The March of the Pens

When I hung up my jacket this evening I found four pens in the inside pocket. I am not sure how four ended up there. Most days there are one or two, some days none at all. There seems to be a steady movement of writing implements from my desk to my jacket, to the top of my dresser and back again. I pick up what pens I see on the dresser in the morning, and take them out of the various pockets they have crept into when I change in the evening. At the end of some days, the pens in my pocket are not the pens that were there in the morning. Other days the pens are identifiable, but their numbers have changed, seemingly at random. Years ago I read a story in which it was discovered that odd socks, tangled coat hangers and abandoned bicycles were all different stages in the life cycle of a mimetic organism, possibly alien. I begin to wonder if I have become the transport system for another organism that adopts the disguise of a common writing implement to make its migration across the wastelands of modern life to feed, breed and eventually die, leaving pen shaped skeletons in the back of drawers and in the pockets of rarely worn overcoats.