For Gregg Phillips
Teleportation: (In fiction) instantaneous travel between two locations without crossing the intervening space.
–Merriam Webster
OK, it all started with a cool breeze coiling around
my ankle. Then my hands began to shake and my teeth
rattled. Oh, boy. But I wasn’t afraid. I just felt like a guy
who’d slept for a week or two in a meat locker.
Then a cloud wrapped round my eyes, my mouth,
round my entire body. Like a sneaky, smoky snake
encircling me. I tried to move my right arm. Nope.
Tried to move my left arm. More nope. Tried my left leg,
My right leg. Nope, and nope again. I’m never going to be
able to make love, after a few beers, to an angel at night
in the back of my pickup truck ever again, I thought.
Then a soft, heavenly voice pierced the fog and lodged
in my cranial control center: What can I get you this morning,
honey? A divine entity, speaking to me, pretending to be
a waitress in a Waffle House. And beneath her voice,
in glowing white letters like subtitles, I read: This is Rome,
Georgia, dude. Not that other Rome with the willful pasta.
What could I say? I’ll have a chocolate chip waffle,
darling, with some bacon, and a mess of hashbrowns,
and keep the coffee coming, I told her. And Good Lord above,
just like that everything I ever wanted appeared right there
in front of me on that counter. The Lord had teleported me,
a lost and hungry soul, to a place of great joy and comfort. Praise Jesus! said the wondrous waffle. And so I did.
.
John Bradley
Picture Nick Victor
.