The lemonade was on the checkerboard floor in the grand foyer beyond the gold-laced double staircase every morning and it was left there for more than an hour before the boy would find it. We knew this because every morning a circle of evaporation remained on the floor after he picked up the tall glass cup. This went on for many years and the boy still wore his hat with the peacock feather and he would arrive for the lemonade through the back door every morning at 8:03 am.
The lemonade always had a wedge of orange on the lip and three square ice cubes the clinked against the thin glass, even when the glass was undisturbed. More strange, the cubes stopped clinking when the boy picked up the glass of lemonade and the orange slice dropped to the bottom of the glass and no one could pin point the exact moment when the changed had occurred. No one questioned it though, because every morning after he had sipped the last drop of lemonade he took the peacock feather out of his hat and left it in the empty glass. And then everyone knew that it was 8:05 am and the people living in the mansion could begin their day with the reassurance of what time it was because they had two reference points; the moment their pocket watches ticked 8:05 am and when the boy put his peacock feather in the glass.
But one morning the boy stumbled into the entryway at 8:04 am in a flurry, his hands searching all over the hat on his head, crumpling it into an odd sort of distorted shape. He could not find the peacock feather. He then shrunk to the size of a small statue or building or horse because he discovered the glass of lemonade was on a white square instead of a black square and the orange peel was inside of the glass instead of on the rim. And now he really started to sweat, taking off his hat and woolen vest, turning a rather red color, because he discovered the entire glass itself was upside down and he could not lift the glass without all the lemonade rushing out.
And then at that moment, upside down glasses of lemonade started popping up all over the checkerboard floor, one on each square with an unsettling randomness and the boy without the peacock feather was in a frenzy and started lifting up all the glasses of lemonade.
By now we had started to check our pocket-watches and noticed that the hands were just spinning in impossible circles and we didn’t know at all what time it was.
With each glass he lifts up he inspects the ground, squatting with his hands on his knees and his nose brushing the ground, and he did this with each glass and each time his smile got a little brighter. He watched the ground closely as he lifted the glasses, and discovered there were no rims of evaporation and he knew, therefore, the time-continuum had shifted.
No one had ever thought of leaving the mansion but the boy now ran, no he swam, outside of the house, swam until he halted mid-stroke, smashed into an invisible wall as a large opaque block floated by him. Now it was quite evident that they were all in a large glass of lemonade.