Tales of the Unexpected by Roald Dahl
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I don't think I'll forget The Landlady, The Man from the South, The Way up to Heaven, William and Mary, or Skin anytime soon. I'm grateful to all those who insisted I had to have a crack at Dahl's short stories. The Great Switcheroo's plot was funny and bizarre and oopsy-daisy-awkward, but this collection flirts with macabre, grotesque, and even gore, with a masterful, playful, brilliant way. I'm absolutely in love with his creations.

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Through the fingers of boredom that support my forehead
(What a wonderful sight to behold)
A hopeless rain droplet falls on my window (and begs for attention)
Its movement narrates a story untold.

I squint and on its reflective course I see
an immovable mass of rigid self-righteousness,
an unstoppable force of fluid unhappiness,
perplexed with the molecules that comprise it, unable to just be.

And so it floats, nameless and empty, forged to defy the worlds,
it stares and casts its judging glares through the spider veils it whirls.

And it drifts with the drafts that define its days, and climbs on made-up thrones
clad in golem’s skin, over werewolf’s rage, over vampire’s lusts, dreams and bones.

It curses the rivers for flowing, it curses the surface that moves,
It curses the birds and the lizards, it curses the kingdom’s rules.

Every day it drops on life’s glass window,
Every move in the spotlight, demented hero.
Every step and another chance to fail;
every failure another dramatic performance,
in self-pity it chases its tail.

On its throne, before its downfall, at the end of the production,
The tragic droplet mourns again –steamy amoeba’s reproduction–
and breaks into honest tears (its impending doom delayed).

I thought I saw it turning to myself for a reaction,
I might have even heard its final words, uttered only for my satisfaction:

“Out, alas! I’ve been an ignorant fool!” said the droplet and then met the soil.
For a moment I pondered–
But in the end, I rolled my eyes and muttered: “No shit, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle”.