Eddie suffered from persistent nose bleeds. They had come on since he turned eighty. He was now ninety. The trouble was that the bleeds seemed to happen quite randomly. Middle of the night. Middle of the morning. Middle of the day. He tried stuffing his nose with cotton wool. He smeared the inside with Vaseline. He tried handstands. (That wasn't a good idea.) He tried ice baths. Nothing seemed to help. He was miserable.
One morning he was eating his regular bowl of rice-Krispies when he felt the familiar drip from his nose. It tickled a bit before it landed with a gentle splash in the milk in his cereal bowl.
'Abstract art,' thought Eddie.
The blood created circular patterns around each Rice-Krispie.
'I have rice-Krispie brain,' thought Eddie, 'my mind is going snap, crackle and pop.'
The Rice-Krispies started to clump into islands. Eddie sprinkled some sugar into the bowl. There was an intense crackling. Some bubbles appeared on the surface of the milk.
'Pop art,' thought Eddie, chuckling to himself.
Eddie never managed to stop his nose bleeds.
But he was much happier after the Rice-Krispie incident.