Arthur tilted his head, squinting at the flat sheet of metal on the table. “You sure these are scissors?” he asked, scratching his head, the strands of hair rising like confused guests at a party.

Emily, perched on a rickety chair, nodded sagely. “Indeed, they are. Just not your ordinary ones. They’re… philosophical scissors.”

Arthur chuckled, the sound curling in the air like smoke. “And they cut, philosophically speaking, what exactly?”

“Illusions,” Emily replied, her eyes sparkling with a mischief only found in children and fools. “They reveal layers, Arthur. The layers we all miss.”

Their voices danced around the dimly lit attic, each syllable a tiny acrobat landing perfectly in its tent of meaning. They were caught in a game, one whispered among shadows playfully masking the heavy ticking of the clock that lurked in the silence.

As Arthur contemplated the possibilities of flat scissors, his mind wandered into a stream of consciousness, reminiscent of Joyce. Thoughts meandered through the corridors of his mind like tourists with no particular itinerary. He sifted through childhood memories, fragments of dreams that clung to his reality with the stubbornness of spiders’ webs in old corners.

“Remember Jadis?” Arthur asked, an unexpected tour guide pointing at the dusty photographs of their past. “Remember her theory about universal games? Everything’s a game, she’d say, while balancing on the tightrope of reality.”

Emily laughed, a sound so sharp it could slice through the air. “Oh, Jadis! Queen of the ludicrous. If life’s a game, we’re the clumsy players eternally forgetting the rules.”

“And yet,” Arthur added, leaning forward with a conspiratorial grin, “here we are, fascinated by a pair of flat scissors.”

Emily picked up the scissors, turning them over in her hands. “Perhaps,” she mused, “the flatness is key. It forces us to redefine cutting.”

They sat in silence, their minds engrossed in a surreal dance, their thoughts performing intricate steps with reckless elegance. Each sentence unfurled like a tightly wound ribbon, each idea a small rebellion against the mundane.

The attic, with its peeling wallpaper and dust-covered secrets, watched their conversation with a knowing hush. It was an old place, a weary caretaker of stories whispered and shouted, filled with laughter that echoed long after the voices had gone.

“Life, death, illusions,” Arthur remarked, threading his words carefully as if stringing beads. “Jadis would say we’re all in a game of hide and seek. We’re both the hiders and the seekers.”

“Or maybe,” Emily offered, her voice laced with a touch of black humor, “we’re just the ones lost. Wandering with philosophical scissors in hand, slicing illusions that were never there in the first place.”

Arthur burst into laughter, a sound that melted into the very walls, leaving cracks in its wake. “Isn’t it wonderful?” he asked, gesturing at the endlessly spinning world outside their window.

Emily grinned wide, the kind of grin that made everything seem sinister and sardonic. “Delightful, truly,” she said.

As the clock ticked away in the background, its hands ever so slowly slicing away the minutes, Arthur and Emily sat amidst the clutter of memories and thoughts. The flat scissors lay between them—a philosophical emblem of revelations.

In the end, it was all just a game, laughter, and an understanding that sometimes even the most absurd tools can cut to the heart of what it means to search for meaning.

They didn’t need anything to change; for them, finding humor in the dark, tangled web of existence was a triumph in itself.