9. The Portrait Of A Lady
Everything was in fast-forward motion, as if it were controlled by a huge remote control by a god-know-who. Could be recollect any memory of his way back from the hospital? Any bumps and hitches had his attention? Something autonomic had taken over his body, propelling him forward but just like a machine, there’s no thinking.
The fast-forward only stopped when he was back to his home, after managing to beg or to put it a more evasive term, persuade his daughter to send him back from the hospital. He was glad that he still had chance to break free from the draconian nurses and cemetery-like hospital.
Back to his house, the first thing he did was to inhale the scent of his house. 2 weeks in the hospital made it such a long time that even a faint scent of his room nearly brought tears to his eyes. Sitting up straight on the wheel chair, he lost his usual agility but at least, he was not bedridden, a fact which he cherished as much as his life.
There’s a family portrait hung on the wall of the living room. It’s so huge that it nearly cover the whole wall and some of his visitors ever commented that the portrait was more pressing than the wall. Pressing? He was wondering what’s more ‘pressing’ than the wall, which was an eyesore due to the poor interior design of this apartment.
“Oh, just forget about the portrait,” he wondered since the portrait had become so irritating. Before being admitted to the hospital, every morning, when he was going out for breakfast, he would stop in front of the pictures and savour any detail he might have missed in his previous visit to the pictures. It seemed in every ‘visit’, a term coiled by him, there would be a fresh surprise awaiting him.
Two days before the operation, he spotted a mole, which he never knew existed, on top of his cheekbone. There it’s, not very obvious, but apparent enough to stir his curiosity. Was that an omen? Was he destined to be paralyzed? One day before he spotted the mole, he found out there were exactly three lines of wrinkles on his meticulously-tailored tuxedo.
Portrait inspection used to be his daily routine, but not today. He was in no mood to entertain the ridiculous portrait. Neither could he explain the dissatisfaction brewing inside him. Hence, he put his blame on the strenuous operation and the haunting atmosphere of the hospital.
Sitting on the cozy couch now, he felt a sudden affiliation to the handle of the couch. He placed his palms on the wooden handles and summoned all his strength to his palms. Slowly and cautiously, he used his arms to support his whole body up from the couch. Panting, he was excited nonetheless. There’s a message behind this, certainly there’s one and he didn’t need much time to figure it up.
He could stand up again. The strength, which was once draining away from him had found the way back to his body. There’s no doubt that he could walk again. Amidst the euphoria, he ignored his daughter calling from the kitchen. “This is my world, this is my world,” he muttered.
Then everything was set in fast-forward motion again. Somehow, he was carried back to his bed by his son-in-law without any awareness. He couldn’t recall any detail of his ‘exodus’ from the living room back to his own room. Perhaps, that was the sign of his recovery. “I could walk as fast as this, it’s not over,” he could hardly swallow his exuberance. But, he was too lethargic and he dozed off soon he was put back to his bed.
He woke up 2 hours later. As phantasmagoric as it felt, the nap he just was laced with incongruous juxtapositions. Visions, intertwined with contradictions danced like a baroness in his dream, as gracefully as it seemed. After this nap, he discovered not only his visions had been altered, but also his five senses had been enhanced.
His apartment was on the twelfth floor, but he could hear distinct chattering of the children playing in the playground of the park. Terrified by his newly found ability, he forced himself up, hands on the frame of the window. He could barely raise himself up from the bed but that’s sufficient for him to get a full view on everything outside of the window.
Then, he saw something bizarre with his own eyes, with eyesight newly enhanced. There were no children playing in the playground. Instead, he witnessed some other things that looked very familiar like he had just visited one by one. “I need brainstorming,” he surmised. And he outlined what he saw into ten parts:
1. There’s an ice-cream vendor with lilac colour umbrella. A boy was standing under the umbrella, extending his hands warmly to a couple, presumably his parents.
2. A man was lying on the bed, with heavy bandages wrapping around his head. A lady was holding his hands and wailing heartily. The boy was looking straight into his mum as if he were searching for something he didn’t even know.
3. 98 people were at a cemetery. The two who were visible was the boy and the wailing lady. She was hollering like a beast while the coffin was lowered into the crypt. Confusions broke out, like an earthquake when the lady pointed her finger to the boy and shoulder, “It’s your crime we have to shoulder the punishment.”
4. In a lavishly designed mansion, the lady was holding a bottle with label ‘malathion’. She shut the door of her room and poured the content of that bottle into her small mouth.
5. The boy was standing at the doorway, gingerly, he pushed open the door. He didn’t scream when he saw a body lying lifelessly on the ground and bubbles were oozing out from its mouth like boiling water. A faint smile was hanging on his face.
6. The boy was now a teenager. He was in his room, writing some kinds of notes. The handwriting was nearly illegible but everybody could tell it was repetition of ‘crime and punishment’.
7. A man was standing by the window, looking down from his apartment. Before this, he had arranged all the furniture and cleaned all the corners of the house until the hose was sparkling clean. Then, without any hesitation, he mounted the window frame and pushed open the grill. With the same faint smile on his face, he leaped into the glorious evening sun.
8. A man was making love to his wife in a small room. Amid the ferocious love-making and gusty groaning, his wife said, ‘it’s not your crime’.
9. That man was at the same cemetery again. Despite the heavy rain, both of knees were anchored in the moist soil. People could no longer distinguish whether the moist on his face was tears or the rain. The tolling of a bell could be heard from a distant church.
Before figuring out the tenth part, as if struck by thunderbolt, his whole body went stiff. “I know what this is!” The visions no longer seemed strange to him with every pieces of puzzle came together in the right orientation.
“No!” he howled dejectedly.
10. The Heart Of Darkness
“Let me guess, the ten pictures or visions, they all are in metallic black colour right? You don’t have to answer me and I know you won’t. Why black? Why metallic? Story of darkness, maybe… There are many parts you yourself can’t possibly expound right? Pardon me for my haughtiness, you seem uncertain with your own story. Firstly, why the guy had to shoulder the punishment for the crime he never committed? Unlike my story, there are causes and effects. Nobody ran from the responsibilities. I think you try too hard to give this story a splendid ending but you fail ultimately. Tell me, are you trying to reconstruct a irreversible destructive ending? There are no ways, let’s stop those illusions…you are talking about life! Not something you can toy with.
When the darkness slowly encroaches in your story, you must be aware of that. Instead, you try to dispel the glowing darkness and build a whole new make-believe world. How naïve and how amateur you are as a story teller…”
I listened quietly to his forceful comments. At certain points of his comments, I wished I could stop him but I refrained myself from doing that. Perhaps, because deep down inside me, I knew perfectly that he was right. But when my weaknesses were exposed in such unscrupulous way, it’s hard for me to control my fury anymore.
He fell silent suddenly. Instinctively, I turned to my back and to my dismay, the ‘stalker’ was back, it was just outside of the plaza. It was slowly approaching me and I didn’t even have much time to consider my options before I sprinted to the exit of the plaza.
As I scrambled to the exit for life, I still could hear, “You are a lousy story-teller!”
11. Atonement
He was now flying, without wings and wind. As he plunged down to the hard concrete ground, he rearranged all the visions. Satisfied now, because he had finally freed himself from the agony, the agony of the boy, the teenager and the man who always perceived this world as a shallow and closed globe. Once he was airborne, surprisingly, he became blind.
On a spur of moment, he was panicked. This wasn’t his choice, to die blindly. He wanted to see, wanted to observe, wanted to expound everything image he received. But soon as he passed by the eleventh floor, he was relieved to know that he hadn’t gone entirely oblivious. Although his eyes no longer functioned, a new system had replaced it and made his eyesight, which he once found indispensable obsolete and redundant.
Without gravity, he could no longer cogitate. New systems, new molecules, new memories had systematically fused into his body seamlessly but he had lost the ability to analyze. Before he reached tenth floor, he realized he had become a photocopier, who always received information faster than processed it. This mere idea saddened but he was relieved.
By the window of the tenth floor, he could ‘see’ a happy family, sitting down by a round table and praying together. How felicitous they were! How joyful this kind of life must be! This again punctured his ego even though he couldn’t care less now because he’s gaining speed now.
As he passed by each floor, he received new information but he hardly processed any of them. And then he also missed out few floors like eighth floor and fifth floor carelessly. Praying silently in his heart now, he wished this would be the last free fall he would ever have. Now, he was just one second away from the bone-cracking moment. But before plunging to the ground, he promised himself he would recollect what he noticed during his free-fall.
The windows of second, third, seventh and eighth floor were not opened. The residents of fourth and ninth floor were catching ‘Prison Break’ on the television. A middle-aged man whom he never knew was reading ‘Moby Dick’ by the window of tenth floor. Why closed windows? Why ‘Prison Break’? Why ‘Moby Dick?
He never had an opportunity to figure out the reasons just before the imminent collisions because his mind was already preoccupied by a book placed on a table by the window of his own apartment.
He mumbled, “Atonement,” just before a blood-curdling scream silenced everything in motion.
12. Totentanz
I ran out from the plaza, anticipating the collisions with the ‘stalker’ but to my utter amazement, it’s not there. Not only it’s no longer there, the street wasn’t there as well. I turned to my back and the plaza had vaporized already as well as Mr Average.
They were all gone! No lamppost, no ‘malice’, no ‘stalker’, no ‘crime and punishment’… The only thing I could see from my position was a bandwagon. It just stood there, empty but finely decorated. I approached the bandwagon cautiously, worrying the sly ‘stalker’ could strike me at anytime.
But as I edged closer to the bandwagon, my worries slowly degenerated into some sort of void but the emptiness was soon refilled by the excitement. The excitement was almost cult-like and it attracted me like a big magnet with unholy strength. The closer I was to the odd bandwagon, the stronger the attraction, of course I meant psychologically.
And then, I heard Totentanz once again.
I jumped on the bandwagon and without any warning, it set into motion. Fought or fled? I decided to stay for a while without letting my gut down. As the bandwagon moved, stably, forward to a place I couldn’t see using my own naked eyes. Somehow, the flawless piano solo conveyed something to me, ‘just rest, my son,’ and so I fall asleep. It’s a peaceful slumbering. Neither nightmares nor any worry intruded my tranquility and so when I was awake, I couldn’t recall how long had I been out. But when I woke up, I found out ‘Totentanz’ was no longer reverberating.
All I could hear was the distant chanting.
Procession of death,
Preceded by hallucinations,
Starts where it ends.
Fragments of stories,
No longer sound,
Buried deep into consciousness.
O, Holy Spirit at Pentecost,
O, Unholy Apparition of Beelzebub,
Gather and debate.
Where it goes,
Where it ends,
Totentanz shall rule.
Sihan 13/03/08
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Totentanz (Part 2)
5. The Sound And The Fury (Part 1: My Name Is Red)
His daughter was cupping his hands, tears rolling down her cheek. She looked paler and this left his heart broken. She was never a tearful type of person. As a matter of fact, he seldom saw her crying even when her mother was canning her when she was young. He once joked to her wife, “she is going to be a tough one,” his wife insisted that her daughter would be a fine lady, graceful and refined.
And she became a piano teacher, following her father footstep. When she was graduated from a music college in London, in spite of the lure of higher paycheck there, she came back to serve with her father, a decision which made everyone raise their eyebrows.
He looked straight into his daughter’s eyes just like what he did many years ago. The gaze was unforgettable and it didn’t change much. Her stare was very consoling but he still felt disorientated, maybe the effect anesthesia hadn’t worn off. He found it hard to focus on his daughter’s eyes but this didn’t concern him more than his numb legs. Ripple of panic spread inside his body with each successful circulation of blood through his body when he found out his legs were none other than two lumps of dead meats.
He turned to his daughter. He thought he saw flicker of regret in her eyes but he brushed it off as senseless paranoia. But this paranoia felt realer than any usual paranoia. No, he told himself to think at the bright side. What colour would make him more optimistic? The green colour of the curtain? No, he hated green colour, it reminded of veggie which he loathed. The white bed sheet? No, it prompted the brutal memory of the death of his dog when he was young. How about the brown colour of the window frame? Worse still, the brown colour mocked him of his immobile and out-of-control legs.
Before finding the right colour, which could cheer him up, he realized he was paralyzed. Exactly 11 months ago, he was diagnosed as second-stage bone cancer patient. He was no fool though. As he attempted to seek for the right colour, which could easily be the relic to his illness, he stumbled on different kinds of emotions. It wasn’t too tough to identify fury as red. Upon the unveil of the diagnosis, he nearly blew his top. For so many years, he had put his thrust on doctors, so faithfully, almost zealously that regular medical check-up could save a life. He could still spell out the how the intensity of red colour escalating in his life even after 11 months, even after red had vanished. Everything morphed into indisputable red, plants, notes, clothing, piano and etc, quite incredibly but not unbelievably.
He almost likened the idea that there’s no tyranny in this world because nobody could be spared from being power-happy. Watching numerous of tyrants falling one by one from 20th to 21st century, the sensation was thrilling to him. He himself couldn’t explain the exhilaration, perhaps the news of the fallen grace served as a testimony or a congratulation to his little cult-like belief. But this time, he sincerely hoped red could be the last tyrant in this world because red, at the end of the day, was the least tormenting one.
As his condition deteriorated over time, the red was diluted gradually and eventually it became something he could no longer identify. It was something between maroon and lilac. He had no mood to determine what kind of emotion it represented but the thought just came to him in one morning after he was told by the same doctor that his cancer might already spread to the liver. The ‘malice’, the name he gave to the blending of maroon and lilac, was indeed a menace, an impertinent one. ‘Malice’, though how innocent it looked, foretold myriad of malignant-like prophecy.
In a nightmare of his, ‘malice’ came to here and commissioned him to stand up. He protested and argued with the ‘malice’ that he was unable to stand up for a time being. ‘Malice’ therefore demanded for a reason. He had lots of rebuttal but on a spur of moment, his tongue was twisted. Astounded and unable to speak, he gasped and he woke up only to find out he couldn’t feel the lower part of his body.
He was rushed to the hospital in no time. ‘Malice’ also followed him to the hospital, like a silent assailant. Frightened and intimidated, he gingerly asked his daughter who accompanied him in the ambulant, “Do you see ‘malice’?” His daughter replied nonchalantly, “ I see ‘malice’ everyday.” Whether she had met ‘malice’ posed a serious question to his own conviction until the doctor revealed the X-ray before him, like a clown who never ran out of trick up his sleeve.
“There’s a tumor at your ****, emm… that means spinal chord,” announced the doctor. He continued, “You may wish to have the operation as soon as possible, before the conditions deteriorate.”
“Does it make any difference now? I lost my mobility, I spoke to with you with my back stickled to the smelly bed, I couldn’t urinate with two feet stamped firmly on the cold ground, I lost everything…”
“But, you still have chance to recover, maybe 15%,” said the doctor sedately.
He hardened grip and shoulders crumbled like World Trade Centre. 15%, the figure unnerved him just as much as ‘malice’ did to him. And before long, he realized ‘malice’ no longer stayed along side. Something nearly colourless had replaced it. Let’s call it ‘Casper’, he smiled weakly, reminiscing the time he spent watching ‘Casper’ with his daughter. This thought drew tears to his eyes but for some odd reasons, he refused to whine in front of the doctor and his daughter.
Maybe he would cry to his heart content next time, but definitely in front of ‘Casper’. “To hell with you,” was the last sentence he muttered before entering the operation room.
6. Tales Of Two Men (Part 1: Crime And Punishment)
“There was a boy whose name I never knew living in a small town, too small to be known by the arrogant tyrant of this country,” said ‘Mr Average’. Obviously, he intended to narrate the story without my consent. Since there’s nothing I could do, I nodded, telling him to continue wordlessly.
“He had no sibling and in fact he didn’t even know where he from was originally. His parents who brought him up, gave him the best education were not his biological parents. In spite of their wealth, they failed to conceive a child after years of futile effort. At first, it was extremely hard to accept, but they still had to bow before the big hand of fate and resorted to the last resolution. Before that, foster parents was a term which was too alien to accept, but slowly, the prejudice thawed, perhaps because of the obedience and the attractiveness of this boy.
They already fell in love with this boy the very first time they had met the boy’s biological parents. He was perfectly normal, in fact, he was nearly flawless with no apparent defect. They were willing to pay higher than what his biological parents had demanded and they happily took over the cash and promised would never see this boy again. This promise pleased the couple.
They fostered this boy just like their own son. With the wealth they accumulated from the logging industry, the amount of gold he had amassed was enough to buy a small country. Although there were rumours circling in the small town that this couple had been linked with several most notorious triads, they appeared unruffled. Perhaps they were guiltless, perhaps they were not, but what undeniable was they gave the boy their best. People could see them walking their boy in the park everyday with envious and avaricious stares fastened to them.
But the boy wasn’t happy at all. Everywhere he went, he would detect hostility and the sense of guilt were stalking him clandestinely. The feeling of ‘guilt’ saddened him just like he was denounced as a liar while he was not and of course this feeling was nothing but a puzzle to him. Although he never had a full grasp on the ‘sense of guilt’ he felt, he knew it existed. It definitely presented, inside him, around him, behind him. Sometime in the night, he would dream of it and he would be woken up by his mother with sweats dipping out from his forehead.
He attempted to describe it to his mother whom he felt more intimate to. Without any effort, he likened the ‘guilt’ to a ‘bogeyman in the wardrobe’. But his mother never showed any emotion. Even when he got very delirious, she was gentle and the most she did was flipping open the wardrobe and declared, “There’s no bogeyman.”
With the nemesis like ‘guilt’ which never stopped nagging him by his side, he found it hard to concentrate in the school. Every gaze from his classmates chilled him. Was that the fault of his ‘guilt’? The young boy would never know until many years had passed. He didn’t have friends because he was unable to engage in a conversation between his classmates. All he could do was stay at one corner of the classroom, observing every gesture of his classmates. The more he observed, the more he wondered were they his source of ‘guilt’?
One day, he managed to confront one of them after mustering enough courage. He was unmistakably trembling when he asked cautiously, “What’s wrong with me?” The boy he confronted was caught dumbfounded and staring him blankly.
Still blank, he replied crisply as if he had rehearsed it few times before, “I heard you are not your parents’ son.” He just stopped his sentence abruptly and ran away without any explanation given, leaving him standing there stupefied. The feeling of ‘guilt’ didn’t just depart with the answer he got and so he deduced his nemesis would still stay with him. Hence, he concluded it’s time to confront his parents, though he didn’t actually know who or what he wanted to get rid of.
He never had an opportunity to confront his parents when something happened. His father had been admitted in to the hospital with skull cracked and several vital organs injury. But he didn’t care. All he wanted was piece of enlightenment on his nemesis. He never watched The Godfather but somehow he understood what ‘keep your friends close, but your enemy closer.’ Now, it could be his last chance, if not to defeat his woe, at least extinguish its arrogance.
While his father was bedridden, he discovered he didn’t have pity on this old man. ‘This was bad,’ his mind murmured but another voice was much stronger, a voice which was much stronger and more substantial. It’s authentic and it did exist. His mom, on the other hand, was wailing and shaking his father’s hand. She said something to his father but he couldn’t hear. Though how sober she looked, he couldn’t help to think this was all staged and phony. There’s trace of comic in her eyes suggested her infidelity and there’s something extraordinary happened between them, he and his father, he and his mother, his father and his mother.
“Is that a hint?” The ‘guilt’ appeared to be more omnipresent and more ponderous every time his mother wept. He had stayed with the ‘guilt’ long enough to smell the presence of it hundreds meters away. But this time the ‘guilt’ was different, it was somewhat more intense and penetrating. This ‘guilt’ was suffocating and that’s something he had never encountered before.
He explored carefully, inhaled every volume of the antiseptic smell air as if it were toxicant. Just as he was beginning to understand that the aura of ‘guilt’ emitted from his mother’s body was something entirely dissimilar, without any warning, his mother screamed. The scream was so loud that he could hardly hear the noise from the life-support machine anymore and for a moment, he reckoned his mother had suddenly ran into her ‘guilt’ and collided with it. He didn’t know what gave him this idea but he was sure something had just gone wrong, terribly wrong.
Wasting no time, three nurses pulled his mother away from his father’s bed. Her screaming grew even more piercing but no doubt, he could pick up some words she had said.
“It’s all your fault! This is the crime we commit! You deserve this… He was an evil, descended from that woman, he brought jinx, he brought omen…you invited him into our house! How could you leave me to face him alone? We shouldn’t have bought this evil!
The senseless rambling carried on not more than 10 seconds before the nurses pulled her out completely from the ICU. He was also escorted from the ICU and he noticed they had said something to his mother. “Why no one says something to me?” He was wondering with his eyes fixed at the mosaic pattern of the marble tile on the floor.
He pondered on what his mother had said. Could it be related to the ‘guilt’ he felt? No, he heard something else. Yes, it’s ‘crime’. Was it the real name of his curse? He was far too young to cogitate all these.”
7. The Sound And The Fury (Part 2: White Noise)
“You can walk again, we trust the doctor. I think you have a very good chance to stand up again if you are willing to cooperate. You must undergo series of physiology exercise before you can stand up again. Now you are weak, you are…”
He let his mind wandering in the arteries and the veins of this hospital. He felt sorry for his daughter because he had no interest in whatever she said. “It’s all rhetoric,” he convinced himself with a renewed conviction. At least, he still could maneuver his own mind and he believed in his mind more than his body. He neither put his blame on the doctor nor his daughter who never got tired in giving him false hopes because he had become a staunch believer of what he imagined, prophesized and rhapsodized.
He had long given up all his senses. “All I felt was nothing, all I saw was indeed nothing, all hear was indeed nothing,” he was more certain of his own little theory now. His daughter was speaking to him and all he could ‘sense’ was her moving mouth without even a slightest hint of moving. He could ‘hear’ but he didn’t know what’s that or perhaps he could ‘sense’ the ripple of air, but not the sound.
His world had slowly degenerated into a very primitive point of view. Everything, in this world, could now be categorized into one category only. For him, all things were white, all sounds were inaudible noise now. Perhaps the prolonged treatment of cancer had inflicted irreplaceable damage to his mind, nonetheless, he possessed no desire to seek for vengeance because he already felt nothing. Numbed legs, numbed ability to distinguish colours and too numbed to feel the numbness.
“You must stand up again, you know, without you, we…” his daughter sobbed again.
Watching the tears streaming down her face, a sudden disgust rose up inside his body. That’s hate, an unemotionally one. This feeling transcended any sense of emotion and this was something totally beyond comprehension. No matter how bizarre it might be, he wished he could tell his daughter that he could ‘hear’ emotion and he was able to decipher emotion.
The emotion he ‘witnessed’ was transparent and beyond the thin veil of deception, he saw something else which was altogether foreign. It’s the core of the story narrated by a mute story-teller. Beyond the emotion displayed, the narration proceeded without a hitch. There’s no doubt a story or two or more than two stories were being orated simultaneously.
A story of a boy, a disgruntled mother, a dying father. He was quick to dismiss that as miscellaneous and randomly-assorted combination of story line. But it was so surreal as if it just happened yesterday. He couldn’t help to spare more watchful stares at it and the next thing he realized was he was deep inside the story, becoming the boy, the mother and the father at the same time.
It’s all very confusing but he was completely immersed in the story. Whenever a potential danger poised to upset the delicate equilibrium of the story, he would shout in alarming manner, only to discover he was bedridden, looking at the green curtain and brown window frame.
The story proceeded slowly, too slow. With this pace of narration, it seemed this story would never end. But out of his surprise, the story suddenly vanished. It just vanished into the thin air, leaving no trace. And more surprisingly, the emotion also evaporated to nowhere. He no longer felt any presence of it and all objects had become white in colour once again.
That’s when he decided to go home and gave up his remaining hope on the next operation. He told his daughter bluntly there was no second operation because he was not going to have one. “I want to go home,” was the first sentence he said to his daughter since he regained his consciousness.
8. Tales Of Two Men (Part 2: Gulliver’s Travel)
“I have finished my story,” Mr Average claimed, “What’s your story?” he demanded subsequently in a extremely courteous manner.
To my dismay, his story ended in such amateur way, just like a story by a futureless novelist. I must say at first I was listening to his story without any expectation because the denouement of today’s events was causing serious indigestion in my crude mind. But as I listened more, I grew more closely to the story, as if I were bound to become one of them. I could even feel the molecules disintegrating inside my bodies, vowing to join the characters. This was the prowess of this story but suddenly, ‘pop’ the story ended, like a bursting bubble.
“What’s your story?” Mr Average pursued.
I wasn’t so sure about what story I wish to share. Maybe I was just reluctant to reveal my story or I felt inferior to share my filthy past, which elegance and brilliance could never outcompete Mr Average’s story. But at the same time, a story came to me out of nowhere. I ran through that story in my mind and realized I, in fact, never heard that story before.
I cleared my throat, trying to buy more time. “Should I share a non-existent story?” When I was toying with the idea of telling a story I myself had never heard before, Mr Average lifted his hands, hinting me to start my narration.
I cleared my throat one more time before telling the strangest story in the world.
“There’s a man coming from a rich family. He once had loving parents but something had changed and he was sucked into the vortex of misfortunate. Love had left him, affectionate had deserted him, leaving him in a state of solitary. In order to survive, he had to sacrifice and work masochistically.
However, he was never able to recoup his loss. Plethora of attempts after attempts, he never succeeded. The thing he lost was priceless. With the wealth he inherited, he could easily buy everything off, politicians, business or even love.
There’s only a thing he couldn’t afford was a thing named ‘atonement’. When he was an impulsive and compulsive youth, he had committed a crime, a crime he never meant to commit. From that day onwards, he was sinned. Everywhere he went, there was smell of sins lurking around him. Sometime, a cat would mock him sarcastically. Even a lamppost opposite of his house was against him. Everything, everyone detested him as much as they loathed the notorious triads. He guessed this was what everyone called ‘retribution’ or ‘punishment’, which he personally favoured more.
There’s a time when the punishment became too unbearable, he decided to kill himself. He jumped off from the fifth floor and by the twist of fate, he survived. The survival didn’t come without price, he lost his mobility. To translate it into a simpler language, he lost both of his legs due to the injury of his spinal cord.
‘I’m sinned,’ this was what he told every person since he was admitted into the hospital. Diagnosed as a mild depression patient, he was spared from legal action. But he slumped further into his own depression, murmuring to himself like a hopeless lunatic. Not only refused to get up from the bed, he initiated a hunger strike which forced the doctor to sedate him forcefully.
Under the strong influence of sedation, he felt his body was fleetly moved away from the hospital. The sensation of moving was very subtle and he couldn’t detect any vibration of movement at all. What made him think he was moving? Must be the stretching feeling of his body. Every inch of his skin was stretched and pulled and yet he felt no pain. A little pressure was what he could feel.
Soon, the sensation ceased. A eerie déjà vu of emptiness struck him. “Where was I?” This was an odd question because at the first place, how sure was he that he had moved? He might still lay on the bed, waiting for the dawn to fall. Tardily, he instructed his hands to move but to his horror, he was like old Gulliver, nailed to the ground, unable to move even a single nerve. Every attempt to move would result in immense pain that he had never experienced before. Or, the pain could well be described as something intrinsic. Whenever he conceived of a certain movement, he could feel that his limbs were indeed prepared to move, but his mind was as if crucified by millions of nails.
Yet, he refused to stay still, waiting for an onslaught of an unknown enigma until he was suddenly blinded by a brightly-lit object right in front of his eyes. Although the illumination was so dazzling, he estimated the object was only 3 meters on top of his body. Patiently, he waited for his eyes to get used to the light.
While he was waiting, before he ever realized, an epiphany descended upon him. “This was heaven!” He didn’t know where he got this idea from but the object, which he could see clearly now, was a perfectly square flat (curvature?) screen (a box?). Instinct told him it’s an oversize television or a water-down movie theater. Television in heaven? This was an absurd idea but this place, beyond his belief, felt exactly like a heaven. But had he been to heaven?
A sudden change of the intensity of light grabbed his attention. Nervously, he forgot he was ‘nailed’. He lifted his arms, trying to rub the sweat which plastered his hairs to his forehead away only to be electrocuted by the inscrutable pain. He cursed silently.
And then he resumed watching the ‘television’. For a while, nothing was shown. The nothingness was so profound that the aura of its was equally fearful. He was relieved when the nothingness was replaced by series of colourful pictures. At first, the pictures were very fuzzy. After a while, he could see every picture with the clarity that surmounted any picture taken by the best camera in the world. This deepened his unshakable conviction of he was actually ‘nailed’ in ‘heaven’.
Soon, the same pictures appeared again. He was baffled. And after another 9 pictures was displayed one by one, same picture came out again. No doubt, there’s no discrepancy in the same pictures came out again and again. But the more he buried his mind into the pictures, the more he was convinced there were differences. Were the branches of trees orientated at the right direction? Was the colour of the umbrella of the ice-cream vendors same?
And were the people same in each picture? At first glance, all of them looked same but not after some careful observation. No, every detail was not consistent each time the seemingly same picture came out. His mind raced frantically. Why changes? Why differences? He sank into deep thought. Few possibilities circled in his mind but none of them could explain everything. His reasoning was no longer sensible; instead, they had become rather mystical and singular.
Before he managed to decipher the riddles, before his reasoning could convince himself, of a sudden, he discovered he was on the same hospitals’ bed again, looking straight into the eyes of the doctor.”
To be continued
His daughter was cupping his hands, tears rolling down her cheek. She looked paler and this left his heart broken. She was never a tearful type of person. As a matter of fact, he seldom saw her crying even when her mother was canning her when she was young. He once joked to her wife, “she is going to be a tough one,” his wife insisted that her daughter would be a fine lady, graceful and refined.
And she became a piano teacher, following her father footstep. When she was graduated from a music college in London, in spite of the lure of higher paycheck there, she came back to serve with her father, a decision which made everyone raise their eyebrows.
He looked straight into his daughter’s eyes just like what he did many years ago. The gaze was unforgettable and it didn’t change much. Her stare was very consoling but he still felt disorientated, maybe the effect anesthesia hadn’t worn off. He found it hard to focus on his daughter’s eyes but this didn’t concern him more than his numb legs. Ripple of panic spread inside his body with each successful circulation of blood through his body when he found out his legs were none other than two lumps of dead meats.
He turned to his daughter. He thought he saw flicker of regret in her eyes but he brushed it off as senseless paranoia. But this paranoia felt realer than any usual paranoia. No, he told himself to think at the bright side. What colour would make him more optimistic? The green colour of the curtain? No, he hated green colour, it reminded of veggie which he loathed. The white bed sheet? No, it prompted the brutal memory of the death of his dog when he was young. How about the brown colour of the window frame? Worse still, the brown colour mocked him of his immobile and out-of-control legs.
Before finding the right colour, which could cheer him up, he realized he was paralyzed. Exactly 11 months ago, he was diagnosed as second-stage bone cancer patient. He was no fool though. As he attempted to seek for the right colour, which could easily be the relic to his illness, he stumbled on different kinds of emotions. It wasn’t too tough to identify fury as red. Upon the unveil of the diagnosis, he nearly blew his top. For so many years, he had put his thrust on doctors, so faithfully, almost zealously that regular medical check-up could save a life. He could still spell out the how the intensity of red colour escalating in his life even after 11 months, even after red had vanished. Everything morphed into indisputable red, plants, notes, clothing, piano and etc, quite incredibly but not unbelievably.
He almost likened the idea that there’s no tyranny in this world because nobody could be spared from being power-happy. Watching numerous of tyrants falling one by one from 20th to 21st century, the sensation was thrilling to him. He himself couldn’t explain the exhilaration, perhaps the news of the fallen grace served as a testimony or a congratulation to his little cult-like belief. But this time, he sincerely hoped red could be the last tyrant in this world because red, at the end of the day, was the least tormenting one.
As his condition deteriorated over time, the red was diluted gradually and eventually it became something he could no longer identify. It was something between maroon and lilac. He had no mood to determine what kind of emotion it represented but the thought just came to him in one morning after he was told by the same doctor that his cancer might already spread to the liver. The ‘malice’, the name he gave to the blending of maroon and lilac, was indeed a menace, an impertinent one. ‘Malice’, though how innocent it looked, foretold myriad of malignant-like prophecy.
In a nightmare of his, ‘malice’ came to here and commissioned him to stand up. He protested and argued with the ‘malice’ that he was unable to stand up for a time being. ‘Malice’ therefore demanded for a reason. He had lots of rebuttal but on a spur of moment, his tongue was twisted. Astounded and unable to speak, he gasped and he woke up only to find out he couldn’t feel the lower part of his body.
He was rushed to the hospital in no time. ‘Malice’ also followed him to the hospital, like a silent assailant. Frightened and intimidated, he gingerly asked his daughter who accompanied him in the ambulant, “Do you see ‘malice’?” His daughter replied nonchalantly, “ I see ‘malice’ everyday.” Whether she had met ‘malice’ posed a serious question to his own conviction until the doctor revealed the X-ray before him, like a clown who never ran out of trick up his sleeve.
“There’s a tumor at your ****, emm… that means spinal chord,” announced the doctor. He continued, “You may wish to have the operation as soon as possible, before the conditions deteriorate.”
“Does it make any difference now? I lost my mobility, I spoke to with you with my back stickled to the smelly bed, I couldn’t urinate with two feet stamped firmly on the cold ground, I lost everything…”
“But, you still have chance to recover, maybe 15%,” said the doctor sedately.
He hardened grip and shoulders crumbled like World Trade Centre. 15%, the figure unnerved him just as much as ‘malice’ did to him. And before long, he realized ‘malice’ no longer stayed along side. Something nearly colourless had replaced it. Let’s call it ‘Casper’, he smiled weakly, reminiscing the time he spent watching ‘Casper’ with his daughter. This thought drew tears to his eyes but for some odd reasons, he refused to whine in front of the doctor and his daughter.
Maybe he would cry to his heart content next time, but definitely in front of ‘Casper’. “To hell with you,” was the last sentence he muttered before entering the operation room.
6. Tales Of Two Men (Part 1: Crime And Punishment)
“There was a boy whose name I never knew living in a small town, too small to be known by the arrogant tyrant of this country,” said ‘Mr Average’. Obviously, he intended to narrate the story without my consent. Since there’s nothing I could do, I nodded, telling him to continue wordlessly.
“He had no sibling and in fact he didn’t even know where he from was originally. His parents who brought him up, gave him the best education were not his biological parents. In spite of their wealth, they failed to conceive a child after years of futile effort. At first, it was extremely hard to accept, but they still had to bow before the big hand of fate and resorted to the last resolution. Before that, foster parents was a term which was too alien to accept, but slowly, the prejudice thawed, perhaps because of the obedience and the attractiveness of this boy.
They already fell in love with this boy the very first time they had met the boy’s biological parents. He was perfectly normal, in fact, he was nearly flawless with no apparent defect. They were willing to pay higher than what his biological parents had demanded and they happily took over the cash and promised would never see this boy again. This promise pleased the couple.
They fostered this boy just like their own son. With the wealth they accumulated from the logging industry, the amount of gold he had amassed was enough to buy a small country. Although there were rumours circling in the small town that this couple had been linked with several most notorious triads, they appeared unruffled. Perhaps they were guiltless, perhaps they were not, but what undeniable was they gave the boy their best. People could see them walking their boy in the park everyday with envious and avaricious stares fastened to them.
But the boy wasn’t happy at all. Everywhere he went, he would detect hostility and the sense of guilt were stalking him clandestinely. The feeling of ‘guilt’ saddened him just like he was denounced as a liar while he was not and of course this feeling was nothing but a puzzle to him. Although he never had a full grasp on the ‘sense of guilt’ he felt, he knew it existed. It definitely presented, inside him, around him, behind him. Sometime in the night, he would dream of it and he would be woken up by his mother with sweats dipping out from his forehead.
He attempted to describe it to his mother whom he felt more intimate to. Without any effort, he likened the ‘guilt’ to a ‘bogeyman in the wardrobe’. But his mother never showed any emotion. Even when he got very delirious, she was gentle and the most she did was flipping open the wardrobe and declared, “There’s no bogeyman.”
With the nemesis like ‘guilt’ which never stopped nagging him by his side, he found it hard to concentrate in the school. Every gaze from his classmates chilled him. Was that the fault of his ‘guilt’? The young boy would never know until many years had passed. He didn’t have friends because he was unable to engage in a conversation between his classmates. All he could do was stay at one corner of the classroom, observing every gesture of his classmates. The more he observed, the more he wondered were they his source of ‘guilt’?
One day, he managed to confront one of them after mustering enough courage. He was unmistakably trembling when he asked cautiously, “What’s wrong with me?” The boy he confronted was caught dumbfounded and staring him blankly.
Still blank, he replied crisply as if he had rehearsed it few times before, “I heard you are not your parents’ son.” He just stopped his sentence abruptly and ran away without any explanation given, leaving him standing there stupefied. The feeling of ‘guilt’ didn’t just depart with the answer he got and so he deduced his nemesis would still stay with him. Hence, he concluded it’s time to confront his parents, though he didn’t actually know who or what he wanted to get rid of.
He never had an opportunity to confront his parents when something happened. His father had been admitted in to the hospital with skull cracked and several vital organs injury. But he didn’t care. All he wanted was piece of enlightenment on his nemesis. He never watched The Godfather but somehow he understood what ‘keep your friends close, but your enemy closer.’ Now, it could be his last chance, if not to defeat his woe, at least extinguish its arrogance.
While his father was bedridden, he discovered he didn’t have pity on this old man. ‘This was bad,’ his mind murmured but another voice was much stronger, a voice which was much stronger and more substantial. It’s authentic and it did exist. His mom, on the other hand, was wailing and shaking his father’s hand. She said something to his father but he couldn’t hear. Though how sober she looked, he couldn’t help to think this was all staged and phony. There’s trace of comic in her eyes suggested her infidelity and there’s something extraordinary happened between them, he and his father, he and his mother, his father and his mother.
“Is that a hint?” The ‘guilt’ appeared to be more omnipresent and more ponderous every time his mother wept. He had stayed with the ‘guilt’ long enough to smell the presence of it hundreds meters away. But this time the ‘guilt’ was different, it was somewhat more intense and penetrating. This ‘guilt’ was suffocating and that’s something he had never encountered before.
He explored carefully, inhaled every volume of the antiseptic smell air as if it were toxicant. Just as he was beginning to understand that the aura of ‘guilt’ emitted from his mother’s body was something entirely dissimilar, without any warning, his mother screamed. The scream was so loud that he could hardly hear the noise from the life-support machine anymore and for a moment, he reckoned his mother had suddenly ran into her ‘guilt’ and collided with it. He didn’t know what gave him this idea but he was sure something had just gone wrong, terribly wrong.
Wasting no time, three nurses pulled his mother away from his father’s bed. Her screaming grew even more piercing but no doubt, he could pick up some words she had said.
“It’s all your fault! This is the crime we commit! You deserve this… He was an evil, descended from that woman, he brought jinx, he brought omen…you invited him into our house! How could you leave me to face him alone? We shouldn’t have bought this evil!
The senseless rambling carried on not more than 10 seconds before the nurses pulled her out completely from the ICU. He was also escorted from the ICU and he noticed they had said something to his mother. “Why no one says something to me?” He was wondering with his eyes fixed at the mosaic pattern of the marble tile on the floor.
He pondered on what his mother had said. Could it be related to the ‘guilt’ he felt? No, he heard something else. Yes, it’s ‘crime’. Was it the real name of his curse? He was far too young to cogitate all these.”
7. The Sound And The Fury (Part 2: White Noise)
“You can walk again, we trust the doctor. I think you have a very good chance to stand up again if you are willing to cooperate. You must undergo series of physiology exercise before you can stand up again. Now you are weak, you are…”
He let his mind wandering in the arteries and the veins of this hospital. He felt sorry for his daughter because he had no interest in whatever she said. “It’s all rhetoric,” he convinced himself with a renewed conviction. At least, he still could maneuver his own mind and he believed in his mind more than his body. He neither put his blame on the doctor nor his daughter who never got tired in giving him false hopes because he had become a staunch believer of what he imagined, prophesized and rhapsodized.
He had long given up all his senses. “All I felt was nothing, all I saw was indeed nothing, all hear was indeed nothing,” he was more certain of his own little theory now. His daughter was speaking to him and all he could ‘sense’ was her moving mouth without even a slightest hint of moving. He could ‘hear’ but he didn’t know what’s that or perhaps he could ‘sense’ the ripple of air, but not the sound.
His world had slowly degenerated into a very primitive point of view. Everything, in this world, could now be categorized into one category only. For him, all things were white, all sounds were inaudible noise now. Perhaps the prolonged treatment of cancer had inflicted irreplaceable damage to his mind, nonetheless, he possessed no desire to seek for vengeance because he already felt nothing. Numbed legs, numbed ability to distinguish colours and too numbed to feel the numbness.
“You must stand up again, you know, without you, we…” his daughter sobbed again.
Watching the tears streaming down her face, a sudden disgust rose up inside his body. That’s hate, an unemotionally one. This feeling transcended any sense of emotion and this was something totally beyond comprehension. No matter how bizarre it might be, he wished he could tell his daughter that he could ‘hear’ emotion and he was able to decipher emotion.
The emotion he ‘witnessed’ was transparent and beyond the thin veil of deception, he saw something else which was altogether foreign. It’s the core of the story narrated by a mute story-teller. Beyond the emotion displayed, the narration proceeded without a hitch. There’s no doubt a story or two or more than two stories were being orated simultaneously.
A story of a boy, a disgruntled mother, a dying father. He was quick to dismiss that as miscellaneous and randomly-assorted combination of story line. But it was so surreal as if it just happened yesterday. He couldn’t help to spare more watchful stares at it and the next thing he realized was he was deep inside the story, becoming the boy, the mother and the father at the same time.
It’s all very confusing but he was completely immersed in the story. Whenever a potential danger poised to upset the delicate equilibrium of the story, he would shout in alarming manner, only to discover he was bedridden, looking at the green curtain and brown window frame.
The story proceeded slowly, too slow. With this pace of narration, it seemed this story would never end. But out of his surprise, the story suddenly vanished. It just vanished into the thin air, leaving no trace. And more surprisingly, the emotion also evaporated to nowhere. He no longer felt any presence of it and all objects had become white in colour once again.
That’s when he decided to go home and gave up his remaining hope on the next operation. He told his daughter bluntly there was no second operation because he was not going to have one. “I want to go home,” was the first sentence he said to his daughter since he regained his consciousness.
8. Tales Of Two Men (Part 2: Gulliver’s Travel)
“I have finished my story,” Mr Average claimed, “What’s your story?” he demanded subsequently in a extremely courteous manner.
To my dismay, his story ended in such amateur way, just like a story by a futureless novelist. I must say at first I was listening to his story without any expectation because the denouement of today’s events was causing serious indigestion in my crude mind. But as I listened more, I grew more closely to the story, as if I were bound to become one of them. I could even feel the molecules disintegrating inside my bodies, vowing to join the characters. This was the prowess of this story but suddenly, ‘pop’ the story ended, like a bursting bubble.
“What’s your story?” Mr Average pursued.
I wasn’t so sure about what story I wish to share. Maybe I was just reluctant to reveal my story or I felt inferior to share my filthy past, which elegance and brilliance could never outcompete Mr Average’s story. But at the same time, a story came to me out of nowhere. I ran through that story in my mind and realized I, in fact, never heard that story before.
I cleared my throat, trying to buy more time. “Should I share a non-existent story?” When I was toying with the idea of telling a story I myself had never heard before, Mr Average lifted his hands, hinting me to start my narration.
I cleared my throat one more time before telling the strangest story in the world.
“There’s a man coming from a rich family. He once had loving parents but something had changed and he was sucked into the vortex of misfortunate. Love had left him, affectionate had deserted him, leaving him in a state of solitary. In order to survive, he had to sacrifice and work masochistically.
However, he was never able to recoup his loss. Plethora of attempts after attempts, he never succeeded. The thing he lost was priceless. With the wealth he inherited, he could easily buy everything off, politicians, business or even love.
There’s only a thing he couldn’t afford was a thing named ‘atonement’. When he was an impulsive and compulsive youth, he had committed a crime, a crime he never meant to commit. From that day onwards, he was sinned. Everywhere he went, there was smell of sins lurking around him. Sometime, a cat would mock him sarcastically. Even a lamppost opposite of his house was against him. Everything, everyone detested him as much as they loathed the notorious triads. He guessed this was what everyone called ‘retribution’ or ‘punishment’, which he personally favoured more.
There’s a time when the punishment became too unbearable, he decided to kill himself. He jumped off from the fifth floor and by the twist of fate, he survived. The survival didn’t come without price, he lost his mobility. To translate it into a simpler language, he lost both of his legs due to the injury of his spinal cord.
‘I’m sinned,’ this was what he told every person since he was admitted into the hospital. Diagnosed as a mild depression patient, he was spared from legal action. But he slumped further into his own depression, murmuring to himself like a hopeless lunatic. Not only refused to get up from the bed, he initiated a hunger strike which forced the doctor to sedate him forcefully.
Under the strong influence of sedation, he felt his body was fleetly moved away from the hospital. The sensation of moving was very subtle and he couldn’t detect any vibration of movement at all. What made him think he was moving? Must be the stretching feeling of his body. Every inch of his skin was stretched and pulled and yet he felt no pain. A little pressure was what he could feel.
Soon, the sensation ceased. A eerie déjà vu of emptiness struck him. “Where was I?” This was an odd question because at the first place, how sure was he that he had moved? He might still lay on the bed, waiting for the dawn to fall. Tardily, he instructed his hands to move but to his horror, he was like old Gulliver, nailed to the ground, unable to move even a single nerve. Every attempt to move would result in immense pain that he had never experienced before. Or, the pain could well be described as something intrinsic. Whenever he conceived of a certain movement, he could feel that his limbs were indeed prepared to move, but his mind was as if crucified by millions of nails.
Yet, he refused to stay still, waiting for an onslaught of an unknown enigma until he was suddenly blinded by a brightly-lit object right in front of his eyes. Although the illumination was so dazzling, he estimated the object was only 3 meters on top of his body. Patiently, he waited for his eyes to get used to the light.
While he was waiting, before he ever realized, an epiphany descended upon him. “This was heaven!” He didn’t know where he got this idea from but the object, which he could see clearly now, was a perfectly square flat (curvature?) screen (a box?). Instinct told him it’s an oversize television or a water-down movie theater. Television in heaven? This was an absurd idea but this place, beyond his belief, felt exactly like a heaven. But had he been to heaven?
A sudden change of the intensity of light grabbed his attention. Nervously, he forgot he was ‘nailed’. He lifted his arms, trying to rub the sweat which plastered his hairs to his forehead away only to be electrocuted by the inscrutable pain. He cursed silently.
And then he resumed watching the ‘television’. For a while, nothing was shown. The nothingness was so profound that the aura of its was equally fearful. He was relieved when the nothingness was replaced by series of colourful pictures. At first, the pictures were very fuzzy. After a while, he could see every picture with the clarity that surmounted any picture taken by the best camera in the world. This deepened his unshakable conviction of he was actually ‘nailed’ in ‘heaven’.
Soon, the same pictures appeared again. He was baffled. And after another 9 pictures was displayed one by one, same picture came out again. No doubt, there’s no discrepancy in the same pictures came out again and again. But the more he buried his mind into the pictures, the more he was convinced there were differences. Were the branches of trees orientated at the right direction? Was the colour of the umbrella of the ice-cream vendors same?
And were the people same in each picture? At first glance, all of them looked same but not after some careful observation. No, every detail was not consistent each time the seemingly same picture came out. His mind raced frantically. Why changes? Why differences? He sank into deep thought. Few possibilities circled in his mind but none of them could explain everything. His reasoning was no longer sensible; instead, they had become rather mystical and singular.
Before he managed to decipher the riddles, before his reasoning could convince himself, of a sudden, he discovered he was on the same hospitals’ bed again, looking straight into the eyes of the doctor.”
To be continued
Totentanz(Part 1)
1. Of Stalker And Wall
I felt revitalized. The rigorous mind of mine which I possessed now was something I had lost in the city. As I strolled down one back alley with silence engulfed me, the mere presence of me filled the place told me this place was not a vacuum. Though there was no pressure, I could sense was light breeze and rhythmic percussion from somewhere else. I heard that, quite vividly and miraculously, I could even tell what that was, despite of its softness and vagueness. It was Totentanz, a masterpiece of Listz, which I played few years before in a competition, I could still recall every twist, every staccato, every chord, with clarity which itself astonished me.
Walking down a back alley was once a hazardous venture. You had to beware of the watchful eyes which followed you everywhere stealthily. Sometime, the existence of a half-opened window was sufficient to unnerve me. But not now. I felt assured by something I never knew in my life. As I walked down the alley, my heart was beating more erratically, not because of a half-opened window, not because of a potential harmful silhouette, it’s the existence of my own self sooth my choppy sea of mind. I couldn’t recall walking down any other alley could bring me such exuberance.
Being directionless, I didn’t feel lost. On the contrary, I glanced around, suddenly, I was astounded. For a moment, I thought when I turned, I could see the same street I walked down. What I found was a wall, just a tall and seemingly impregnable fortress. The wall looked new as if it was newly built. But deep down inside me, I knew a wall just couldn’t suddenly appear like an apparition. I touched the wall. It’s cold and as I waited for the epiphany which I surmised would strike me didn’t happen as I wished.
Chagrined and mystified, I continued my journey. This alley was longer than it seemed as I slowly dragged my feet inch by inch. Still, there was no sign of life. This place was deserted, I concluded. I strained my eyes, trying to locate any sign of life. To no avail, I placed my blame on the mystery that engulfed me like a big mist. Where was I and where should I head to? And how could I focus when I discovered a wall was stalking me like an assassin. Every time I turned back, it’s there standing abruptly and melodramatically in front of me.
Strangely, I was calm, although being followed quite inexplicably by a wall. Silence like a layer of snow, forcefully buried every over-heated particle. I wished I could think but the stalker, which is the name I decided to give to that wall, kept me vigilant like a porcupine. Having no choice, I had to calculate my every step quite carefully. I was afraid one I slipped, the wall my trampled on me or left me behind. I would rather have a wall following me than following a wall. I was not a stalker and neither did I aspire to be one.
I was just a wanderer, looking for something to commemorate my existence.
2. As I Lay Dying
Slowly, he opened his eyes. Every ray of light felt like a needle, pricking and piercing his delicate cornea. Again, his eyelids collapsed and instantly, immediately, there’s no light. He was already accustomed to the day without light and he indeed enjoyed the companion of the total darkness.
When he slumped back to the shapeless wilderness, he could hear laughter. At first, it was faint and then it gained its momentum. With each laughter died off, another laughter with greater amplitude replaced it. He was perplexed by the stentorian laughter. Knowing it’s neither a dream nor a fantasy, he was somehow relieved but he was no fool. How could he hear laughter when there’s nobody beside him? By the way, did he even know where’s him? So, who gave him the impression that he’s alone?
Lastly, the screeching laughter died off. Soon after that, he was overcome with a strong urge to fell. Of course he was protesting, there’s no way he could fell. Suddenly, gravity was nowhere. The sudden loss of weight floated him and he was panicked. He wanted to screamed and as he opened his mouth, heavy air sipped into his lungs and choked him. As if didn’t recognize the foreign particle, his body reacted violently.
Instinctively, he opened his eyes. For a while, he though his eyes didn’t recognize the light because all he saw was fuzzy shadow. Beside that, nothingness prevailed. Feeling trapped, he once again hesitated. To expose himself to a know danger or to explore an unknown reign? He chose the later and that’s how he met his future wife. A young and vigorous-looking nurse stood in front of him, busily recording details. Without shifting his head to other side, he knew there’s a doctor there and besides that, he also knew he had no visitors, even when he was lying on the dead bed.
Nauseated by the sudden influx of bright light, he sensed his head was giving way to the haunting laughter once again. While his eyelids sank once again, he swore he could hear laughter once again.
3. To Whom The Bell Toll
He fixed his gaze to the young nurse. Not very pretty but he had to admit she was charming. Now, laying motionlessly and dying inaudibly, a strange vision occurred to him. He was not sure whether to call it a ‘vision’ or an ‘apparition’. But he was not given time to muse before he saw he held the nurse’s hand and begged her. No, he was not begging and he saw himself doing something but definitely not begging shamelessly. Flummoxed by what he witnessed, he could even feel his palms were sweating. Nevertheless, a new vision temporarily shifted his attention again. It was a scene where he was holding an infant, way too small to call it baby. It was so tiny and delicate. Happiness quickly superseded the somber feeling and he indeed felt lifted.
The happiness swiftly drained away and it’s subsequently substituted by an unbearable heaviness. From far, he could hear the bell tolling as people scurrying into a small church with somber look on their face. He wanted to move forward so badly to see what really happened as his curiosity was stirred by the tolling bell. That’s when he discovered he could actually move. But this was not an ordinary sense of moving, to put it more realistically, he was hovering on the ground.
Nobody seemed to notice his bizarre propagation. It seemed he neither left any trail or stirred any disturbance to the still air around him. As he approached closely to the church, he ‘saw’ people talking. He could tell people were discussing about something but he couldn’t hear anything. But this time, he remained quite unperturbed. “I have had enough queer things,” shouted him to a couple walking up the steps to the church as if to seek for sympathy.
No response. Frustrated, he purposely stomped up the steps, hoping it could at least reminded myself of my invisible existence. The moment he walked into the small church, the choir was already starting without me. After getting used to interior illumination of the church, he started scanning every inch of the church. There’s no statue, there’s no bible and there’s no pastor. The only thing stood in solitude in the middle of the church was a coffin.
Mischievously, he dashed to the coffin, without knowing what he was actually up to. Then he was stoned. It’s the nurse. Suddenly, he recovered his hearing. As if having an orchestra in his ears, he kneeled and shook his head incessantly. Now, lying on the floor, he felt extremely exhausted. His ears was long accustomed to the incomprehensible orchestral. What he didn’t know was why the nurse was lying in the coffin.
He was in dire to know. But before he sorted out anything, he found out somebody was holding his right hand.
4. Midnight’s Children
The street was no longer dimly-lit. Now, it was flooded with tender light. There’s nothing that could escape from my eyes. With the little assistance of the light, I finally could make up what where was I. Strictly speaking, I was not in an alley. But in fact, I was trapped in a labyrinth-like alley. I scanned my sides, there were exits everywhere, each of them led to an equally deserted plaza. According to my calculation out of boredom, I estimated there’s an exit every 50 meters. If this alley was 1km long, there was going to have 20 plazas! The mere imagination of 20 eerily deserted plazas was enough to enervate me.
Just when I was distracted by the plazas, the shadow casted by the irritating ‘stalker’ in front of me brought me back to the reality. Like a nagging grandmother, it just couldn’t give me a break. I clenched my fists but after realizing how naïve the idea of fisting a wall was, I decided to look more clearly how did my stalker look like.
To my utter disappointment, the wall was simply nothing. No graffiti, no chewing gum, no flaw. But I had to admit that amidst my disappointment, I was quite mesmerized by the meticulously built wall. My stalker seemed having no flaws at all, not even one. It was just a combination of thousands of carefully crafted bricks. Of course, there’s no indication or whatsoever about where the bricks came from.
“Hei!”
A childish voice coming from a plaza at my left side made me jump. At first, I thought I was fantasizing this but the voice was unmistakably calling me. I was first shocked and then grew weary. My situation could be well described as a set up. But it was a ludicrous idea. I turned to the origin of that voice.
A boy was standing at the middle of the plaza. He looked like a dot from my point of view and so I estimated he was well 200 meters away from me. The reflection of the bright light on his face almost prevented me from identifying him. I managed nonetheless, not without staring at him forcefully for more than 10 seconds.
“Would you come here?” He inquired in polite manner, which is a twist I never expected. I never thought he would speak to me except saying hi. I had also no idea why he gave me this impression. I just keen to portrait him as a mute, lonely and hapless. But he seemed more cheerful than I expected.
“How long have you been here?” Before I had responded, he asked, “Am I the first one you have seen?” I had no idea what was “the first” he referred to. The first human? The first light? The first boy?
I didn’t reply. The plaza was huge but it was empty. All I could see was the boy standing in the middle of this plaza. Perhaps the reflection of the light from the marble tile amplified the emptiness of this plaza, I was deeply indulged in the affectionate and pleasant air of this plaza. The air here was fresher but the trace of staleness was hard to be ignored. Temporarily oblivious of the presence of the boy, I continued inspecting the whole building without any reason. Perhaps, I was intimidated by the grandeur of this plaza.
“I guess you are never much a speaker, are you?” He winked at me.
He was ordinary. Too ordinary in the sense of normal people, though how normal they are, at least they would have one extraordinary. This was the miracle of DNA. But the boy standing in front of me defied all the beauty of random selection. Nothing from him suggested he was indeed different with other people. His attire was something could be seen on the road everyday. Although I had never met him before, I decided to call him Mr. Average because he was too ‘average’ in everything.
“Do you tell stories?” Mr.Average’s abrupt question had me taken aback. Stories? All of a sudden, I thought of the ‘stalker’ once again and I checked my back, no sign of the ‘stalker’ anymore. But it seemed uncanny things never ceased to happen.
To be continued...
I felt revitalized. The rigorous mind of mine which I possessed now was something I had lost in the city. As I strolled down one back alley with silence engulfed me, the mere presence of me filled the place told me this place was not a vacuum. Though there was no pressure, I could sense was light breeze and rhythmic percussion from somewhere else. I heard that, quite vividly and miraculously, I could even tell what that was, despite of its softness and vagueness. It was Totentanz, a masterpiece of Listz, which I played few years before in a competition, I could still recall every twist, every staccato, every chord, with clarity which itself astonished me.
Walking down a back alley was once a hazardous venture. You had to beware of the watchful eyes which followed you everywhere stealthily. Sometime, the existence of a half-opened window was sufficient to unnerve me. But not now. I felt assured by something I never knew in my life. As I walked down the alley, my heart was beating more erratically, not because of a half-opened window, not because of a potential harmful silhouette, it’s the existence of my own self sooth my choppy sea of mind. I couldn’t recall walking down any other alley could bring me such exuberance.
Being directionless, I didn’t feel lost. On the contrary, I glanced around, suddenly, I was astounded. For a moment, I thought when I turned, I could see the same street I walked down. What I found was a wall, just a tall and seemingly impregnable fortress. The wall looked new as if it was newly built. But deep down inside me, I knew a wall just couldn’t suddenly appear like an apparition. I touched the wall. It’s cold and as I waited for the epiphany which I surmised would strike me didn’t happen as I wished.
Chagrined and mystified, I continued my journey. This alley was longer than it seemed as I slowly dragged my feet inch by inch. Still, there was no sign of life. This place was deserted, I concluded. I strained my eyes, trying to locate any sign of life. To no avail, I placed my blame on the mystery that engulfed me like a big mist. Where was I and where should I head to? And how could I focus when I discovered a wall was stalking me like an assassin. Every time I turned back, it’s there standing abruptly and melodramatically in front of me.
Strangely, I was calm, although being followed quite inexplicably by a wall. Silence like a layer of snow, forcefully buried every over-heated particle. I wished I could think but the stalker, which is the name I decided to give to that wall, kept me vigilant like a porcupine. Having no choice, I had to calculate my every step quite carefully. I was afraid one I slipped, the wall my trampled on me or left me behind. I would rather have a wall following me than following a wall. I was not a stalker and neither did I aspire to be one.
I was just a wanderer, looking for something to commemorate my existence.
2. As I Lay Dying
Slowly, he opened his eyes. Every ray of light felt like a needle, pricking and piercing his delicate cornea. Again, his eyelids collapsed and instantly, immediately, there’s no light. He was already accustomed to the day without light and he indeed enjoyed the companion of the total darkness.
When he slumped back to the shapeless wilderness, he could hear laughter. At first, it was faint and then it gained its momentum. With each laughter died off, another laughter with greater amplitude replaced it. He was perplexed by the stentorian laughter. Knowing it’s neither a dream nor a fantasy, he was somehow relieved but he was no fool. How could he hear laughter when there’s nobody beside him? By the way, did he even know where’s him? So, who gave him the impression that he’s alone?
Lastly, the screeching laughter died off. Soon after that, he was overcome with a strong urge to fell. Of course he was protesting, there’s no way he could fell. Suddenly, gravity was nowhere. The sudden loss of weight floated him and he was panicked. He wanted to screamed and as he opened his mouth, heavy air sipped into his lungs and choked him. As if didn’t recognize the foreign particle, his body reacted violently.
Instinctively, he opened his eyes. For a while, he though his eyes didn’t recognize the light because all he saw was fuzzy shadow. Beside that, nothingness prevailed. Feeling trapped, he once again hesitated. To expose himself to a know danger or to explore an unknown reign? He chose the later and that’s how he met his future wife. A young and vigorous-looking nurse stood in front of him, busily recording details. Without shifting his head to other side, he knew there’s a doctor there and besides that, he also knew he had no visitors, even when he was lying on the dead bed.
Nauseated by the sudden influx of bright light, he sensed his head was giving way to the haunting laughter once again. While his eyelids sank once again, he swore he could hear laughter once again.
3. To Whom The Bell Toll
He fixed his gaze to the young nurse. Not very pretty but he had to admit she was charming. Now, laying motionlessly and dying inaudibly, a strange vision occurred to him. He was not sure whether to call it a ‘vision’ or an ‘apparition’. But he was not given time to muse before he saw he held the nurse’s hand and begged her. No, he was not begging and he saw himself doing something but definitely not begging shamelessly. Flummoxed by what he witnessed, he could even feel his palms were sweating. Nevertheless, a new vision temporarily shifted his attention again. It was a scene where he was holding an infant, way too small to call it baby. It was so tiny and delicate. Happiness quickly superseded the somber feeling and he indeed felt lifted.
The happiness swiftly drained away and it’s subsequently substituted by an unbearable heaviness. From far, he could hear the bell tolling as people scurrying into a small church with somber look on their face. He wanted to move forward so badly to see what really happened as his curiosity was stirred by the tolling bell. That’s when he discovered he could actually move. But this was not an ordinary sense of moving, to put it more realistically, he was hovering on the ground.
Nobody seemed to notice his bizarre propagation. It seemed he neither left any trail or stirred any disturbance to the still air around him. As he approached closely to the church, he ‘saw’ people talking. He could tell people were discussing about something but he couldn’t hear anything. But this time, he remained quite unperturbed. “I have had enough queer things,” shouted him to a couple walking up the steps to the church as if to seek for sympathy.
No response. Frustrated, he purposely stomped up the steps, hoping it could at least reminded myself of my invisible existence. The moment he walked into the small church, the choir was already starting without me. After getting used to interior illumination of the church, he started scanning every inch of the church. There’s no statue, there’s no bible and there’s no pastor. The only thing stood in solitude in the middle of the church was a coffin.
Mischievously, he dashed to the coffin, without knowing what he was actually up to. Then he was stoned. It’s the nurse. Suddenly, he recovered his hearing. As if having an orchestra in his ears, he kneeled and shook his head incessantly. Now, lying on the floor, he felt extremely exhausted. His ears was long accustomed to the incomprehensible orchestral. What he didn’t know was why the nurse was lying in the coffin.
He was in dire to know. But before he sorted out anything, he found out somebody was holding his right hand.
4. Midnight’s Children
The street was no longer dimly-lit. Now, it was flooded with tender light. There’s nothing that could escape from my eyes. With the little assistance of the light, I finally could make up what where was I. Strictly speaking, I was not in an alley. But in fact, I was trapped in a labyrinth-like alley. I scanned my sides, there were exits everywhere, each of them led to an equally deserted plaza. According to my calculation out of boredom, I estimated there’s an exit every 50 meters. If this alley was 1km long, there was going to have 20 plazas! The mere imagination of 20 eerily deserted plazas was enough to enervate me.
Just when I was distracted by the plazas, the shadow casted by the irritating ‘stalker’ in front of me brought me back to the reality. Like a nagging grandmother, it just couldn’t give me a break. I clenched my fists but after realizing how naïve the idea of fisting a wall was, I decided to look more clearly how did my stalker look like.
To my utter disappointment, the wall was simply nothing. No graffiti, no chewing gum, no flaw. But I had to admit that amidst my disappointment, I was quite mesmerized by the meticulously built wall. My stalker seemed having no flaws at all, not even one. It was just a combination of thousands of carefully crafted bricks. Of course, there’s no indication or whatsoever about where the bricks came from.
“Hei!”
A childish voice coming from a plaza at my left side made me jump. At first, I thought I was fantasizing this but the voice was unmistakably calling me. I was first shocked and then grew weary. My situation could be well described as a set up. But it was a ludicrous idea. I turned to the origin of that voice.
A boy was standing at the middle of the plaza. He looked like a dot from my point of view and so I estimated he was well 200 meters away from me. The reflection of the bright light on his face almost prevented me from identifying him. I managed nonetheless, not without staring at him forcefully for more than 10 seconds.
“Would you come here?” He inquired in polite manner, which is a twist I never expected. I never thought he would speak to me except saying hi. I had also no idea why he gave me this impression. I just keen to portrait him as a mute, lonely and hapless. But he seemed more cheerful than I expected.
“How long have you been here?” Before I had responded, he asked, “Am I the first one you have seen?” I had no idea what was “the first” he referred to. The first human? The first light? The first boy?
I didn’t reply. The plaza was huge but it was empty. All I could see was the boy standing in the middle of this plaza. Perhaps the reflection of the light from the marble tile amplified the emptiness of this plaza, I was deeply indulged in the affectionate and pleasant air of this plaza. The air here was fresher but the trace of staleness was hard to be ignored. Temporarily oblivious of the presence of the boy, I continued inspecting the whole building without any reason. Perhaps, I was intimidated by the grandeur of this plaza.
“I guess you are never much a speaker, are you?” He winked at me.
He was ordinary. Too ordinary in the sense of normal people, though how normal they are, at least they would have one extraordinary. This was the miracle of DNA. But the boy standing in front of me defied all the beauty of random selection. Nothing from him suggested he was indeed different with other people. His attire was something could be seen on the road everyday. Although I had never met him before, I decided to call him Mr. Average because he was too ‘average’ in everything.
“Do you tell stories?” Mr.Average’s abrupt question had me taken aback. Stories? All of a sudden, I thought of the ‘stalker’ once again and I checked my back, no sign of the ‘stalker’ anymore. But it seemed uncanny things never ceased to happen.
To be continued...
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