=The Mystery Cup=

This is how you could sum up her life: She wanted what was in the one cup whose contents were forever hidden from her. She wanted the wanting. That is why she never lifted the cloth, keeping what lay inside the cup hidden from herself. It was a common enough malady. She figured she wanted what she could never have, just like everyone else. Her infirm father disagreed. "What you are describing is a magic cup. But it's got monsters in it, too. You don't want to let either out. It's enough to know that they're in there. That knowledge alone enchants your life." Paul came home from work in a great mood that evening. Work had gone well that day for a change. He didn't want to hear the old man's senile ramblings about magic and monsters. He didn't want to see his wife's pretense of earnest interest and rapturous admiration. Intended as kindness, they only served to encourage the crackbrained coot. Paul ate his meatloaf hunched over in a hadal silence. He glared at the clock above the sink just to be looking at something, as if it were the hole through which someone was shoveling the dirt burying him alive.