Flora & Ulysses

When Flora came back upstairs after dinner, she found Ulysses curled up in a tight little ball, sleeping on her pillow. She put out her hand and touched his forehead with one finger.

His eyes twitched, but they didn’t open.

She picked up the pillow and moved it carefully to the foot of the bed. She changed into her pajamas, lay down, and imagined the words

A SUPERHERO SQUIRREL RESTED AT HER FEET, AND SO SHE WAS NOT LONELY AT ALL

emblazoned on the ceiling above her.

“That’s exactly right,” she said.

Before the divorce, before her father had moved out of the house and into an apartment, he had often sat beside her at night and read aloud to her from The Illuminated Adventures of the Amazing Incandesto! It was his favorite comic. It always cheered him up to read about Alfred T. Slipper and Dolores. Her father did an excellent parakeet imitation. “Holy bagumba!” he would say in the voice of Dolores. “Holy unanticipated occurrences!”

“Holy unanticipated occurrences!” was what Dolores would say when something truly unexpected and unbelievable was happening, which was basically all the time. Life was pretty exciting when you were Incandesto’s parakeet.

Flora sat up and looked down at the sleeping squirrel.

“Holy unanticipated occurrences!” she said.

It sounded better when her father said it.

Not that he said it these days. He didn’t say much of anything anymore. Her father had always been a sad, quiet man, but since the divorce, he had become even sadder and quieter. Which was fine with Flora. Really. Cynics don’t like a lot of chatter.

Besides, Alfred T. Slipper was a quiet man, too. For instance, when he was on his tour of the Incandesto! manufacturing facility and had fallen into the vat of Incandesto!, he hadn’t said a single word. Not even “oops.”

Words had appeared above his head, however, and Flora’s father had read those words to her so many times that she could recite them by heart:

HE IS AN UNASSUMING JANITOR. BUT HE WILL DARE TO BATTLE THE DARKNESS OF THE UNIVERSE. DO YOU DOUBT HIM? DO NOT. ALFRED T. SLIPPER WILL LIVE TO FIGHT THE FORCES OF EVIL. HE WILL BECOME KNOWN TO THE WORLD AS INCANDESTO!

Flora lay back down. If the squirrel were in a comic, she thought, what words would have appeared in the space over his head when he was sucked into the vacuum cleaner?

HE IS AN UNASSUMING SQUIRREL.

Yep.

BUT HE WILL SOON CONQUER VILLAINS OF ALL STRIPES. HE WILL DEFEND THE DEFENSELESS AND PROTECT THE WEAK.

That sounded good, too.

HE WILL BECOME KNOWN TO THE WORLD AS ULYSSES!

Holy bagumba! Anything could happen. Together, she and Ulysses could change the world. Or something.

“Do not hope; instead, observe,” Flora whispered to calm herself down. “Just observe the squirrel.”

And then she fell asleep.