He Called Himself Glob

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He Called Himself Glob

It was a hot and lazy afternoon. A gentle breeze blew the curtains. They were closed against the heat. Outside the window, pigeons were cooing in a tree. I was in my darkened living room with a glass of ice and water, and on the sofa opposite me, in full attire, was a wizard.

He called himself Glob. And I know what you’re thinking. Wizards aren’t real. They don’t actually exist outside of fairytales. Believe me, I know, and I thought the same, until this tall, funny-looking old man appeared in my living room out of thin air.

He wore a blue robe, a blue hat — the kind of hat that wizards wear — and brown boots. His staff was wooden and bent. He wore silver half-moon earrings in each ear.

I’m not joking when I say that he appeared out of nowhere. I mean, nowhere. There was a pop, like the sound of somebody stamping on a water balloon, and it woke me up. I was dozing in front of the telly. The television was all static. You know, the kind of static that old TVs had. And there was this, well, wizard, sitting on the living room ceiling — upside down.

He said, “Sorry,” and then vanished.

There was that pop again, then — pow — there he was, on the sofa, smiling at me.

You had to be there to believe it, I guess.

He said, “My name is Globington the Third, but you can call me Glob.”

I said, “Wha—”

He said, “You’re not supposed to know that people like me exist. But, well, haha, accidents happen! How’s about you pour me a nice glass of water, and I’ll try to explain.”

I went to the kitchen to get him a drink, and as I filled a glass from the tap, the neighbour’s cat jumped over the fence, stretched in the sun, and went off again. The world outside my kitchen window looked normal. The world inside my living room had gone bonkers.

***

Three months had gone by. Three very interesting months. There are things about the world that are hidden in plain sight. But my eyes were finally open, all thanks to my friend, Glob.

I had taken to using a walking stick. Of course, it wasn’t really a walking stick. It was a gift from Glob. There were certain perks that came with keeping my mouth shut about him and his kind. One of the perks was my stick.

Let me explain. Oh, look, there I am at the back of a long queue for coffee. And now look, see how I’m tapping my walking stick on the floor three times. Woah, how did I get to the front of the queue so suddenly? You get the idea.

Didn’t anyone in the queue notice me, you ask? Nope. Why, you ask? Because — magic. That’s why. And that’s a good enough reason for my simple brain, believe me.

It wasn’t all sunshine, roses, and happy days, though. On more than one occasion, I really messed up. Big time. Or should I say, big times.

There was the time I tapped my stick on the floor four times by mistake and ended up in Spain. And once, when I was late for work, I turned every traffic light in the world green — at the same time. That was bad. But what really did it was when I stopped time, and I mean totally froze time, for a whole week.

In the middle of winter, when getting out of bed in the morning is dreadful, I woke up to the not-so-sweet sound of my alarm. It was warm in bed, and I could hear my neighbour leaving for work outside in the cold. In that moment, I wished as hard as I could, a deep and true wish, for five more minutes in bed.

My walking stick was listening. It heard my wish. And just like the good old dependable stick that it was, it made my wish come true. The neon numbers on my clock went back by five minutes. It was amazing. The only problem was they stayed there, stuck on six fifty-five a.m.

***

A few days after the time dilemma, there were five loud pops in my living room. My TV switched on. It was all static. I was in trouble.

“What do we do with him?” said a witch in dark red robes. “He knows too much. He’s too clumsy.”

As the witches and wizards were discussing my fate, it began to rain.

“Turn him into a frog?” said one of the wizards. He wore a gold frog on a silver chain around his neck.

“Like I said the last time, and like I will say the next time, we don’t turn people into frogs,” said the witch in red.

“Hear, hear.” said Glob.

A little old witch, who hadn’t spoken yet, cleared her throat. “There’s only one thing for it,” she said.

There is? I thought.

“He’ll have to come home with us.”


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