Part 43: Mystic numbers and hidden warnings…

Penelope's brain smouldered with confused inklings of mystic numbers and hidden warnings.

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Someday, Penelope would pen a masterpiece! One day soon, during her haphazard leafing through her many sacred tomes, God would reveal the greatest discovery that mortals had faced. Everything, she determined in that moment, was a symbol—not just the book’s holy signs, but all physical omens. With excitement, she tried to foretell the future and reveal the unknown. Outside, the sun shone brightly, sending a shaft of brilliance that illuminated a globe of the Earth by her bureau. She ventured, “If it continues to shine on the globe for five minutes, then it will mean I’m to travel to South America. There, I will live under a new disguise and spend my money.”

She chewed her fingernails and watched the hands on her alarm clock. The sunlight almost lasted four minutes and then faded as a cloud passed before it. She gasped.
It was a warning, and she quaked. Would she ever leave this place of dull brooding? She had once thought it a clever refuge, now it imprisoned her.

She suddenly saw it all. “I ran away and hid in a prison! Justice doesn’t catch the criminal, he or she catches himself or herself!”

Again she tried, the best of three. She speculated about whether the number of carrots stored in her pantry was greater or less than five. If greater, then she had sinned. If less, then she was beyond the law. She pushed her chair back, rose, and raced to the bedroom door, sweating with the suspense of the test.

Suddenly, she stopped at the head of the stairs and cried, “Am I going crazy?” Her brain smouldered with confused inklings of mystic numbers and hidden warnings.
 
 
To be continued… 
The real world:
 
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Like to know more about Alf, Bert and the rest of the gang? You can read their chaotic history in What on Earth.
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Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay