The Overgown

It was magic!

She opened her overgown to reveal a scene of forests and castles in the sky embroidered on its lining. It was an exquisite world filled with movement.

Then she quickly closed the overgown.

When it was opened again, the wonderful dimension had gone and was replaced with the island destinations Jim and Alice had flown to over the years.

How could this mystic in the sideshow of a rundown funfair know the places they had visited? Between them, this couple had generated more air miles and pollution than a head of state. And they had many more trips planned before their pension pots were eventually drained.

It was difficult to see what such a skilled illusionist was doing in these tawdry surroundings, and why was there no other audience in this small tent? Her performance was just for them. It was not only astonishing, but a little scary and Jim and Alice would have preferred some company.

The next time the illusionist opened her overgown some more countries they had visited were revealed, but not those places tourists snapped with their smartphones and posted on Facebook. Beyond those sites that attracted visitors were the slums, the scorched land of failed crops, and places where people lived on the brink of starvation.

Jim and Alice did not want to see any more, but another sweep of the overgown revealed burning forests which filled the tent with suffocating smoke.

Jim and Alice were not aware that the mysterious funfair was moving on. Roundabouts parents would not allow their children to ride, and a shooting gallery that had rifles with crooked sites no one would have dared pick up, were packed into their trailers before disappearing into the night.

The illusionist's tent folded itself like a huge piece of origami and flapped off into the moonlit sky.

Jim and Alice suddenly woke.

They were on a tropical island in a shack overlooking a turquoise sea.

Neither remembered booking a flight to this exotic location, and if they had they would have chosen a hotel.

The couple were so overwhelmed by the beauty of the place, they did not immediately notice that they were without luggage and dressed like the islanders further up the shore who were busily ferrying their worldly goods to higher ground.

Jim and Alice’s shack was being lapped by the incoming tide. All they could think of was to save their passports. They should have been in their luggage...