play writing class...

The task was to write something in the style of someone else.
Here's what I wrote:

Fred Wakes Up
In the style of Douglas Adams


Frederick Planter woke up one morning and realized all the things he had been having a hard time remembering were no longer troubling him. Those things became less of a concern as he was now not able to remember anything at all.
He didn’t know where he was or how he got there. He didn’t know who he was. He was somewhat sure that his name was Frederick Planter, but that was only because he found a large piece of paper on the table beside the bed he had been sleeping in with that name on it.
It somehow did not concern him that that name was the last one in a long list of names that had been crossed out. It seemed to fit.
He made his way downstairs to the kitchen to begin making a nice pot of tea and was confused by the fact that he was not at all confused as to where the teapot was kept. If he could not remember anything, which he was sure he could not, how did he know where the teapot was?
Further, it occurred to him that he was thinking these things via an internal monologue. There was vocabulary being used to represent the thoughts he was having.
“Clearly, I must remember some things…”, he began to say, then stopped when he realized the sounds that came out of his mouth when he spoke, were not the same sounds he heard when he talked to himself in his head.
This frightened him quite severely.
He began to pull various images out of his head to see what he thought the words for them were.
He pictured a small, friendly animal with four legs, covered in fur that barked occasionally. The fur did not bark, the animal did, he corrected himself. The animal, his mind said, was, “Dog.” His voice, however, said, “Geegawk.”
This process was repeated several times with the same effect, only using different sets of mind words that made sense matched with mouth words that did not.
While he was lost in thought, naming things then hearing the wrong names for them come out of the front of his face, he managed to burn the water he heating up for tea.
He looked down, saw the water singeing and experienced a feeling very close to vertigo.
“Water can’t burn,” he said out loud in words that didn’t mean anything to him.
The instant he recalled that water could not burn, it didn’t.
No longer in the mood for tea, he put the kettle aside and stood looking out what he thought was a window. As he didn’t see anyone coming up the walk to explain what was going on (and he so desperately wanted to see exactly that) he went into the bathroom and took a shower.
In the shower he was overcome by a depth of loneliness and sadness he had never felt before. Unless, of course, he had, but forgot.