The Armchair Avalanche

An old man explains how he accidentally buried his cat beneath a mountain of armchairs while trying only to rearrange them.

寓言Level A277 words

Mr. Henderson stood in his living room. Twenty red leather chairs lined the walls, all brand new and still smelling of factory dust.

"The order is wrong," Mr. Henderson said, his voice sharp as a knife. "I must fix the lines." He stood very straight. One red leather chair sat at the front, its legs touching the floor cleanly. Behind it lay a dark, empty space, deep enough to swallow a cat.

Mr. Henderson stands before one isolated red leather chair, with a deep shadowy void stretching behind it.

He moved the first chair. It creaked loudly under his boots. "Ah, yes," a soft voice whispered from the wood floor. Mr. Henderson looked down into the dark hole. It seemed deep enough for a cat. A sleeping cat often fits in any thin hole.

He moved the second chair. He swept his legs forward. "The order is wrong," Mr. Henderson said again, louder this time. The second chair slid fast against the third. It hit a wooden leg of the table nearby. A long crack ran through the plaster wall above, and dust fell onto the armrests.

He moved the third chair. It knocked into the fourth, which hit the fifth, and so they all fell together like dominoes. They rolled across the rug until they stopped exactly at his feet. The hole remained empty for just a second, then filled up fast. Mr. Henderson's bare toes touched piles of red leather. They pressed back into the wall. "The order is wrong," Mr. Henderson said one final time, now holding his breath.

The domino effect ends with a pile of chairs at Mr. Henderson's feet as dust falls from the cracked wall.

A damp smell rose from the pile. Fresh varnish mixed with old fur. A small head poked out from beneath, and a gray cat's eyes stared up at him, wide and round.