The adventures of Hot Chip

Hot Chip was a simple man. In fact, it was dubious as to whether or not he was even a man. His minute stature, coupled with a surprisingly portly build, gave him the appearance of a bouncy ball rather than a human being. His arms stuck out from the sides of his torso as if they had been stuck on at the last minute, whilst his legs were long enough to knot.

Hot Chip didn’t mind, though. Hot Chip was happy with himself, and he loved his Creator for designing him.

He knew his name was Hot Chip because the words were stuck to his cradle. It was his earliest memory; gazing wide-eyed at the new world before him, peering past the folds of the ceiling and excitedly wondering what was beyond the cross-hatched bars that encircled him. Beneath his feet were the words ‘Hot chip’, and he knew that was his name. There were other words near his cradle, too, but none as close or as prominent as Hot Chip. The vibrant reds, the way the light caught the letters, the shine of the outline…. His birth certificate was beautiful. Not like the poor fool called Cotton Bud. Their name was plain, pastel blue and bland white, and their birth certificate was nowhere near as big as Hot Chip’s.

It took Hot Chip a while to work his way out of his cradle. He called it growing up, because he knew that was what humans did. Day by day he peeled millimetres of his body away from the confines of his swaddle, eventually close enough to stroke the gleaming words of his birth certificate. It was scented, too! The smells tickled his nose, but he was happy. Bet Cotton Bud didn’t have a scented birth certificate.

A myriad of obstacles kept Hot Chip from exploring beyond the confines of his house for quite a while. Every time he dared to stray further from his bed, a new ceiling had been imposed. Once, the ceiling had shimmered in the same way his birth certificate did, and he was entranced, compelled to reach up and touch it. That was the farthest that Hot Chip had ever gone, scrambling over scraps of beige and ivory furniture in his quest to embrace the light. The rich purples and deep golds were hypnotic, and Hot Chip yearned to discover what he should call this ‘ceiling’. Could something so beautiful truly be called a ceiling? Surely, it was art.

On that day, Hot Chip discovered beauty.

Regrettably, when he was a breath away from knowing the glory of the ceiling, his foot slipped. One of the thin decorations that filled his house was sticky, for some reason, and he fell prone, slick with fluid. Hot Chip had seen enough of his decor get ruined by this mysterious substance that he knew to move quickly, to return to the sanctuary of his bed before he became glued to the ornament. He was able to slide down, returning to his spawn point, wistfully wondering when he would make it to the top of his house.

While he waited for his grey clothes to dry, Hot Chip observed the outdoors. His house was full of windows - some might call them bars - that offered him a relatively unobstructed view of the great beyond. He knew that the earth was a deep, fluffy blue, often terraformed with crumpled mountains of felt. The horizon was marked by a strong stripe of white, breaking up the ground and the sky, both shades of navy. Somewhere to the East there was an entire unexplored land, blocked from Hot Chip’s view by a behemoth of wood that stretched into the atmosphere. He had never seen the top but he assumed it led to a fantastic new world, perhaps a world as glittering and phenomenal as the beauty that graced his house.

Hot Chip was determined to one day find out what it was like to explore the outside. He just had to dry off first.

Some time later, he became aware that he was dry, but he didn’t know how much time had passed. He could see that his world was slowly lightening, casting his house into irregular shadows as rays deflected off his roofs and ornaments. Hot Chip loved to watch as his birth certificate was illuminated, casting his house into ruby splendour.

When the light had finished stretching its fingers over the ground, reaching a point of stability, Hot Chip decided to venture upwards once more. To his disappointment and shock, the ceiling was gone. Evidently the Creator had decided to take it for themself.

In that moment, Hot Chip discovered rage.

Incensed, he doubled his efforts to conquer the house. Furniture crumbled away beneath his feet, repeatedly tossing him back to the start. Yet he persevered. Anything could be a hand hold if you were fuelled by fury.

The velocity that Hot Chip’s tiny mind was working at suddenly produced a startling new idea. Why not use the walls to climb? They were perfectly sized. Each window, glassless and hollow, could serve as a hold. He would finally reach the top.

Filled with violent resolve, Hot Chip started his ascent. He didn’t know what he was going to do to the Creator when he got out. He didn’t even know how to see the Creator. He just knew he wanted his ceiling back. He had been so starved, so lonely, dependent on a scrap of birth certificate to bring him joy. Ha! All that was moot. He had seen heaven, and it had smiled down upon him before being cruelly snatched away by a malevolent god. The Creator did not deserve such jewels, not if they were just under-appreciated. Hot Chip would worship that ceiling. He would preserve it, adore it, and the Creator had taken it from him. And for what? What uncultured creature would tear that art from its position of reverential glory?

Hot Chip was going to find out.

-------

“Mikey, it’s recycling day, bring down your paper basket!”

“Alright mum!”

-------

He had done it. He had reached the summit. Arms splayed, feet gripping the rungs of his makeshift ladder, Hot Chip surveyed the landscape before him. He was not tired - he wasn’t sure he could feel tired - but there was a hollow within him where his anger had been. Deflated, his insides felt as desolate as the landscape ahead.

What was he even planning to do, huh? How could he attack his Creator when he didn’t know for sure how, or where they were, or even if they existed?

Hot Chip now understood tiredness. He was entirely worn out. He slumped over the rim of his house, not even wondering why he had no ceiling, just a circular void leading down to his bedroom. He did not wonder at anything. It was so tempting to just let go of the wall, slide back to his bed, and face his birth certificate until joy sparked within him once more.

Hot Chip’s forlorn state was abruptly interrupted. Thundering feet advanced towards his home, shaking the foundations of everything Hot Chip held dear. He clung onto the walls with a frantic terror, hardly daring to look up at the Creator who held his entire being in just a few fingers. When he was wishing beyond all else to be able to meet and punish the Creator, he didn’t realise how darn big the Creator was. They could lift Hot Chip’s house in a few digits!

“Eh? What’s this?” the Creator intoned. Their voice peeled through Hot Chip’s body like a death knell as the fingers of their free hand swept towards the prone being. He closed his blurry eyes and begged somebody, anybody to spare him from this inevitable reckoning.

Fat fingers crept past Hot Chip and dived into the bowels of his home. To his horror, the Creator grasped his birth certificate, withdrawing it from its pride of place opposite Hot Chip’s bed.

-------

Mikey examined the scrap of foil quizzically. “Why did I put this in here? This is landfill,” he mused aloud. Thoughtlessly, he tossed it into his general waste bin before turning on his heel and departing with his paper recycling.

-------

Hot Chip was shaken both literally and emotionally as his home was flung through the air. He fell ungainly, crushed and tossed amidst the ruins of his house. There was no birth certificate to cling to - it was apparently something called ‘landfill’.

If he could cry, Hot Chip would have. How could something so focal to his life be ‘landfill’? It did not just fill land, it had filled his entire being. He was built off the reality that the birth certificate provided. Who was he, without it? Was he still Hot Chip?

Before he could philosophise any further, Hot Chip and all of his belongings were upended and unceremoniously deposited into a large, green box. Suffocating, buried beneath his history, Hot Chip closed his eyes, wondering how on earth he was going to escape this new prison.

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“Are you sure you don’t want to keep these?” Mikey’s mum asked, peering at the box of doodles with motherly pride. “Some are quite good.”

“Nah,” Mikey replied, already leaving the room. “They’re all trash.”

“They’re art, Mikey-”

“Just doodles, Mum. Nothing important.”