The completely impractical lives of Sarah Thomas and Wilfred Myers at 2 Smith-Wallace Lane

a Micro Fiction

2 Smith-Wallace Lane was an apartment building between pages 5 and 6 in a fold-up children’s book called “The Rather Nice Stroll Through Town” by Sir Reginald Boysenberry (which may have been a pen name — or an otherwise delightful person). Young Beaufort Richardson had received the book from his Aunt Wellesley Snickens, really it was his mother’s roommate from university, but he called her Aunt Snickens anyway, for his 8th birthday.

Beaufort was delighted with the book and immediately started reading it. On page 1 a beautiful park opened up in typical pop-up book format with large trees holding oranges snapping up into three-dimensional existence, a bird or two perched on a park bench began singing sweetly with perfect pitch (Beaufort wondered if there were a battery and speaker somewhere in the book but he couldn’t find it). He delighted as the birds seem to fly to the ground and peck at the oranges — there must have been clever string for them to move on.

Pages 2–4 had wonderful shops and stores that popped into existence and Beaufort was certain that he heard an Italian baker hawk his fresh bread and he was equally certain he smelled hot-cross buns fresh from the oven, there most certainly was a scratch and sniff on the page he thought.

As he turned to page 5 a large two-page apartment building sprang into life with all the tumult and clatter that would accompany a 300-foot-tall brick and mortar building (and cardboard) suddenly shifting to a third dimension. On the lower-left corner of page 5, a street sign popped into existence with a placard reading “Smith-Wallace Lane”. The apartment building had the numeral “2” next to the painted green awning on its cardboard façade.

Up on the 8th floor was apartment 8c and 8d and Beaufort could see two ridiculously small people waving to each other on the painted balconies of 8c and 8d; they were neighbors, Sarah Thomas and Wilfred Myers.

Sarah was just in the beginning of her morning routine, getting ready for work and making her breakfast which consisted of unusually small sausage patties (to Beaufort’s perspective of course), some scrambled eggs, a glass of orange juice, and a cup of coffee — she had placed them all on the table of her balcony and was sitting down to read the morning paper when she noticed her neighbor Wilfred Myers had come out on his balcony as well.

“Good Morning Wilfred!” Sarah said cheerfully. Wilfred turned to her and smiled and started to speak.

“And what a lovely morning it is! I was just thinking of going to the park…”

Wilfred was interrupted as Beaufort turned to page 7.