Inside Out

First comes the clutter. Then the unfamiliar bones. By then, the laughter has become difficult to maintain.

Matteo di Verro begins amid buoyant curiosity, while the arrangement permits each new discovery to seem merely more ridiculous than the last. Its accumulating weight gradually changes the question from “What else is in the bag?” to “What kind of boundary has just been disturbed?”—without ever announcing the precise moment comedy became cosmic dread.

Curiosity hath launched more catastrophes than malice ever managed. The hero of this composition is presented with a perfectly innocent question, asks it aloud, and then commits the grievous error of insisting upon an answer. At first the spectacle is merely ridiculous. Long-forgotten possessions, improbable clutter, and objects belonging to no one present burst forth in glorious confusion. The audience is encouraged to laugh, just as Matteo di Verro doth when he first beginneth the tale. Yet with each successive chorus the merriment groweth increasingly uneasy, for it slowly becometh apparent that the bag containeth not merely more than was placed within it, but perhaps more than ought ever to exist within anything at all.

For this slow corruption of merriment into dread, Matteo di Verro proved indispensable. He possesseth the rare ability to guide a listener across that distance without ever seeming to change character. He never becomes a frightened man; he remains the same optimistic fellow who insisted upon turning the bag inside out in the first place. The world around him simply groweth steadily less comprehensible. The finest cosmic horror revealeth itself by degrees. One first laugheth at the absurdity of the situation. Then one notices the unfamiliar helmet, the bones no one recognizes, the thing moving beneath the pile, and finally the object resting in one’s own hand that absolutely was not there before. By then, of course, the laughter hath become rather difficult to maintain.