He ran two fingers along the side of the plush purple top hat. Luxurious, smooth velvet slipped by, darkening as he changed the orientation of the fibres. $9.99 down to 99c. What a steal!
Someone knocked into him from behind. No apology. The only thing madder than the prices were the sale-grabbing shoppers.
Afterword
The mission was to write a story of exactly 53 words about ‘madness’.
I played with a number of ideas, including writing through the lens of a character who is a little mad (think of, say, the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland).
Aside: Did you know that the phrase “mad as a hatter” came from hatters suffering from mercury poisoning, which they were exposed to during the hat-making process?
Instead, I put on my thinking hat (see what I did there? – no, don’t groan!) and came up with something more out of left field.
Photo attribution: thanks to Allison Christine on Unsplash.