1480. Pillow case

Contessa was a tiny worm, undetectable, that lived inside the pillow on Nerissa’s bed. Every night, Contessa would wiggle her way out through a little hole in the corner of Nerissa pillow, crawl into Nerissa’s ear, and enter her brain. Once in the brain, Contessa would rearrange all the new information that Nerissa had gathered during the previous day.

This was a necessary thing for Contessa to do, because Nerissa was forever planning to air the pillow in the sunshine the next day. Nothing would kill a worm off quicker than warm sunlight. Hence, for Contessa, deleting data related to the airing of the pillow was paramount. It was self-preservation.

Over the years, Contessa grew longer. Now, when she entered Nerissa’s brain, Contessa’s tail hung several inches out of Nerissa’s ear. These days, there seemed so much more information in Nerissa’s brain to process. Some nights, Contessa never finished sorting and deleting. And then the inevitable happened…

In her sleep, Nerissa scratched her ear, and in doing so, Contessa split in half. For a while the dislocated bottom half wiggled away, but Contessa’s top half panicked and scrambled back to the safety of the pillow.

Because the job of sorting was unfinished, Nerissa remembered the next day to air the pillow. Contessa’s top half died in the warmth of the sun.

It didn’t matter though, for Contessa’s bottom half was safely hiding in Nerissa’s other pillow. Her life’s work would begin the following night.

1286. Nice portraits of mice

When Mitchell stood up straight from weeding the garden, he accidentally hit his head on a plank that the house painters had placed between two ladders. It was quite a severe knock and Mitchell had concussion. He spent three days in hospital before returning home.

What amazed people, including specialists, was that the accident seemed to have activated a section of his brain hitherto dormant. Suddenly Mitchell discovered he could paint pictures of cute field mice; field mice in a corn field; field mice eating cheese; field mice taunting cats. He even painted a delightfully intricate picture of a mouse flying a de Havilland Tiger Moth aircraft! These paintings sold for hefty prices; so hefty in fact that Mitchell and his wife were able to purchase a house free from debt.

“They’re not simply pictures of mice,” said the curator of the city museum, “it’s the thought processes behind it. Mitchell is able to convey feelings of beauty, insignificance, aloneness, grandeur. Even the sky above the mice conveys varying deep emotions. With one knock on the head he is able to portray scenes of incomparable exquisiteness.”

Unfortunately, Mitchell drove his wife to drink. He was totally nuts.