So, now what? Are you supposed to make me change my ways and then you’ll save me?
“No, I’m a teapot conjured from your mind. I’m going to die at the same time as you”
“Which is when exactly?”
“It’s when you hit the ground, Stupid”
“Oh, I was hoping that wouldn’t be the case”

--A little while later, still very high up—

“You know, I think I’ve lived a good life so far”
“Well you’d certainly hope so, there’s not much you can do about it right now”
“No I’m serious. I live in a nice house, I’ve got the best job in the world.”
“It’s your mum’s house and playing video games for 8 hours a day isn’t a job, even if you put it on Youtube and call it ‘a review’”
“Fine then, what about you, what’s your life been like?”
“I AM YOU!”
“Oh, yeah good point”
“Sigh”

--even later, now getting close to the ground—

“So, how much time do you think we have left?”
“Not enough time to evolve to have wings”
“I think it’s about 5 minutes probably. Not a very long time to sum up my whole life”
“Why would you want to do that?”
“I don’t know, to pass the time maybe. I can’t stop myself from dying from this so there’s not really that much point in making it seem like I have more time left”
“You could try flapping your arms really fast”
“Probably wouldn’t do much help”
“Not in the slightest”
“Well, goodbye Jim”
“Goodbye Ted”

James Peters was just exiting his apartment to go to an important board meeting when a person happened to land in front of him. Pondering this he decided that he really didn’t need to go to the meeting today, after all meetings about how many pickle slices to put on sandwiches can’t be too important. So, He went back to bed.