1.
I had a dream and it was a strange dream. I could ‘see’ ships hovering on the cloudless sky. They were of different sizes; some of them were mammoth, some of the were just microscopically petite (how I saw the ship that small?). Then, they suddenly developed a glowing orange tide on them. Slowly, almost randomly, the orange tide receded, giving way to dark clouds. Now the sky seemed somber. Thunder was brewing and precipitating the eerie déjà vu- I could no longer wake up or I would wake up an entirely different creature, just like Kafka’s bug and Roth’s breast.
And I was wide awake, feeling my heart throbbing in my head. What a bizarre dream! Luckily I was never a staunch believer in dream that could mildly resemble a fairy tale or a senseless images that deprived me of hours of sleep. I turned and looked at the white Mickey Mouse clock on the table; Mickey’s arms were pointing to 5.30am. What a ghostly hour to have such a dream! Somehow, I was not so sure of my trusty Mickey Mouse this time. The playground I could see from my window was buzzing with activities. Frisbees, dogs, pregnant mums, I stared at them disbelievingly. It must be a mistake. I had never slept until 5.30pm.
My stomach was sick with the prospects of I actually slept for more than 17 hours. Pushing open the door, I was sweating profusely. I tiptoed gingerly to the living room, suspecting foulplay. Somebody must have drugged me to sleep. Recall, recall, I told myself. Was my drink laced? No, it would only happen if I were to go to a pub yesterday night. My mind was like wires crisscrossing and shooting current sporadically without any coordination. There was once my friend recounted a real story of being shell-shocked. A person who was facing an unexpected event would have their self-defend mechanism turned off for a moment.
What benefits could we possibly get from shell-shock? My friend shrugged.
As if waking up only to discover I just slept through half a day was not shocking enough, the moment I stepped into the living room, I saw me sitting on the couch. I was shell-shocked. He or I was tossing his (shoes I just bought during the sales!) shoes and slumped on the couch. No emotion was shown but I was him, I knew exactly what it meant. Tossing shoes, slumping, poker face, he was in bad mood. My depression had no cinematic impulse nor expressive grief. He was in every aspect, a me, my doppelganger; Or was I his doppelganger?
Suddenly, he stared straight at me. I had no idea whether he could see me. Once again, I found myself in an impossible position. Facing myself, as if it was not peculiar enough, I had to reason whether I was the unwanted one in his world or vice versa. One way or another, by all means, I couldn’t help but shivering in a morbid sense of excitement.
‘I had a bad day’ The slight pause in between ‘I’ and ‘had’ was deliberately created to invoke my curiosity. Suspense was his game. He loved the way he pronounced ‘real’ and he enjoyed every moment of teasing my ignorance. ‘why?’ He sighed.
How could he be so indifferent as if I meant nothing to him? How could he keep his cool when his mirror image was not acting in his own way? I was puzzled by him. Was I that normal to him?
‘I told her, I told her everything, the fairy tale, everything!’ his sudden outburst was inexplicable. I should have refrained myself. Instead, I asked like a caring old friend, ‘What happened? Didn’t she like the story?’
‘You had no idea what that story is, didn’t you?’
‘In fact, I don’t,’ How did I manage to hold my nerve? Talking to myself…
‘It is a fairy tale, I don’t tell fairy tales. To me, they are too morbid. Humankind is mocked by their simplicity and only in fairy tales, morality was nothing. People get killed all the time in fairy tales but… this story just sprung to my mind on night. The urge was so strong. I need to tell her, I need to confess my love.’
She… that was not her name. However, ‘she’ sounded like a déjà vu. Again, déjà vu, the thunder, the lightning… they all happened again! Who was she? She was in my mind but where was she in my mind? Every obscure corner, every piece, I needed to remember who she was. Who?
2.
All of a sudden, the strange orange ships and the stentorian thunder were back. I was rudely awaken by the dream and to my dismay, same thing happened all over again. I rushed to the window, all of them were still there, doing exactly the same thing. ‘Was what I went through another dream?’ No, it was too surreal. My doppelganger would be sitting on the same couch if I were to muster enough courage to go out from my room. My heart was not strong enough for another encounter with my doppelganger, not after the surreal dream I had. Was it a dream? The question was back. However, I was more inclined to think so because if I was wrong, then, somebody might have pressed a ‘backspace’ in my life and refreshed my last few minutes.
That was even more disturbing.
Then, I saw him, my impostor. He came out from the washroom. He still looked the same, except he was humming ‘Yesterday Once More’. I should know better than anyone else. My favourite, the only song I would hum when I was in a particularly jolly mood. I couldn’t really remember when was the last time I hummed this song. It must be ages ago because I could hardly remember the lyrics. ‘You should be happier, you should do something to cheer yourself up, your all make-believe stories have gotten into your head, do they not?’ my friend who was concerned once asked me.
What could I say? I was not nihilistic, I was not even an idealist or perfectionist. But, happiness? Not my thing, I inadvertently distanced myself from them. Perhaps my friend was right, the stories I wrote influenced me more than I managed influence them.
Back to my doppelganger, he grinned at me. ‘Tell you what? I’m going to see her tomorrow.’ I threw an anxious look on the Mickey Mouse clock which was still there, 5.30pm. The calendar, one cross was missing. I had a habit to mark everyday I lived through by putting a big cross on the date. Today was supposed to be 11th May but there was no cross on 10th May. First thing that came to my mind was, I time travelled. Nonsense, how did I explain why all the scenes were still the same? Why the same dream?
‘She agrees to go out with me, finally. I asked her for a few times already but I was being unlucky for quite a few times. First time I asked her, she had an exam. Second time I asked her, she had to attend a wedding dinner. Finally, she said yes. Aren’t you happy for me?’
He painstakingly narrated all the tedium. I could hear and see the exuberance. But, how could I bring myself to tell him he was going to be heartbroken on tomorrow? All these things had been strange to me, I could hardly convince myself. He wouldn’t believe In me, neither would I if I were to experience this all over again.
3.
I refused to open my eyes. It was all happening, all over again. The dream, the thunder, I was on the brink of losing my mind. Another refreshing of my life would ultimately force me to go berserk. I howled aimlessly. The Micky Mouse clock was still on the clock and it annoyed me. I hurled the clock out of the window in frustration.
Desperation, was a more appropriate term.
Without any surprise, I saw him sitting by his desk. He was writing something ferociously. The fairy tale! I suddenly recalled. Occasionally, he lifted his head and looked at the playground outside his room. The sky was dyed in the brilliant orange clouds. His exultance was reflective in the eccentric colour of clouds. What exultance? The fairy tale?
I wished I could surreptitiously steal a view on the story he was working on. Just before I was about to do that, he turned to me with a worried look on his face. The same face I grimaced at when it appeared behind the mirror. Behind the mirror, the face with its mouth opened, eyes wide, sweat crystallized on the forehead- they were all perfect testimonial of an infatuated heart.
He had tons of worries, the absurd ones, the groundless ones.
Without totally denouncing his paranoia, I advised him to take the middle way. Be nice to her, be the one she needed, be there for her… I was good in assuring him everything would be alright but ultimately, I was him. The worries were gnawing in me too. She, was a shapeless and formless apparition to me. But he didn’t know that, he assumed I knew her well; maybe I did, just that my memory failed me, at this crucial moment.
‘Why are you writing this?’
‘12th May is her birthday, I want to tell her this, I think it’ll be a perfect story for her. I think she will be touched,’ he beamed.
His optimism touched me. For a moment, I thought he was going to succeed and 12th of May would be altogether a different ending. The shoes wouldn’t be tossed and he wouldn’t be talking to a stranger who turned out to be himself. The story was on the desk. Somehow, without looking at it, I was convinced. She would be touched.
And I realized I had too much ‘would’, ‘could’ and ‘should’ in my own wishful thinking. Woulda, coulda, shoulda, three blind mice.
I no longer argued with the rational. The irrationality surrounding me no longer troubled me. Perhaps, I had grown used to it or perhaps, I was just very obsessed with his soon-to-be failure. As he continued scribbled down his final thought, I watched from far.
‘Why you want to tell her this story?’
He was startled. ‘I don’t know, she is different. I want to tell her that. She never gives me any hint but we can talk for whole day long. Tell me, can I be mistaken?’
No exactly an answer to my question. At least, one thing was confirmed. He was indeed a replica of me. Or he was just an ordinary infatuated teenager? No reason to fall in love, yet, believing in a reason that never existed with a conviction so strong that would tear him apart if he were to be rejected- he picked up the sign of falling in love.
Naïve, childish, impulsive, three blind bats.
4.
‘I thought bats are blind naturally?’
‘Does that mean men are blind naturally?’
‘Love is blind naturally.’
‘Love is naïve, childish and impulsive?’
‘Don’t you know that?’
Then the orange ships marched in, I was awake, with hair plastered to my sweaty forehead. He was not In the room. He was not in the living room when I went out to see what was awaiting me out there. No surprise and should I consider this as a different type of surprise?
The dreams had left me pretty much dehydrated. And dehydration made me drowsy. I sat down on the couch, thinking of all the possibilities. The absence of him made me nervous. I was partly afraid of he would suddenly appear out of no where and was not entirely relieved either if this was not a part of my ‘refreshed’ dream. ‘Yesterday Once More’, what was the significance of the song?
The calendar hung on the wall seemingly foretold everything, including the significance. It was 18th of March- my birthday. Was I going through another birthday? Which birthday was it? The 2008 one or the 2009 one or the even earlier ones?
Somebody was knocking the door of the apartment.
I was cross because my thought was disrupted. Who was the one who knocked the door? I decided whoever that person was, he/she was definitely not him. Wouldn’t he have the key to his apartment (technically my apartment also)?
Realizing the whole new probability, I weighted two possibilities. 1. It was a prank. 2. She was the one.
I opened the door slowly, half-expecting she would be standing in front of me. How would I know she was the one? No way to prove it nor to disprove it. Juggling such a variety of mixed thoughts was quite a headache. And it number my response. How did I know?
Because she was standing there, right in front of me the moment I opened the door.
I was shell-shocked for the second time, though the magnitude must be lower. I still could instinctively welcome her to my place. I still could mutter some mumbo-jumbos- which clearly made sense to her. She said something and I replied something else. We both smiled, though all of them didn’t really register in my mind. It was all reflex.
Hence, I couldn’t really describe her. Was she petite? Did she have an alluring figure? Was her hair black or brown? If my friends were to be here to witness everything, they must be laughing at my apparent state of autonomicity. ‘How can you fail to notice her hair?’ they would say.
I poured her something. I told her something. And now I discovered I was facing the mirror in my bathroom. The person behind the mirror was in every aspect, a quintessential me. ‘Clear your mind, ask the important ones, skip the miscellaneous,’ who was talking to whom?
I must ask her.
She was flipping through The Economist scattered haphazardly on the round table when I came back to the living room. There’s clarity in her eyes, eager to learn about me, eager to strike a conversation, eager to gain control. ‘Do you like yachts?’, ‘The orange one,’ she was taken aback by my question. Clearly, she didn’t expect me to ask a question first.
‘How do you know I like yachts? Orange is a strange choice, but it’ll be quite a stand-out if an orange yacht is anchored with other yachts.’
‘ Have you been to one before?’
‘No’
‘ Why you like them?’
‘ You are acting weird today.’
‘Answer me’
‘Hmm… they were once in my dream.’
‘What kind of dream?’
‘It was kind of silly but I dreamed of I was on a yacht with thousands maybe million of perfumes around me.’
‘Thousands? How did they smell like? It must be one hell of cocktail.’
‘No, they smell just like here.’
‘Here? I don’t understand, there’s no perfume here.’
‘ Don’t you realize we are surrounded by millions of scents all the time?’
‘You like perfumes?’
‘You are asking a lot.’
‘Do you?’
‘Yeah, talk about yourself. Why didn’t you say hi to me this morning in the campus?’
‘I didn’t? I thought I said hi to you and even told you about my birthday?’
‘No you didn’t, I’m sure about that.’
‘How did you find out about my birthday?’
‘Why are you at home during your birthday? Expecting someone?’
‘Are you here to celebrate for me?’
‘No.’
‘Why?’
‘Why what?’
‘Why are you here if you are not here to celebrate?’
‘Just come by to meet my new friend.’
‘We are friends?’
‘More than that?’
‘What do you mean by more than that?’
‘More than you wishful thinking.’
‘What wishful thinking?’
‘About me.’
‘About you what?’
‘About how I like yachts and perfumes.’
‘I’m confused.’
‘Me too.’
‘Would you like to, you know, swing by and be my guest?’
‘That’s very generous of you. I guess I will see you more often?’
‘I think we are throwing each other too many questions.’
‘Are we?’
‘I think so, another question from you.
‘No question next time.’
‘Seriously?’
‘See, another question.’
5.
Now I realized those ships in my dream were yachts. Old habits died hard. I had been calling them yachts since I was young and no matter how my mother tried to correct me, it’s hard to change. Orange yachts, lots of them were in my dream. They were on the sky and the sky was instantly dyed orange. I tried to close my eyes; the ray was too glaring. My eyes were closed in my dream. So, what could be so glaring until I felt like losing my eyesight?
The thunder roared and soon the yachts dispersed. The wind was too strong for them.
Ceiling fan was the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes. Mickey mouse clock was the second thing I saw. 5.30pm. The calendar was the third thing I would like to see. It showed 12th of May when I stepped into my living hall. A huge tide of relief overwhelmed me. It’s now all over. No more doppelganger, no more endless fear of facing myself, no more ‘she’.
She?
She was completely out of my mind until the haunting images of the dream dragged her back. 12th of May, 5.30pm, I ought to do something, something that sounded to eerily familiar to me. Reminder, yes, I kept a reminder. I ransacked my room and my study table for that piece of reminder. And I found it, right underneath ‘The Art Of Yachting’.
5.40pm- pick up her gift from the shop
6.30pm- meet her.
Her gift?
Yacht was way beyond me. I couldn’t have bought her a yacht. It must be something else. I found myself pacing in obvious irritability, trying very hard to remember. What gift? Another question from me. My head was overdriven by information and the couch suddenly looked so tempting to me. I slumped on the couch, musing about how I came to lose my memory. No, I didn’t. I once told a friend, ‘it’s all in your mind, it’s just a matter of whether you can remember.’
I was sure I didn’t forget.
Suddenly, my saturated mind was intruded by an untimely thought. Didn’t I look exactly like the ‘him’ I witnessed in the dream? Depressed, worried, jumpy… ‘Think like him,’ I tried to condition myself to think like him as if I was not him in the first place.
The story!
How could I forget the single most crucial link? I rushed into my room and flipped open ‘The Art Of Yachting’. A piece of paper dropped out. The story, my story, my story for her... my promise.
Once upon a time, there was a young man living alone in a humble hut. One day, a young girl passed by his hut and the moment he saw her, he was completely in love with her. He swore to everyone he met that the girl was the most beautiful lady he had ever met in his whole life. But, he never saw that girl again. All she left him, was a petal of flower. The scent of the flower, strangely enough, ever faded. It was the magic flower, he thought.
One night when he was asleep, suddenly an old man came to his dream. ‘I’m the father of that girl. In order to marry her, you have to complete three tasks. Firstly, you must buy the most expensive gem in the World for her. Secondly, you must build a house for her on the most dangerous cliff in the World. Thirdly, you must live in there and wait for her.
The first task, to him, was the easiest. He worked hard for 20 years in a nearby mill and when he amassed enough fortune, he bought the biggest ruby in the World. The second task was tricky. He thought all by himself, there was no way for him to build a house on the steepest and the most dangerous cliff in the World. But, with enough courage and perseverance, he finished building that house in another 20 years.
The third task, which was supposed to be the easiest, turned out to be the hardest of all tasks. Everyday, he was eagerly waiting for her to come back to him. Another day went by, another disappointment added. Nonetheless, he waited for another 20 years. His love for her never changed and wavered. He swore to himself that he would wait for the one who brought that heavenly scent to his life.
One day, the old man in his dream 60 years ago suddenly appeared at his doorway. The old man didn’t seem to change a bit but the young guy was now a frail and old man already. The old man said to him, ‘congratulations on completing your tasks, you shall now have my daughter’s hands.’ Then the young girl appeared in front of him. She also didn’t change a bit.
He was very sad. He was no longer young but the girl was still young. ‘I can’t marry her,’ he said, ‘I’m too old for her.’ The old man laughed, ‘do you know why I set all the tasks for you?’ He shook his head.
‘A guy doesn’t have to be rich as long as he is willing to spend for the one he loves dearly. A guy doesn’t have to be strong as long as he is willing to carry the one he loves dearly and be the one for her all the way. A guy doesn’t have to be immortal as long as he is willing to wait for the one he loves dearly.’
‘You are the right one for my daughter,’ as the father of the girl said that, the old man was turned into a young guy once again. He was overjoyed. He lives happily with the girl happily ever after.
The perfume. Mystery solved, the gift is a perfume! A perfect testimonial of love.
Such a simple fairy tale! There was only one thing in my mind now, I must tell her that. No more questions, no more careful calculations, no more searching for signs and hints. I must and would tell her everything.
As I held the paper close to my chest, I could see the yachts once again. Orange ones. The thunder was not in my sight. For once in my whole life, I felt the optimism caressing my skin, warming my heart, soothing my injured soul, once again. For once, I believed.
Another me must be watching me from far and I was sure, he could feel the happiness too. There would be a smile on his face.
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