“Katie, your word is flocculent.”

“Flocculent,” I said. “May I have a definition?”

“Having or resembling tufts of wool.”

“Can you use it in a sentence?”

“The first snows of winter lay thick,” intoned the pronouncer, “and flocculent.”

“Flocculent,” I repeated, more to myself. Did it have one C or two? Wool, sheep, flocks. Might it have a K in it? It sounded Latinate, so maybe not.

“F-L-O-C,” I began, in my best impression of loud and clear. Then I took off my glasses, set them on the podium, and dilated. Within seconds I had grown so fast that my head smashed through the auditorium roof. Fifty feet tall, I overlooked the boulevard. Then I snapped and the cars on the interstate turned into great galumphing stallions. The mountains in the distance briefly flickered into ziggurats and cotton candy and seventies wallpaper. A sprawling castle, strange and non-Euclidean, sat where the Macy’s once stood. I dissolved into a mist, let my particles travel a million paths by airborne transmission through the ornate double-doors, and I reconstituted myself into the shapes of Alex Trebek and a sea lion. In the centre of the Grand Hall I encountered a woman with a Chinese lantern for a face. Old decadent jazz floated across the hall from no discernable source.

“Begin,” intoned the Lantern Woman.

Alex Trebek curtsied and the Sea Lion whinnied.

“Poise,” snapped the Lantern Woman. Off to one side a panel of well-dressed people held up numbers: 5, 6, 5. Off to the other side a monkey clapped with a tambourine and inched closer to us.

Alex Trebek curtsied more elaborately and the Sea Lion whinnied more creatively.

“Form,” snapped the Lantern Woman. The judges held up new numbers: 3, 3, 4. The monkey closed half the distance. An invisible crowd booed and blew raspberries over the jazz.

We’ve got one more chance.

Alex Trebek twitched, and the Sea Lion mooed.

“Intonation,” snapped the Lantern Woman. The disapproving roar of the crowd grew deafening, and the monkey pulled out a shotgun and levelled it at us.

Just then a flying trolley burst through the castle walls, and Alex Trebek leapt onto its side as the interstate stallions galloped in and ate the Sea Lion. The late Jeopardy! host shouted various French obscenities, which so enraged the Lantern Woman that she sucked him and the entire Universe—Fweeeeeeooop!—into her lantern-head.

Ding!

“I’m sorry,” said the pronouncer, “that is incorrect.”