The Highest Prime Number

The highest prime number sat solemnly in a corner, alternately sulking and going mad. He wore an expression similar to that of someone who has won the grand lottery only to find that they’d lost the ticket through a hole in their pocket while celebrating with their pants on their head. The highest prime # sat warmly and resentfully in the rickety rocking chair in the corner of the circus that was his new home. He resented the craziness of this new place, he resented the loneliness. He relentlessly resented the way the strange parrot upstairs always eyed him, seemingly evilly, from her perch. Most of the time he just sat resenting the fact that he resented everything so much and wishing that he had never come here. It was not at all how he had pictured it, it was massively worse than anything he had ever experienced, and it offered him frighteningly slim odds of returning to his, now increasingly pleasant, former existence.

The highest prime number generally resented this greatly, and not just because the lowest prime number owed him six quid from a long-standing and much debated bet on which of them was divisible by more numbers, which went something like this. The highest prime number would claim that since it was so high as to be close to infinity, that it was readily divisible by all other numbers to which the lowest prime number would reply, all the while trying its best to bodily convey that this was not a line of inquiry it was prepared to consider, that near infinity isn't infinity; the highest prime number would then explain that even if this was the case, which it most certainly wasn't, the lowest prime number was only divisible by itself whereas it, the highest prime number, would be divisible by itself AND the lowest prime number, to which the lowest prime number would reply that it had no truck with that sort of thinking either, would not, under any circumstances, be a divisor for the highest prime number, and that it, the highest prime number, was more than welcome to go divide itsself.

This, or something like it, would set them off and they’d rage on and on about it, or something like it, into the wee hours of the morning until the highest prime number’s girlfriend would come downstairs and demand to know what all the commotion was about. After a short period of a mixture of angry declarations, embarrassed silences, and uncomfortable looks, it became apparent that the highest prime number would go another night without his winnings, and that this would be the least of his problems. His girlfriend, a shapely little factorial, would calmly, or not so calmly depending on the sort of night she’d had, explain that the nature of a prime number was that it wasn't readily divisible by other numbers and she would go on to ask, not so calmly and regardless of the night she’d had, who were these other prime #s he’d been talking to anyway. She’d further add, with a slight tightening of voice and posture, that if the highest prime number didn't stop this nonsense and come to bed immediately he would be finding out just how lonely a prime number could become.

And how lonely he had become since hiding himself away forever, something that seemed like a great, if not incredibly improbable, opportunity at the time but which had become a decision he had rapidly come to regret. The coalescing had been a particularly nasty business he’d just as soon forget about, but could not due to a severe case of Potent Memory he’d woken up with that morning which was now in full swing as he sat in a corner that was now becoming resentful as well. The highest prime number resented many things about his current predicament, but what he resented most was the constant knocking, which had been so pervasive that it had received a promotion to Part-Time Imaginary Sound, on a door he could not find. It was as if every time he would seek out the source of the incessant knocking, the door would somehow sense his coming and retreat like a spider fleeing a shoe in an overly messy laundromat. The knocking occurred at random intervals of time and for varying duration in each room, dependent on several horrifically complicated factors, and it was often quite loud.

It came from behind what was presumably a door; but not just any door. A very special door. It was, if it was indeed a door at all, the only door in the house that was now the failed personal utopia for the highest prime number. If the door was a special door, the house itself was just plain weird. It looked like something Salvador Dali might paint after several rather bad and concussive nights out drinking. The smattered walls looked as if someone had just sat and poured cans of paint in a series of giant fans every day for a good number of years. Little splotches of complimentary colors lived long and prosperous, if not incredibly improbable, lives across every conceivable canvasable surface in each of the house’s seventeen bizarrely different rooms. Far less harmoniously, giant blotches of singular colors established fuzzy borders with each other all over the floors. Depending on the lighting, the whole scene was either pleasantly distracting to the eye or the cause of permanent vertigo. The circus-like mishmash of colors also made it impossible to tell precisely where the perpetually incessant knocking was coming from, and so afforded the highest prime number very little comfort.

The highest prime number sat solemnly in a corner. This wasn't fair at all.