This is my least favourite short story and I often considered revoking it’s online status. Now, people often tell me that it really isn’t so bad and that they liked it – reverse psychology isn’t founded on nothing it seems.
It was alright as far as the stairwell, but then it would go no further. It seemed weary with life and obstinate. It had too awkward a size to make it up the stairs, it claimed, with its strange long limbs and bulging shapes in odd areas. I tried explaining to it, that it would be completely irrational of it to just stand in the middle of the hallway, wrapped in plastic and cardboard, when it could settle for a nice, warm, long life just one stairway up. It didn’t pay any attention to me and just claimed that I didn’t “get it” at all.
Of course, I couldn’t just leave it there on its own. I had invested a lot of money in that couch and had big plans for it. So, I started trying to force it upstairs – pushing it hard, for its own sake of course. But it had grown to big for me to handle, and it had too strange a shape to fit into normal conventions. So it said, hysterical creature. Soon it even started hurting itself, if you would believe it. Cutting itself on the sides of the hallway, as I was pushing it upstairs – completely over dramatically; claiming that this was the only way for it to feel anything at all. It’s a couch! What did it expect?
Well, of course I didn’t have the heart to keep pushing it and I let it slide back down. But I wasn’t about to settle for a defeat yet. I couldn’t just let it destroy its own life, so I took away it’s cushions – and upholstery as well – basically all of its privileges. If it wanted that badly to be left on its own, I would show it how life was on your own. So there we were – it standing in the hallway, freezing and naked with (sort of) self-inflicted cut-wounds, and me in my flat, barely ten meters away, with cushions and upholstery that only reminded me of my couch and the happy times we had had back when it was all new and innocent. I had to do something.
The couch seemed content to be left on its own in the hallway, it neither moved or seemed to regret anything. So I arranged to have it moved into the neighbors flat, promising it that it would go in whatever fashion it chose and I wouldn’t try to force it up the stairs or anything. So, the damn thing had to be hoisted up with wires to my neighbor’s window, would you believe it, or it wouldn’t enter the building at all. Once we had all gone out of our way to please its passion for cheap thrills, we could finally move it the last piece of the way into my flat. And it was home!
Sure, it has had its little adventure, but we don’t talk about that anymore. I think we all agree that it was very silly. The important thing is that its home now, in front of my television where it belongs and where I can keep an eye on it. Look out for it. Sometimes I wonder if its truly happy there, it looks sort of sad standing in front of the same television all the time. But then I remind myself that it is happier here with me than on its own, and one day it will realize the same.
And then it will thank me, I’m sure.
By Jeppe Grünberger