Losing the Plot

We’ve lost the plot. It happens. Plots get lost all the time; it’s not that unusual. But no one around here seems to have any idea how it happened, when it happened, or what the plot even was. Old Man Griffith, the village grump, has taken to standing astride the fern in the lobby of our office building and scratching at his scruffy chin. Yes, astride. Does that have something to do with the missing plot? None of us knows, and Old Man Griffith doesn’t seem to know, either. This just feels right, he says, and the rest of us choose to keep our distance. There’s also a well just outside the office building. An old-timey water well, in the middle of a scrubby field. Go ahead and peer down into it; you won’t see anything of note. It’s not like there’s a boy in the well. If there was a boy in the well, we’d really have something. We’d have a plot, the plot being: get boy out of well. But there’s nothing. The well isn’t even haunted. Good luck finding a demon in it. You can’t even drop something down into the well, like a cell phone. “Help me get cell phone out of well” isn’t much of a plot, but it is one. There’s steel mesh over the opening; you can’t even fit a quarter through it. No one’s been murdered. Everyone is accounted for. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. But there aren’t even any illicit affairs going on, and you can forget about malfeasance and skullduggery. Go ahead and attempt to uncover corruption in the mayor’s office. You won’t find shit. Mostly we’re all just confused. We share a distinct feeling of having had a plot at one time, but that’s about as deep as our collective memory goes. We go to the office, which isn’t up to something nefarious; we eat our nachos, which are not made of people; we drink our tap water, which isn’t laced with poison. But today Agnes, the village librarian, said something that changed everything. Doesn’t our search for a missing plot constitute a plot? she said. We thought about this. My god, we said. Agnes, you’ve done it! That’s not all, she said. My son just fell in the well. And the village rejoiced.