The Man with an Upside-Down Nose

Once upon a time there was a man with an upside-down nose. He was born that way. As a child, he was bullied, of course. They would throw little balls of scrunched up paper at him, bouncing them off his forehead like a basketball backboard. If they went in, he'd huff them out in a puff of air and his classmates would shake with cruel laughter on the coarse classroom carpet. Once a boy punched him, and the blood welled up and over his nostrils like a sink overflowing, like placid volcanoes, errupting, calmly. The nurse tipped his head back gently over a white basin and the blood flowed over his closed eyelids and his furrowed brow and into his hair. The nurse washed it away under the tap and the water, like dilute orange juice, gurgled away down the plug hole.

Colds were a nightmare, and he wore a baseball cap to stop raindrops going down his nose, for he grew tired of carrying an umbrella all year round, just in case.

Life was hard for him, you'd imagine, considering that when he sneezed he was blinded and when he cried he drowned. He wore goggles to prevent these things, although sometimes he would take them off, climb a tree and, hooking his legs over a bough, hang upside-down like a bat and quietly weep, weep, weep for humanity.