Malcolm Steadman was awakened by his alarm feeling suspiciously refreshed.

This evidently required further investigation. He propped himself up to sit on the bed, his growing confusion sloshing down from his cranium to the rest of his body under the pull of gravity. He did certainly feel tired, which was reassuring. But not much. However, the delay in the onset of the morning wave of dread was certainly puzzling. After waiting for it for a few seconds, he basked in the illusion that it wouldn’t come at all.

It didn’t come. He was happy.

“That’s weird.” he thought. Figuring he’d been bitten in the night by some variety of radioactive fulfilled human, he resolved to test his new powers after – of course – breakfast.

Malcolm even attempted to will the anguish back, for the same reason normal people pick scabs. No success: he just seemed to have suddenly lost the ability to figure out the worst angle from which to look at the cosmos and was simply stuck in a thought pattern that made sense, in which facts entered, were processed, stirred relevant emotions, and was expelled. As he examined this machinery with a mixture of amusement and doubt, he realized he was outside. Walking. “Auugh!” he tried to whimper in terror, but it came out as a manly, puzzled “huh”.

He wondered just what he was doing in the street in his pyjamas but quickly came to realize he was actually dressed. Not only: he appeared to be dressed… well! On a Sunday morning! Some force, for him completely alien, controlled him and pushed him to march with an impeccable posture and confident step towards the caf? behind the corner. After having tricked him into getting dressed properly to do so.

This was disgusting. He thought it was particularly horrifying how easily his control over his own psyche had subsided simply because a single genuine positive feeling in decades had washed over his brain and erased his identity. To be precise, he attempted to, or rather expected it of himself, but couldn’t. It required an inhuman amount of force for Malcolm to resist this wave of carefree serenity, and the usual Malcolm Steadman that was getting overwritten had no force of his own to present to adversity, and so he gave in. That’s how Malcolm Steadman became, at least for the time being, happy.

Without hesitation, he slammed the caf?’s door open. The people in the establishment all turned simultaneously to stare wide-eyed at the astounding example of masculine clarity and focused intentions. He crossed the distance up to the quivering barista, whose brain blanked as she froze with her finger five centimeters above the till.

“I would like,” said Malcolm in a limpid, rich voice, “a black coffee.”

“Uuuhh… yes…” replied the girl, for some reason able to express Malcolm’s own shock to his actions. “Straight away, sir.”

Malcolm figured, out of habit, that he would ponder something really depressing based on some triggering detail to pass the time until the coffee was ready. He scanned the coffee shop for any suggestion, but did not manage to spot any unpleasant sight, nor any pleasant one he could cook up some dark side to for that matter. People were still staring at him in awe. A blonde woman whispered to her boyfriend: “I wish he would ask *me* for a black coffee.”

“Same.” whispered back the boyfriend.

“Here’s your coffee, sir.”

“Thank you very much,” said Malcolm Steadman, *smiling*. That was slightly painful to him, considering it required the reactivation of atrophied muscles. As he sipped on something noticeably better than the sewer water he steamed every morning, the barista turned to face you, the reader, and said:

“This is all canon, mate. Get over it.”

Meanwhile, Malcolm stared into the black, featureless surface of the coffee he’d just tasted. His mind zoomed slowly, but ominously towards it, and the darkness began engulfing more and more of his field of view. He was entering a black portal directed to a deep, vast void of forbidden thoughts and never ending anguish; he was letting his spirit drop down into that infinite sea of death. And when that dark was all he could see and feel, outside and inside of himself, Malcolm Steadman thought: “well, this coffee tastes really good.”

“It’s one ninety-nine, sir” smiled the barista. Malcolm recognized, or decided if you prefer, that she was fairly attractive.

“Hey, what time do you get off? You’re awfully cute.”

“Ah uhm…” she hesitated, embarrassed. Which is somewhat of a pointless dance considering that the trope forces her to go out with him at the end. But, you know.

“Sorry, I don’t usually do this…” Yeah Malcolm, no shit. Still, the serenity and confidence that radiated from the born-again Malcolm Steadman ensured that the implausibly young and attractive recently met romantic interest would agree to the date and possibly anything else to allow for his personal growth as a traditional main character.

So she did. They went out and had a pleasant evening (except for the fact that they wouldn’t serve coffee and toast for dinner, which Malcolm found unacceptable). The only potential awkwardness could have arose when he had begun making a couple of disconnected tirades about carbon and plastic, but the barista found the passion and enthusiasm for whatever the fuck he was trying to talk about extremely charming. In fact, she did find him charming overall, for some reason.

They got together, she moved in. After searching for a while and doing a fair share of interviews (none of which had caused him any significant stress – “I’ll just try my best”, he always thought), he finally found a nice, fulfilling, well-paid job and sort of turned his life around. It just flowed well in the following years; few regrets, many satisfactions, and a fantastic sequence of optimally cooked toasts.

One night the full moon shone through the window and woke Malcolm Steadman up from tranquil dreams. He laid in bed, naked, next to his beautiful, sleeping and up to this point still nameless token love interest. A dangerous nostalgia crept up inside him. He remembered – with effort – all of his life before he somehow had become happy. He wondered why it had happened. If he deserved it. If it would revert back at any point in the future, exactly as suddenly as it had come. He pushed and pushed towards these pernicious thoughts. He started breathing harder. Would his girlfriend love him if he were still a sad, pathetic, self-deprecating waste of life? Would he have killed himself?

And then, it finally happened. A tiny, beautiful existential crisis popped deep inside of his guts. Like the weakest, cutest nuclear bomb. Puff – and it was gone. And to feel again a miniscule nugget of nihilist vertigo, after so many years, filled him with so much dread and joy. It was wonderful to know he was still able to be miserable, even just a bit.

Malcolm wished he could be sad.

APRIL FOOL’S!!!

That wonderful gag you just read was a part of the Serial Fiction April Fool’s Day Swap, 2017 Edition. The gag post above was written by EmptyPattern, who normally writes the story Shatterbrain.

Michael Fitzgerald, who normally writes Existential Terror and Breakfast has today created his own piece of tomfoolery for Gregory Taylor who writes Virga Mysteries.

For a full list of all April Fool’s Swappers and their stories, as well as dozens of other serial novels that will tickle your fancy, check out The Web Fiction Guide Forums.

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