The man who lived inside walls
Outgurned before February 2, 2025.
Last Sunday evening, I met a most curious man. He never told me his real name, so I decided to call him Phippil Ronbert Prå. I saw him again on Monday, staring curiously at me while I went about my own curious morning routine. I told other people he lived in my walls, but these otherpeople thought otherwise. I always knew I could gurn with the best of them—but Phippil Ronbert Prå could gurn just as good as me. My homely, ugly little town’s gurning competition was to be held on Wednesday, so this frightened and perturbed me in vociferous, voluminous, and most vehement ways!
Becasue told me to calm the hecklegroober down—it was only the bathroom mirror. But I couldn’t calm down: “If that’s all it is, why is the bathroom mirror in the bedroom now!?” I wailed. My big little redheaded huzzey-muffet reminded me I had begun camping out in our seventh-floor water closet after I tore all the wainscoting off our kitchen walls with a butter knife in a fit of inanity. (Or was it insanity? One can never tell with me.) But I remained skeptical—if I had torn all the wainscoting off, why was there so much on the ceiling in here?
“Because you nailed it to the ceiling after you tore it out of the kitchen, you big doofus.”
“…”
Sufficiently cowed, I sheepishly slunk off to my seventh-floor water closet and doggedly practiced my gurning. My performance on Wednesday would be a nose-smashing success! Only one potential threat to victory lingered: “It’s just you and me, Phippil Ronbert Prå,” I ground out through clenched teeth and gurned lips. “And you won’t outgurn me this time.”
I sat leafing through the morning edition of the Bouillabaisse Boulevard Bulletin while sipping my corn-flavored coffee and nibbling about my moose-synapse bacon. Becasue was painting her delicate toenails a lovely cornflower blue. The Sun was up, the Moon was down, and another twenty yards of snow had buried the town and everything within. But nothing would keep me away from that gurning competition on Wednesday.
The Bulletin announced the usual dreck, cack, piffle, twaddle, froth, and calumny we had all come to know and love. Mayor Rhoodie had responded to complaints about the ugly new solar farm at the edge of town by proposing it be moved underground so it’s out of sight. A new study blamed not only global dimming and global dumbening on global warming, but also the dearth of dirigibles over the past dozen decades (inflatable, submersible, or otherwise). And a new Tarantino film starring a barefoot Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a vampire was playing in cinemas this week. I turned the page.
The man who lived inside my bedroom bathroom wall mirror was growing stronger. Phippil Ronbert Prå still mirrored my every move—most of the time. But if I stared intently enough, held my Pnårpy self still enough, I could see, I could just barely discern it—a twitch here, a flinch there, a little micro-gurn now and then—motions which did not precisely align with my own spastic, squirrel-like movements. Prå was slowly gaining power, gaining strength… soon he would be fully independent of his sciurine doppelgänger out here in the real world.
And then nothing could stop him. Nothing could prevent this devious anti-Pnårp from leaping from the mirror and outgurning his erstwhile master. I tried in vain to convince others to believe me. Becasue just laughed at me and called me a doofus again. My neighbors all laughed at me and called me worse names. Even Nurdlebutt laughed at me (but that was because I had taken to wearing a necklace made out of empty catfood cans and dried fish heads). No one would believe me!
I returned to the bathroom and glared into the mirror. Prå glared back at me. I glowered. He glowered, just as darkly. But then he began sneering.
By Tuesday, my sinister homunculus began to outright mock and ridicule me from behind that silvered glass. When I gurned, he would stand there, stiff as a board and still as a dead horse. When I stopped to glare, he would gurn furiously back at me. Yet still… no one would believe me. I dragged a hissing and snarling Nurdlebutt into the water closet, plopped her in front of the mirror, and forced her to watch. But then, Phippil Ronbert Prå put one over on us: The fiend returned to mirroring and aping my own ape-like movements in perfect synchrony, as a mirror image ought to do. Nurdlebutt tried to scratch my face off and fled. I then dragged a kicking and screaming Becasue into the water closet, but she tried—and succeeded—in scratching my face off.
There was only one thing left to do, to keep the world safe from Phippil Ronbert Prå (and ensure I won that gurning trophy): I tore open the window, locked the door, nailed it shut, and headed downstairs to call the only person who could put a stop to this mirrored evil once and for all. After walking into the door I nailed shut, I pulled all the nails, unlocked the door, stepped outside, re-locked the door, re-nailed it shut, and headed downstairs. Phippil was still there in the mirror—and he was laughing.
My neighbors had gathered around to gawk in awe. What was that curious bum squatting at 229B Bouillabaisse Boulevard up to this time? The truck—all 70,000 pounds of it—came to a stop. Chutes were extended and pumps roared to life. Becasue stood alongside me, Nurdlebutt catting about at our feet. I gave the signal to the driver and moments later, twenty cubic yards of smooth, delicious cement poured into my seventh-floor bathroom through the smashed-open window. Phippil Ronbert Prå would never trouble any of us again.
[Feetnote: Oh, what happened to the gurning competition? My teeth got in the way again and Ol’ Fishface won the trophy. But there’s always next year!]