Reversius Lobodicatus

A terrible noise breaks the night. Rapid thud-thud-thud rouses, with alarm, the sleeping Matron. Mothers have enhanced hearing, comes with swollen breasts from natal estrogen chemicals, least their young become prey to hyenas and sharp edges. Her feet, forsaking the slippers, meet the hardwood. The lapis nightgown forgets its static sleeping state, the form sustained moments before, billowing with air current as the master bedroom door opens telepathically, bending to her determined will. Into the hallway, she moves, scanning for a worthy disturbance.

Was it the raccoons? She audits the kitchen, visualizing where the broom last waited. She’d shoo them out the front while cursing her sleeping husband for not installing the chimney grate cover. Precocious raccoons scurry from kin-like trees, descend friendly branches, funnel down chimney tops and investigate kitchens for eatables. The grates prevent this nocturnal mischief, stops them, their steely, unwelcomed bandit eyes, from cutting and invading the kitchen dark, even worse, an infant mistaken for a hairless rodent prey, captured and confiscated back to the raccoon den, hole, nest or wherever they habitat and procreate.

The mallard shutters, the willow tree out front, the stone path in the backyard, the frequently used swing set, all were undisturbed and normal, unaffected by the terrible thud causing outcomes to flicker, each outcome interrupting others, then continuing, then multiplying and fracturing into simultaneously looping potential outcomes, all receiving attention from her, the host mainframe, with two more so popular—the raccoon oscillating with the burglary scenario.

None of the scenarios made her pause, wake her husband or phone the police. It’s not like she didn’t think it through. Even bad decisions involve rapid visuals of what outcome(s) may transpire. Rather, the surprise—the badness—occurs at causation. One entertains a thought, holds a scene in their mind, but doubts the causal dice are loaded enough to achieve commencement, acquiescence between all players and variables. In short, she considered it all thoroughly, albeit instantly, yet never paused: instinct can be rationally realized; instinct doesn’t exclude cognition. Instinct, believe it or not, involves gradation.

She halts at the top of the stairs, her hand already clasping the rail, ready to descend when sighting an inanimate clod down at the stair’s conclusion. What was that period mark? Not a raccoon or thief but her precious, disoriented yet unscathed, child.

It took a series of medical tests that financed the doctor’s sloop and dinghy to discern that her middle child, at this point the second not yet middle child, though only son, suffered from a condition that “reversed, or caused the appearance of reversed landscapes” meaning that the patient “tends to and/or habitually reverses physical locations from left to right due to an unknown long-term memory deficiency” that is “difficult to test for even with CAT Scan resources.” Hence, the upstairs bathroom entrance is two doors down on the right for the patient and everyone else. However, on a random night the bathroom door is two doors down on the left for the patient, which isn’t the bathroom but tragically the stairs.

She sincerely asked the doctor what if her son, still second not yet the middle child, though the only now and future son, might be the only “normal” person and everyone else is unable to detect physical landscape flux. The doctor raised a probing eyebrow, requesting “More,” to which she explained her suspicion the house changed and that her son processed objects in the noumenal things in themselves realm, being a metaphysical wunderkind, whereas others were duped, didn’t notice change because they only accessed the phenomenal realm.

The doctor embarrassed her, the mother, verifying curtly, “I certainly hope you’re joking.” She replied, “of course.” The doctor kicked himself, realizing he lost the chance for a new patient in the hasty refutation. Sad because dock rent was higher than estimated; could’ve used the extra income.

The son’s legitimate condition, Reversius Lobodicatus, didn’t deter him from indulging a varied, full life. Reversius L. even helped his athletic prowess. The unpredictability and sheer oddity of his movements made him difficult to guard in soccer matches.

All the family could do was track the patterns of his reversing using regression analysis, with the correct sample size, and insure deleterious doors were locked. Thank God his variety was systematic and not the more severe Reversius Lobodicatus Spratica-Incongrunium, which is impossible to chart or predict.