It started out like any typical day in suburbia. Percolators perked, toasters toasted, garage doors opened to disgorge cars heading toward the freeway. Everything was beautifully ordinary, until the shadow passed over it changing everything in its wake.

I woke up and came out from underneath the bed. I took a shower, got a toast from the percolator, poured myself some coffee from the toaster and had a filling breakfast.

I went and sat in my car and the roads rolled and dragged my car to my office. At the office, I tried to enter through the door but remembered just in time that doors are there for people to look into or out of a place and windows are there to enter or exit. So I entered the office through a window. The secretary of the boss was sitting on her table with files piled up on one chair and the telephone resting on another. She smiled.

"Go in. The boss is waiting for you."

So I went in and the boss was waiting for me. He too was sitting on the table. I sat down on his chair and looked up at him.

"I want a raise," said I.

"You got it," said he.

After the office, I met Julia. We had a stroll in the park and her adoring eyes were fixed on me all the time and I, without hesitating, without becoming tongue-tied, told her that I loved her and she cried with happiness.

And it went on like that in suburbia for quite some time. Percolators toasted, toasters perked. Everything was beautifully topsy-turvy, until once again the shadow...