--Index--

The sound of a creaking door blends into a softly ringing bell. Bendyman and Pernille exit the restaurant. A bit tipsy, they tumble across the sidewalk, accidently bumping into each other. Pernille is happy, she got promoted from 7th grade teaching to 8th grade teaching today. As Bendyman reaches for her hand, she senses a warm liquid flushing into her cheeks. Yellow and red, they stumble side by side along Stubenring, over the bridge across the canal and into the second district. They stop in front of a cardboard door and exchange quiet whispers before entering the building together.

Upstairs in Bendyman’s bedroom, they start kissing each other softly. Bendyman is a lot taller than Pernille; he wraps his long, yellow, wobbly arms around her twice and playfully carries her towards the bed. Pernille giggles at his clumsiness. Bendyman bends over and buries his face in her neck. Surrounded by the purple smell of her hair, he kisses her soft skin; barely. Then harder. Now Pernille breathes heavily, a slight moan is escaping her mouth -

- A scene so intimate, vulnerable, cringe - Call it gut-wrenching! My body is being repelled by the length of a step. Just a tiny little step to the back, but as my heel touches the orange wooden floor with a soft click, Bendyman becomes alert. He quickly raises his head and meets my green eyes in the “door” frame. His eyebrows form an angry V as he sits up on the paper mattress. Pernille looks up to him, then down to me in shock, and I run!

I run down the staircase, passing two pigeon dummies and a wrinkly figurine fitting on its old leather slippers (so Vienna). My steps become heavier when suddenly, the paper stairs underneath crack and give way under the weight of my body. I slip and get stuck in a small hole, but I can hear footsteps coming, so I quickly free myself from the paper stairs and jump towards the exit, now almost tenderly. Finally, I get ahold of the door handle, but as I push it down, it breaks into fifteen little cardboard pieces. I pause to examine the mess in my hand as I see a long, yellow, wobbly shadow rise on the wall. It grows and grows, soon it fills up the entire wall; I turn around and see Bendyman, his yellow stumps on his hips, bending over me, ready to yap…

Outside on the street, I turn around to take a last look at the cardboard building. My imagination is walking back into Bendyman’s bedroom. Now they’re going to bed and my stomach is sick, but wait – wasn’t Pernille always an 8th grade teacher, and isn’t Bendyman just another wrinkly figurine decorating that paper staircase, and isn’t this whole plot idea about third-person writing and then surprising the reader with an I-narrator stolen from Anne’s new novel Protokoll einer Annäherung? On my way home, I pass this new bar and take a look through the window. All my friends are sitting inside, celebrating K.’s new show together, and as I look closer, I can recognize that all of them are reading from paper menus, drinking from paper cups, sitting on cardboard benches. In this new bar, everyone is walking around between cardboard props, playing the I-narrator in their own stolen plots, and I feel strangely connected. I loosen my gaze and head towards home, and now all I can think of is how I’m gonna jump into my Idiot Box*, close the lid and play fantasy all evening - with a big smile on my face.

Lucie G.

*Spongebob Squarepants, Season 3, “Idiot Box”