Comedy, Divine

You’d find it funny. I did.

It’s the greatest comedy of all. The one where someone trips and falls, and the world laughs at him.

And he, as part of the world, will laugh at himself.

It started when I slipped and fell, presumably on the sidewalk; I couldn’t quite remember, but it was raining and I was walking to the office and for the most of it I was falling through the grey, cracked monochrome of the typical cement curb.

It seemed like I fell a long way, but it wasn’t painful or anywhere scary, so I wasn’t much inclined to scream, or shout, or flail helplessly. I did, however, wish that I could sit.

I suddenly just stopped falling. Or, maybe, I was simply just lying down on the star-decked blackness at the start, and nothing else had taken place, ever. Like I never lived, or birthed, or existed.

At any rate, it was blackness decked with stars. Some were quite close, burning quietly in brilliance that didn’t overwhelm, as though the blackness seem to shroud them in some sort of harmony. The stars far away merely glimmered and fall, sometimes, like they always did.

It seemed like a nice place to be, but I remembered that I was needed at the office in half an hour to pitch in the Blue-jay Project, my life’s Magnum Opus, as each life would allow one, so I really needed to get back. It struck me, then, that I’m at someplace that wasn’t New York, or even Manhattan.

“Ah, hello,” said someone. He sounded, if there’s anyway to describe it, archaic. I looked around, found the moon, and on top of it was someone in white robes.

“Hello,” I said. And, because he was on the moon and I wasn’t sure if this was the universe, where I was standing, I shouted again; “Hello!”

He took a tentative step backwards, and made a gentle leap from the moon and landed next to me.

He looked like Woody Allen. The enthusiastic nervousness of it, at least, shown on the wrinkles of his forehead and the way his mouth couldn’t make its mind to stay closed or opened.

“Hello,” he said again. “You are… I… think… presume, yes, from Earth?”

I didn’t quite understand what he was saying, so I just shrugged.

“Yes, well, you must be… nothing else would explain why you’re here suddenly.” He mumbled something else, and absently scratched his temples. He had white hair, thinning and rough, but well kept.

“I think I fell here,” I said. “I kinda slipped and fell. It was raining.”

“Yeah, it happens sometimes… stupid, really. This is quite an honest mistake, you being here. Happens sometimes.”

“So, I’m not supposed to be here?” I said.

“Yes.”

“Ok,” I said. It was a little embarrassing. It’s like walking into a Staff Only washroom and then having to apologise on the way out. “Well, I need to get out. I have a meeting to attend to.”

He ignored me, almost completely. He seemed to be thinking. And while I waited for his reply I looked around again. Behind the moon was a planet… Mercury, I think; it was small and it looked like what I read from the science textbooks. And behind Mercury was Venus, and behind it the Sun. The Sun. Someone didn’t do astronomy, obviously.

The man hadn’t replied, so I said; “Um, how do you get out of here.”

He breathed in, held it in his chest, and then let out. It whistled through his nose.

“I don’t get out of here. I am here, I remain here, and I cannot leave if I wanted to, unless I’m allowed, which I aren’t.” He seemed to grow increasingly flustered. “You, however, have to take the long way back, I’m afraid.”

“The long way?” I asked.

“Yes. The way it normally takes to get here. Your falling down here is simply a mistake.”

I sighed. I might just miss the meeting. I might have to call Collins and tell him I had an accident, slipping and falling on the sidewalk, and he can maybe get another meeting to come around, sorry if he had pulled enough strings for me already, but my Magnum Opus was a Magnum Opus and it just. Had. To . Be. Seen.

“Where am I, anyway?” I asked. I just noticed I didn’t know.

“Why,” he said. “You’re in Paradiso. Paradise.”

“Wow,” I said. That explains a lot. “That explains a lot.”

He didn’t say anything.

I looked around again, this time in amusement. “Can’t I stay here?”

“Obviously not,” he said. “You’re… you… don’t belong. Not yet, maybe. Well, it’s a huge mistake, you being here.”

I guess you can’t get everything in life.

“Ok, how do I get back ‘the long way’?”

“Ah…” he said, and then looked over his shoulder, as though checking out for eavesdroppers. “We have to be quick before Matelda comes with the procession. There’s a lot to remember, so you listen carefully, ok?”

“Yep.”

“Ok, firstly, you walk down there.” He pointed to my back. “Keep going until you see two rivers. Signs will say Lethe and Eunoë; you just walk past them and don’t drink anything. Ignore them and keep walking. You with me so far?”

“Yep.”

“Right. Keep walking and you’ll reach a mountain trail. Just follow it. It’ll wind downwards and you’ll reach a garden. There’re apples there, but don’t touch any. Got it? Then you exit through the gate and take the mountain trail down and you’ll reach a terrace.”

“Terrace?”

“Yes. Like a porch. A platform. There’ll be a sign that says ‘The Seventh Terrace.’”

“Ok.”

“Go into it and follow the path there. You can’t miss it. You’ll reach a stairwell. Take it down. You’ll be in another terrace. Just ignore everything and walk to the end of the terrace to find another stairwell. You know what? From the Seventh Terrace onwards you’ll have to keep going down these stairwells until you’re in the First Terrace. Just follow the path in each one. There’s a lot of smoke in the Third Terrace, but if you feel around the ground you’ll find the path.”

“Ok.”

“Anyway, once you’re in the First Terrace, you’ll find a gate. There’s a guard there and he’ll ask to check your forehead. Just show it to him and say that there’s a mistake and… wait, scratch that. Tell him you came in but he forgot the give the mark. No, wait. Yeah, just show him your forehead and tell him your story and he’ll probably let you through.”

“Probably?”

“Once you’re out, you’re in this ante chamber. Lots of people are there, so just ignore them and find the exit. You’ll be in another ante chamber. Exit. You’ll then find this… um, wall of fur. Just climb it.”

“…fur?”

“Still with me? Keep climbing, and um… you’re in this place. Nothing to see really, though there’s something there… ah, well, just run once you’re out. You’ll find some stairs going up. Take it, and you’re in um… this round… um, zones. Well, they sort of work in a circular way and if you just follow it you’ll keep going up. Once you’re out, call for Antaeus, and he’ll help you up. If he refuses, say you know about him and Heracles.”

“Ok.” At this point, I was wondering if I remembered what he had said earlier.

“So. You’ll be in this place with flinty steps. Just climb. And ignore whatever you see. You’ll keep seeing signs that point elsewhere saying Bolgia 8 or 7 and so. Just ignore and keep heading up. Alright? You’ll see this three rings. Gigantic rings, I mean, sort of circular paths… just follow them through and find the exit. Keep taking the stairs upwards, ok? Right, Sixth Circle… you’ll be in a graveyard and the tombstones are on fire, so try not to touch anything.”

He cleared his throat.

“Exit. You’ll see a swampy river. Talk to Charon and he’ll take you across. He’ll refuse. Just say to him, ‘So it is wanted there where the power lies,’ and he’ll ferry you. Got it? ‘So it is wanted there where the power lies.’”

“So it is wanted there where the power lies,” I repeated.

“Good. Keep heading up. Forth Circle… nothing here, just keep going and you’ll find the way up. And um, the floor above, nothing there, keep going… ah, the next one, well, be careful; crazy winds blow there and you wouldn’t want to be swept away. Just keep heads down and don’t think about anything, well, related to women.”

“Ok…”

“Aha, and then you’ll be out, and all you have to do is find an officer and tell him your story. I’m sure he’ll be glad to lead you out the rest of your way, and you’ll be where you belong in no time.” He breathed a sigh of relief, and shook his head slightly.

It sounded like a really long way to me, and I was sure then that I wouldn’t be able to attend my meeting then, and I’d really hate to call Collin and trouble him, and even so my Magnum Opus might not see the green-light of approval, being late and all, but I figured that there wouldn’t be any other way but to take the ‘long way out.’

“You alright? You got everything I said?” he said, rather more nervously.

I thought for a bit, and then said, “From here, keep going down. Touch nothing. Talk to the guard. Climb the fur. Run. From there, keep going up. Ignore everything. Call for Antaeus. He has something with Heracles. Reach river. So it is wanted there where the power lies. Keep going. Don’t think of girls. Find officer.” Even I amaze myself sometimes.

“Good. Excellent.” He looked around again, seeming out of breath. “Right. Off you go now. It’s a long journey.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I’m David.”

“Dante. Pleased to meet you. Not in quite good circumstances but… ah well. Off you go. Take care.”

“Will do. Thank you.”

He smiled. It was a Woody Allen smile. I turned around and walked, and there it was - I must’ve missed it earlier - a path of silvery white that went out into a white nothingness. I turned to wave goodbye but Dante wasn’t there anymore, perhaps gone back to the moon.

So I turned, faced the white nothingness, and started walking.

It was straightforward, the path. For a moment it seemed that I might have just walked blindly in a place too vast and too white, probably drifting left without really knowing, until I came across the rivers. True enough, there were signs on brass fashioned as vines, saying;

Lethe
- To forget past sins -

Eunoë
- To remember good deeds-

The water looked like crystals that flow. It could’ve put any mountain stream to shame, or if bottled, topple Evian off the charts. But Dante said not to drink, so I left them, and walk along.
I reached the garden. It reminded me of an old painting, a Victorian masterpiece printed too many times in the encyclopaedias, but I couldn’t remember which. True enough, there was a tree with apples so tempting I could’ve picked them just for the sake of it. But as Dante said, leave them, so I left.

The mountain trail lay on the other side, and I took it down.

The Seventh Terrace had the sign, ’The Seventh Terrace’ emblazoned on top of it, and below it was a mat that said; “From where you’re coming, you sure you want to leave?”. I had to. I have a person I probably took for granted to call, so that I can beg an audience to my architectural chef d'oeuvre.

I entered. There was a wall of flame there. It was, however, room temperature, and the path led right into it. Perhaps it was some sort of hologram. I walked through it. It was like walking past a waterfall going upwards. Weird. And sensual. When I came out I was already facing the stairway down. I didn’t read the sign, or the mat.

On the other terrace there were buffet tables lined up at the side of the walls, separated by a thick wall of glass. These weren’t the 55 dollars++ buffet from the typical hotel. These were the ones at the king’s royal feast, the ones you can only see on TV and probably drool after. To top it off, the scent were sort of ventilated into the terrace. Since there wasn’t anyway I could eat them, I walked on.

The next terrace had a couple of people lying faced down on the ground. They looked dead, only that the dead would’ve been more active. They weren’t doing anything at all. I nudged one, and he woke up, saying, “Time already?”. And then, groaning, he said, “Aw man…”. Then he just disappeared. I sidestepped everyone else lying on the ground, and then walked downwards.

Terrace four had a roomful of people running in circles. All of them, however, were fat. They huffed and puffed and looked like they were going to puke. There was no way to get to the other side without being stampeded, so I cut into the circle and joined them. Some glanced at me and smiled awkwardly. I grinned, then ran ahead.

Like Dante said, the next terrace was full of smoke, and a lot of coughing. I couldn’t see anything, but when I bent down and touched the ground I found the path, which felt like a tarmac curb, rising a little above the floor, and I followed it, crawling at spots. A couple of times I bumped into someone, all who said sorry, and in a few minutes I was at the stairway, going down.

The next terrace had several people, all with their eyes sewn shut, and wearing clothes that were gray like the floor and wall. Hence, if I just stood and looked, it was like staring at a room were faces were floating in the gray. It was really sombre and disheartening, so I walked quickly and left.

The First Terrace had people walking around carrying boulders on their backs. Big, heavy ones. They looked like a parade of hunchbacks. Or Egyptian slaves. And they all looked at me as though I was the luckiest man on earth. In the room, I was probably. I left.

There was a man with wings at the gate, holding a sword. He was halting someone entering, and after a few questions, held up his sword and starting carving seven P’s on the person’s forehead. After that person left I approached him. He crossed his arms and cocked his head. I told him what happened to me. He nodded, moved me to one side, made me sign a piece of paper (procedure, I suppose) and then opened the gate for me.

I walked on.

Both ante rooms were full of people, standing around. They looked, above all things, really, really bored. A couple of old men were at the corner playing yo-yos, and pretty much most of them were moving around playing cards. Others simply sat, or stood, or slept. Like in a hospital room. Waiting.

There really was a wall of fur. It was easy to climb, but there were things hopping around, which I later found out to be really big fleas. The fur led upwards and to a gaping hole on the ceiling, where there were shadows dancing on fiery light.

Past the hole, it was like a flame-themed pub. All red, fiery and shadowy. Some shouting and wailing, and an occasional growl. On one side of the wall is a full, obviously CGI display of a head with three faces (that’s 3 eyes, 3 mouths and six eyes for you), chewing up three people with their legs flaying about. It looked almost real. There were fire everywhere. I’d call that place tasteless. Moving on.

Whatever Dante meant by round zones were corridors that move in a circle, with several doors leading into rooms that were completely darkened.

When I was out in the open, I called for Antaeus. He was a giant simply by being very big (very damn big). He looked infuriated when I said I knew what happened between him and Heracles. “Cheated!” he cried, taking me across a wall of ice. “And don’t you tell anyone, you hear me? Don’t you dare tell…”.

Up flinty steps, and ignoring the signs that say Bolgia 8 to 1.

The rings were like the seats on a circular stadium, and at every round there was a bridge to the other, and at the exit (or entrance) was a minotaur, which I figure to be a guard, but he was sleeping, so I just walked.

The graveyard did indeed have fiery tombstones. It was also downright hot.

At the swampy river, I said to the boatman, “So it is wanted there where the power lies.” “Whatever,” he replied, and ferried me across.

I came to a circular room where people were playing an odd game; one group would push heavy bags (which chinked and chimed like bagfuls of coins) into the middle of the room, and another group would carry them back. It repeats, like watching clockwork.

There was a three headed dog, and a bunch of people lying in what looks like vomit and garbage.

And then, when I left them, there was a rough wind, like a hurricane, and remembering Dante I walked on trying very hard not to think about girls.

And then I was in a plains of green grass, with trees in the distance, and mountains decked with castles and turrets. There was a cottage nearby, with a lot of people standing outside, looking gloom. I went in.

A man in white toga was ticking sheets of paper on a desk, and he looked pretty important, so I went up to him and said, “Hi, I need to get out of here.”

“No can do,” he said, barely looking up from his papers. “Once you’re in Limbo, you can’t leave. Unless you’re in the list. Go look it up at the message board.”

“I’m here by mistake,” I said. “I fell on a sidewalk and into Paradise.”

He looked up, and was very reminded of Alec Baldwin. With spectacles. He looked at me thoroughly. And then he said, “Gee, another one. Management is going to have a ball.”

Not really knowing what to say, I murmured, “Sorry.”

“Nah, it’s not your fault,” he said, stretching himself. “Have a seat. It’s the problem with the system, see. People fall into a coma and they label it wrongly as ‘death’. Happens when you computerise the system. Glitches everywhere. The management going bollocks. Obviously, it has more advantages over the cons. We’re all much freer, at any rate, and more of us gets transferred to Cupid.”

“Does that mean that dead people come here?” I asked.

“Yeah. The souls, actually. The body stays up. So if you’re here by mistake, you’re probably in coma and your soul just landed down here. You said you fell into Paradise?”

“Yeah.”

“Ho ho, the management’s not gonna like my report. The very place they didn’t want people landing in. At any rate, you’re the first. So you walked all the way here? Down Mount Purgatory and through the Nine Circles?”

“I suppose so, yeah.”

“Blimey, that’s a really long way. Well, time to send you back, if it’s a mistake. What’s your name? I need to look it up and set you back.”

“David Kingsley.”

“David Kingsley. Kingsley, D., aged 34, New York, born in Carolina, architect… let’s see,” he was saying all that while leafing through a stack of papers on the floor. “Found it. Right. Oh dear…”

“Oh dear?”

“Well, says here, you’re dead.”

“I am?”

“Yeah, an hour ago. From the blood clot bursting in your brain, after your fall on the sidewalk. Coma for two weeks. I’m sorry.” He put up a face of sympathy, which looks fake.

“So… I’m stuck here?”

“That depends.” He flipped through papers in his hand. “Tell me, David; are you a pagan?”

“A what?”

“Ah, yes, you are. Written here. Well, you died without being able to do anything, so that means you’re either in Ante-purgatory; Excommunicate or here at Limbo. Let’s go through your records.” He reached backwards and drew out a file.

“Ah,” he said. “You’re a heavy sinner.”

“I am?”

“Several accounts of sloth, various forms of envy, occasional gluttony, and immense amount of wrath, pride and lust. Particularly pride.”

“Whoa.”

“505, 788 accounts of lying, 78, 332 murder…”

“Wait, 78 thousand murders?”

“Ants and insects are all taken into account. At any rate, that’s a lot.” He cocked his eyebrows.

“Worked part-time as a pest-killer once.”

“6, 567, 992 times you cursed and/or insulted, stolen money of your mother’s purse 18 times, slept with your boss’s wife twice, slept with her sister once, slept with your best friend’s girlfriend four times. Beat up a hobo once. Do I need to go on?”

“No, not really.”

“Well, I’ll just tell it to you straight; with this record, and having being a pagan above it all, there’s no way you’re going to Ante-purgatory and you definitely don’t qualify for Limbo.”

“Oh.”

“That means you’re going to Hell.”

“Ah…”

He let out a long whistle. “Well, I’m going to have to read to you the whole hell program. All the 9 circles of it. Of course, you’ve seen it all coming here, so I guess I don’t have to go through all the details.”

He chuckled. I chuckled too, a little nervously, perhaps.

“Well, at least you can tell everyone down there that you’ve been to Paradise. Whoa, you’re probably the ONLY guy who’s been in both Paradise and Hell. Lucifer aside. You‘ve met him?”

I can only grin. And cry.

“Ah, well, I’m sorry, but you’re one heavy sinner and all you have to do now is just reflect on it.”

I nodded. I guess you can’t get everything in life. Life?

“Well, lets get started with Lust.”






********************************END***********************************




Some comedies aren't funny. This is one of them.

I guess sometimes I can relish in the fact that certain literature, dubbed as comedies by their respective authors, are far more than mere stories that try to tap on the ironic aspects of life. I'm talking about social commentators and literary geniuses, and the group of people that have nothing to do but churn out the Meet the Spartan or Superhero Movie movies.

Not all comedies are comedies.

This story is concocted from sleepiness and boredom of having to wait in a hospital room for three hours with nothing to do but watch Herbie: Fully Loaded.

For the record, I have not read The Divine Comedy. Wikipedia proves, once again, to be a good source for quick research.

Untitled Story, as of yet.

I found this thing tucked oddly in My Pictures folder, written a long, long time ago. It is supposed to go somewhere, but for now, it's going nowhere.

*************************

The demons Rafael and Larking were playing cards under the Nifel tree. Rafael was the shorter demon, stout and sturdy and hunched, with a rather intimidating horn. Larking was taller but slimmer with a certain fragility in his thin frame, but makes up with a more intimidating horn, because he was two centuries older.


It was dim as it always had been in Nifelheim, but the moonlight was enough for the demons to see. Shadows lurked past in sniggers and groans. Occasionally a scream would sound, but the demons knew that the Nid hog was only playing with its food. Unperturbed, they shuffled and Larking dealt.


Rafael made a sucking sound. He was agitated.


“Apparently you have little knowledge about game faces,” Larking said. He arranged his deck of 5 and licked a maggot off his thumb.


“Meh, I’m not one to bother with game faces. If it’s a winning card I win, and if it’s a losing card I damn Luck and her lot of pushies. I raise you four.” Rafael flicked four miniscule buttons onto the table.


Larking smiled, and tossed six chocolate wrappers above the buttons. “I raise you by 18.”


Rafael made another sucking sound, which sounded like a very beastly kiss. “I’m short. Maybe we can put this in my tab?”


“Your tab is already overflowing as it is,” Larking sneered. “You still haven’t paid me for the bet at the race.”


“Yeah, yeah… was kinda hoping I could win it square tonight…” said Rafael, scratching his scaly head, his brow furrowed over his cards, thinking.


Larking cocked an eyebrow. He leant towards the stout demon with a wry smile.


“Two pennies for your Thought. How about that?”


“I don’t know,” said Rafael, scratching his head harder. A Thought costs a lot… just a much two pennies do, to be precise, but it was a valuable Thought nonetheless. Still, if he could win and call the debt void…


“Deal. Two Deaths, Two Plagues and a Goat. Demonic Destitution. Show me your cards.”


“Three Angels, one Sword of Flame and one Foe-Striker. Divine Retribution. I win.” Larking chuckled and swept his winnings into a small leather pouch. It was bulging.


“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you have a deal with Luck to begin with,” grunted Rafael, rubbing his horn as he always did when he loses.


“Not Luck to be precise,” said Larking, with a dribble of cold in his voice. “One of her cronies owe me a favour and I had him rigged tonight’s game.”


“You stinking son of a sow,” said Rafael, and he laughed with grim satisfaction. “Give me a chance to win back the Thought, won’t ya? Tomorrow night?”


“Not in hundred years, my friend,” said Larking. “Desmont just put me on the Venice project, so I won’t be free until then.” He dropped the last button into the pouch and leant towards Rafael again, in the same way and in the same smile.


“Now, the Thought, if you please.”


Rafael grumbled his displeasure and cleared his throat. A wind blew and rustled the Nifel tree, and both demons spread out their wings to embrace the bitter cold of the breeze. The wind billowed and turned towards the sky, and its gust drowned under a sudden, sickening crunch; the Nid hog had just finished its dinner. There was a soft whimper, followed by gasps of fear, to show that the Nid hog was preparing for breakfast.


Rafael had his jaw locked and eyes closed, his chest heaved and relaxed as though trying to gather phlegm to his throat. And then he raised a hand and gave the back of his head a heavy pound, and the Thought splattered onto the table coated in thick, dark rheum.


The mucus sizzled and dissolved the table, but the round glowing ball of dimmed light remained unscathed and untainted, sapphire in its weak incandescence. Larking reached out a hand and brought the light to his nose, where he breathed and sucked the Thought like swirling cigarillo smoke.


“Hmm,” said Larking, a contemplative look on his face. “A rather interesting Thought.”


“It’s good stuff,” grunted Rafael, resentful. “Worth more than two pennies any day.”


“But of course,” Larking said, closing his eyes in savouring. “If not for the agreed cost of a Thought as determined by law.”


Rafael grumbled something about knowing things and ludicrous rules, and started shuffling the cards absent-mindedly.


“I’d say,” said Larking, after a while. “This is quite the Thought. Quite the Idea, more likely, especially from a human. Fascinating.”


“Yeah, good stuff, isn’t it? I nicked it off Montesto after one of his routine visits Midside. He said he bought it from a human for a killing favour. It’s illegal, but for a Thought, everything’s worth it.”


“Pity. I would like to see it evolve into something more… complete,” said Larking. He swallowed the Thought and lodge it between his rib-cages; foreign Thoughts can muddle his judgement if kept in his mind for too long. “We could sell it to another human for a more fetching price.”


“Pfft… what human would actually buy a Thought? Especially an Idea,” Rafael snorted, but found himself wondering as well. He could understand the nascent gravity of the Thought, but to actually sell it to someone… well, it would be preposterous to begin with. It is hard to sell Ideas unless presented in whole beforehand, and in the manner of this, would make the Idea a free gift at any rate.


“We tempt the human. Certain humans, in particular. One who knows a bargain when he sees the reason,” said Larking. He ran a finger down his cheek, drawing a red hot line which spittle and hissed before darkening into his obsidian skin. “We could sell it for a Story. Or a Television… yes, that would be proper. Way proper. The question is how do we sell it.”


“Like I said, there ain’t anyone of the living dumb enough to buy an Idea in the first place,” said Rafael. “Sell them the wrong Idea and they go crazy. Plus, it’s illegal.”


“Perhaps I should rephrase my question a little bit… I believe the question is whom do we sell it to.”


“It’s illegal,” repeated Rafael, afraid that Larking didn’t hear. Larking cocked another eyebrow and sneered. “We thrive in illegality, my friend, if that’s not the way we’ve been working ever since we decided to move Downside.”


“Yeah… yeah you got that right,” said Rafael, defeated as he always had been, under the wings of Larking. He gave the cards a tentative rub, and then swallowed it down his throat. No more games tonight now that he knew Larking had rigged it, and not that he had anything left to gamble with.


“But it’s not like we’re going Midside anytime,” said Rafael, stretching his arms. “Nor Montesto; he’s under probation for smuggling a carton of milk. He’ll probably keep the profits anyway, seeing that I nicked the Thought from him. Still seething when I met him last week, almost degutted me.”


“Desmont hinted that I might need to travel Midside for a bit of supervision. Perhaps I can look for someone then,” said Larking, cracking his knuckles. The moon flickered for a moment, the began to vane a little. Something rumbled past nearby, the shadows riding above and under it. Larking yawned. It was getting early.


“You do that,” said Rafael, stretching his legs and pulling a hand over his head to stress the muscles. “And then we split the profits.”


“I daresay the Thought is mine now,” said Larking, popping his large toe. “You are, of course, free to come over and watch when you like.”


Rafael followed his final act of stretching his back in a cobra positioned (which he remembered was called yoga) with a grunt and more muttering. There was a quickly extinguished yell; the Nid hog had decided breakfast shouldn’t be played, and by the sound of wailing that struck like a repetitive call of sirens, second-breakfast was being served.


“The missus is starting to wonder,” said Rafael, looking at the moon. “I’ll see you in a century then.”


“Right,” said Larking, a painful-sounding crick snapped from his flexing jaw. “Though, I might drop by for Oglith’s birthday.”


“Don’t bother. She’s making more of that tin can stuff she bought from Montesto. I told her it was cat food but she didn’t believe.”


“Right… perhaps I wouldn’t. See you in a century then.”


Larking was already at the clouds when Rafael shouted at him:


“Get a TiVO from while you’re at it!”

Classroom Doodles

I’m a horrible student. That goes without saying.

In class I only do three things… mostly, do three things, and that is to draw (on the tables, or on any scrap of paper with blank spaces), to daydream (also applies to staring at people and wondering if their hairs will curl and start strangling the people next to them) and lastly to write, or doodle, in a notebook.

(I also have the tendency to sleep through classes, and while most embarrassing, also most justifiable since I only do it when I’m dead sleepy).

Sometimes I write mini-stories, something that would fit in one page (there’re also micro-stories, and they’re roughly 50 words long or so); this is a practice that was introduced to me back during Creative Writing classes (my lecturer and tutor, miss Annie Tan, had made it delightfully interesting. She dropped by sometime ago and commented on Walrus story, and I can’t thank her enough for her teachings).

The first exercise we had in class was to write a 1-minute long short story to be read in class; the story should only last one minute when read. I wrote something about a man and a cockroach; I had hoped to type it down sometime, or make it longer, but every time I sat down for it, it slips away and parks at a corner. I had given up since, but the written copy is still with me, though I had lost the crumpled-up version a long time ago.

Still, I occasionally find the urge to write something down that’s only one page long, and that is normally a challenge for me, since I’m as long winded as old highways used to be. They never normally make sense, and some of them I mix up and throw into other stories. But they’re very fun to write, especially when class gets boring.

Here’s two most recent ones, and I put it here before I lost my notebook, which is bound to happen. Someday they might be part of something longer, but while they’re here, I better let them out and play.

***************


What’s lost, cannot be retrieved (17 July 2008, Culture and Communications Lecture)

Look. Look over there. Do you see him?

The boy. In the shadows. Do you see him? Right there, at that corner. Just shy from the streetlight.

Can you go say hello for me?

He can’t come out. I can’t go in. he can’t listen to me, or he won’t, or maybe, maybe, he’s listening and answering but I can’t hear. I can’t. I can’t can’t can’t.

Go say hello to him? He’s a lonely boy, good boy, but lonely. And no friends, not from the darkness; only danger. Bullies, enemies, and I can’t go in. I can’t be there where he needs me. He needs a friend, needs a family. Or just someone.

My fault… all my fault. I dropped him. Let go of my hand, dropped him, and down and down he goes between the cracks. I didn’t mean to… hadn’t wanted… stupid… stupid…

And where’s he now, I can’t go. The cracks are too small. I’m too big. And he’s grown now, else he could come out, come here. I’ll wait, I think. I’ll wait till the end of the world I’ll wait, I’ll wait. Then I’ll take him home. To mommy.

Go say hello to him? Go say hello?


******************

In the Palm of my Hand (21st July 2008, Creative Strategy for Advertising lecture)


That day, the salesman walked up to me and said, “Hi sir. I sell you something good. I sell you a World. 79.95.”

So I asked him, what do you mean by a World? I had taken it for a globe.

“A World. Very cheap. I show you.”

He extracted a round circular thing that floated on his palm, rotating silently.

“Nice world. I sell you. 79.95.”

I walked away. Somehow, he chased me.

“Ok. Ok, sir. I give you cheaper. 59.95. Very cheap.”

I said to him, I don’t know what you’re selling. I don’t know what to do with it.
Then he said; “Buy a World. You be God. You make it happen. Only 59.95. Very cheap.”

So I paid him. He snatched the money, smiled, looked immensely relieved, and gave me a box labelled Lux Ata-lus.

“Nurtured best under lots of light.” And then he went away.

I got home and took out the World. It looked quite a lot like Earth, but I noticed 11 continents, and the south pole is relatively large.

I turned on the table lamp and put it under it. I guess I’ll leave It there until the bulb burns out.

Sunday I’ll water it.

How the Walrus got its Tusks

When I was younger, the school library did little to harbour my amusement; certainly, there were the few story books that were ignored and discoloured, probably noted as too ‘kiddy’ for most of us growing boys to read, but as far as I remembered the shelves of my humble primary school seemed to have a preference for housing rows and rows of fraying text-books and antique copies of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.


Where it did amuse me was the select few illustrated story books that made the small selection at the ‘storybooks section’, and they were the type of story books that went, “How did the Tiger get his Stripes” or “How Cat and Dog were Enemies.” Stories told in the manner of folklores (for all they are, which they are), which made them sound old and typical, but in the way of its age they managed to sound true.


I don’t refer to true as in unanimous, unwavering truth; I refer to it as the way stories seem to grow from, and as a way for them to seem real; in a sense they are what they are, because these stories started it. Without them we really can’t seem to think how Tiger got his stripes, be it accidental or biologically so, and that he uses them to his advantages.


One such stories was How the Walrus got its Tusks, which many other retellings prefer to title it as:



The Walrus and the Steamboat.


In the olden days walruses were just as fat and in love to both sea and shore, but they were also smarter and considerably more civilised. They were also true gentlemen, too, though never really great ladies, which one would liken to having all that blubber and moustache. They were also very rich; wealthiest of all creatures that set their home both on shore and water, and above all they love food just as much as monkeys live to chatter, or as passionate as lovebirds towards love.


They also didn’t have tusks, back then. They could’ve had them if they wanted, but they were very unsightly things, and in no manner useful or productive (unless, as one walrus mused to the other during a particular party, if you really want to scratch yourself in the belly and didn’t have the flippers to do so. No one laughed, and the water was colder that night.)


Walruses were rich because they ate oysters. And clams. And fishes and seaweed, too, but nothing better than something with a persistent shell and soft, juicy insides. They were rich because oysters produce that rare pearl every now and then (not so rare if you dedicate your life gathering them to last a lifetime), and subsequently the shells also fetch a fine price among humans (humans, they buy anything).


Life was pretty good, as it is pretty good for most creatures, back when the earth was younger and people don’t wipe each other off because of small matters like land. Good times.
Our walrus in our tale, whose name was… well, whose name was just like any other walrus, and this we shall then call him Walrus, who found himself lumbering up the rocky beach at night hoping to bask under the moon. He wasn’t disappointed, as the moon was bright and the surrounding stars managed to match in a unison of shimmers.


It was then when he chanced upon a scent. So exquisite it was, what with it being like a symphony of smells and tangs and various other aromas, that he couldn’t help but made his way towards the source of it, which was further down shore, up the beach and on the snow.


He came upon a man dressed in thin, patchy clothes and a broad hat made of dried leafs, which told Walrus that he was a fisherman and also that he was strangely immune to the cold. In front of the man was a circular pot of some sort, a peculiar thing coated in gold that Walrus had never seen the likes of.


It was from that curious object from which the scent wafted from, together with thick steam that curled gently towards the moon. Closer as he was, and stronger the smell, Walrus started to feel his mouth water, and curiosity got the better of him.


“Good evening,” said Walrus, polite and courteous (for walruses were gentlemen.).


The fisherman looked at the creature with a curious eye.


“Why good evening, sir Walrus! Not often do I see your kind so far up shore,” said the man, which we should call Fisherman for ease’s sake.



“The moon is full and the winds fresh,” said Walrus, glad that Fisherman is friendly. “So much that I prefer the land over the warm sea.”


“Aye, nothing but the moon and breeze to turn the night into a venerable one.”


Fisherman gently stirred the contents of the pot. The steam danced and teased at Walrus.


“Pray tell, kind Fisherman,” said Walrus. “What is that curious object by which you are using?”


“This?” said Fisherman, a glint in his eye. “This is what the people call a Hot Pot, or what others also call a Steamboat.”


“A Steamboat,” said Walrus. He was already amazed. “I see the steam, but it certainly doesn’t look like a boat, or any of that kind for any matter.”


Fisherman chuckled. “Aye,” he said. “The same way they can call a sparrow Sparrow, or a tiger Tiger, when all in the same they were birds and cats. The name is just the name; words and nothing else.”


Fisherman smiled at Walrus, and it was a kindly smile which made Walrus (rather old as he was, being close to approaching his elderly days) felt young and unknowing.


“So what does the Steamboat do?” asked Walrus, though he realised he knew the answer the first time he chanced upon the smell.


“It cooks our food, faster and quicker, and so that we can dine while we cook altogether.”


True enough, Walrus saw that there were fish and crabs and shrimps, tossed around by boiling bubbles.


“A cooking device,” echoed Walrus. Then he noticed something. “But sir, unless I am very much mistaken; a strong fire is need to make fire strong enough to boil the water fast, but I see that there is no wood and yet the fire roars so despite the winds and the cold.”


“Ah,” Fisherman said. “This is a special Steamboat.”


Saying that, Fisherman reached down and seized a fistful of snow, which he then fed into the fire. The flames licked and crackled and roared higher.


Walrus was astounded. “Amazing! A magical Steamboat, which uses ice as fire!”


At this moment, Walrus was already bent on owning such a remarkable object, and was ready to pay any sum for it. He thought of what it could do, and the smell that it exhumes -- so sweetly and immensely alluring. And he needn’t worry about fire, or wood, or cold winds and snow. And cooked fish! No, better, cooked oysters. Walruses were not taken towards eating cooked food, but the scent and steam was swirling in Walrus’s head, making dances and teases, and it was all that he needed to know that cooked oysters would taste majestic.


He lumbered closer to Fisherman, and said; “It might seem sudden of me to ask -- but I am very well wishful to procure such an interesting object. Would you tell me where I can find one?”


“Alas,” said Fisherman. “This is a rare item, only as much as the gods or sorcerers wanted to make them, and the few that fall in the hands of men travel across oceans and continents. I was given this by a travelling sailor whom I rescued from a shipwreck.”


Walrus was disappointed, but he was rich, and the rich will always find other means to procure the things they have set their eyes on, so long as they can pay for it -- which they perpetually think they can.


Walrus cleared his throat, and asked if Fisherman can sell the Steamboat to him.


Fisherman was contemplative. “Now, I would sell it to you… but it is indeed valuable to me; it cooks my food and keeps me warm, and I needn’t worry too much about supplies when I go to the sea to fish.”


“I can pay you any amount. I wish to have that steamboat.”


And Fisherman, he thought; he thought that if Walrus could pay him any large amount for the Steamboat, then he wouldn’t have to fish for a living any longer, and thus wouldn’t need the Steamboat. He imagined the south where the beaches were sands and the Summers forever, albeit a little humid.


He thought and thought it through, and finally he agrees.


“Aye, I’ll sell the Steamboat to you, for 50 pink pearls.”


Walrus hesitated. 50 pink pearls was a lot, even during those day, and pink pearls were thrice the value of the regular pearl and that saying, pretty much thrice the more beautiful.


Walrus had had 50 pink pearls, but that was the bulk of his treasure. It could set him back a decade in wealth and probably exclude him from the gentlemen’s club.


“50 pink pearls it is,” said Walrus. “Can you wait while I go and fetch it from my treasury?”


“Certainly. I’ll be here until sunrise.”


And with that Walrus lumbered back into the sea and swam for his underwater treasury, where he took 50 pink pearls, sweep them into an old pouch he managed to find at the sea years ago, and took it back to Fisherman.


When Walrus got back, Fisherman had already finished his meal and had even washed the Steamboat, to be given to Walrus in a more appropriately civil manner.


“When you feed the ice underneath the Steamboat for the fire,” said Fisherman, after he had counted and happily juggled the pouch of precious pearls and was making to leave. “You have to blow at it like you are to blow at firewood to get the fire started. After the tenth blow, the fire will ignite.”


Fisherman then left, leaving Walrus to content himself with the purchase of such an invaluable object, and throughout the course of time away from this tale managed to obtain himself a house by some tropical island, where he spent most of his days at the beach looking at the water nymphs and fishing with a pole.


And Walrus, with the Steamboat at his grasp, immediately took it to his home where he set to feast himself with cooked fish and cooked oysters.


He propped the Steamboat carefully on a low rock, surrounded by small mounts of snow he had gathered beforehand, and then set to place snow into the pot (to be melted into soup, for the sea water is too salty).


He then stuffed the remaining snow under the Steamboat, took a few breaths and then blew into the snow -- one, two, puff. And he blew and blew and then at the tenth breath, as though by magic (for indeed it was magic, what else could it be?) the fire flickered and spat, settling into a considerably hot roar.


Walrus, so immensely delighted by this, began to drop some leaves and herbs Fisherman gave to him for the soup, and then some salt, and then some fish heads to sweeten the broth, and by several minutes in which the water boiled, had himself a soup that smelled just like the one he scented upon a few hours back.


Now Walrus was very elated and pleased, and wasted no time in plonking down several oysters into the boiling soup. He waited for 15 minutes, like Fisherman had advised in cooking oysters, and when the time was up he bent down the pot to grab some oysters out with his mouth.


He scalded himself. And burned some whiskers too.


Walrus was now appalled; it didn’t occur to him that he would be facing trouble in extracting his food from the pot. Fisherman had used a pair of sticks to tweak it out.


Walrus considered his options. He could pour the soup onto the ground -- perhaps a well aimed flick of his tail would do it, but it would be such a waste. He could wait for the fire to die out, for the soup to cool enough, before taking the oysters out to eat. Though, surely, it would beat the purpose of a Steamboat. Cooked food is all about being hot, steamy, warming the throat and stomach as it goes down, where it would dwell and make itself comfortable like a warm fire on winter’s night.


Fish it out, thought Walrus. Use something to take it out.


So he lumbered out to the snow and found himself some ice stalactites, and with it in his mouth he trick to pick the oysters out, but the pick soon melted in the soup and Walrus got a singed chin for his trouble. One would be hard pressed to find sticks in the Arctic, which Walrus knew enough to start hunting for some, so there was nothing for him to do but wait in despair for the fire to die and for the soup to cool before he managed to remove the oysters from the Steamboat, and by then it was already cold.


But Walrus wouldn’t give things up so easily. Every night he would restart the fire, cook the soup and placed several oysters in, and every night he would try different methods to extract the oysters. One night he would try some sharp rocks, and on another he would think of ladling it out with a flat plank, but everything was pretty much futile, for Walrus was clumsy with his mouth, and his flippers were useless in managing objects.


So he tried and he tried. He tried some more, until his herbs run out, until the objects he could utilise around him ran out, and he sought to purchase them elsewhere. Night after night he poured over his ideas, bent on eating that piping hot cooked oyster. Soon his money went out, and his friends left him, and later everything left him to his own obsession on the golden Steamboat.



He forgot to groom himself. He forgot his speech, his manners -- politeness and courtesy now a distant entity in itself, slowly forgotten. And, after a full year of futility, forgot everything about what being a walrus was, except for an unhealthy craving for cooked oysters.


It was at the end of that full year in which Walrus, now ragged and rough, no more the gentlemanly walrus we told of at the start, realised that he had a pair of fully grown tusks. Three feet long each, he would’ve been a detested specimen amongst the prim-and-proper crowd he was once a part of. That night, at the end of that full year, was the time when Walrus realised that he could used his tusks to extract the cooked oysters.


That night he cooked the same soup he cooked every night, in a Steamboat which fire is fueled by ice, placed the several oysters into it and waited 15 minutes. When the time came he plunged his tusks into the soup and flicked an oyster out. He watched at the silent curls of steam emanating from the piping oyster, drooling, knowing he had spent a full year for this very moment.


He ate the oyster.


He didn’t like the taste.


- The End -

*****************

Of course, as stories of such that was ever told, somehow one change in a singular walrus affected the change of his entire species, and in time to the time that is now, every walrus is as such -- wild, clumsy and with tusks that do their bidding.

You will probably realise that none of this made sense, but that is the way it is. To start with the least, illogical, sometimes preposterous means for animals to turn into what they are today is perhaps all too common.

Most times I laud at it. Sometimes I laugh and shun it, though somehow, and always somehow, it would make no sense, yet it would feel like the truth.

Sometimes stories don’t need to make sense. They just need to happen.

- Wallace J.Y Reidding-

Shallowness

I think, in truth, we’re all dreaming.

I think we lie to ourselves,
With the idea of reality

I think we forsake
The meaning of dreams
Creation
And what it does

I think we forget

Thoughts

Being empty

And then

Being something new.

22nd of August

The 22^nd of August wasn’t meant to mean anything, but to the lady it meant that she was (exasperatedly) another year older. And when you’re 45 and feeling the creeping tendrils of age catching on, another year older also meant another year’s worth of worries; worries, about the way the veins start showing more vividly on the hands, or the increasing number of wrinkles at places where wrinkles shouldn’t be, or the age old dilemma of feeling the waistline expanding further than preferred. Yes, the lady was another year older, and she was both happy and aggrieved by it.

On the 22^nd of August the lady woke up and saw that it was raining. She dressed in the usual manner of her working days, set about to arrange the laundries and suffered her youngest son, who was awake after he wet his bed, and that was before he decided to topple his bowl of cereals just to see the milk splatter. She reset her husband’s alarm clock, bade her eldest son goodbye as he prepared for the office, and drove off into the rain feeling cold and a year older.

The 22^nd of August was the day her new branch manager arrived, and it was a prioritised dilemma of the hour to try and make a good impression, which she was failing quite miserably in. It was a Wednesday, and the clients came in throngs, so she was busy and at the end of lunch she was tired. During work she would muse and ponderingly poke at the fact that it was the 22^nd of August, and at least something should go right, if not less aggravating, and wondering what dinner she was set in stored for. Her friends supposedly had prepared for her a karaoke dinner complete with premium wine, but she knew her obligation was to return home and dine with her family, however inclined she was to forsake dining with her temperamental husband and her youngest son, which was a difficulty she always imagined worse and experienced worst everyday. Her eldest son would’ve been sweet, but it was the 22^nd of August. Shouldn’t she have a say in things?

Driving home she took the time to muse on her compulsory 22^nd-of-August wishes. She could wish for a new handbag, or that pair of shoes Eileen was strutting on a few days ago, or for her youngest son, who was 20, to think and act like he was 20, and not the drooling, silent and incorrigible patient he was now. She could wish for a new life, perhaps, like a house in Venice where she would marry someone else that wouldn’t shout at her, as it was now. And she let herself pour over and over and over these wishes and wishing that, perhaps, she could just have all of them, as it was the 22^nd of August, and she should have a say in things.

It was still raining, and she was cold. She was tired, and she was worried. She was another year older.

And then she saw the inevitable crash into the ditch, because her car was careening and screeching, and her brakes wouldn’t work, and her vision was a flurry of blurs intermingled with water droplets and the lights that scattered through it. There was a plummet, a crash, a sudden explosion of pain, and on the 22^nd of August the lady was dead, in her car in a ditch, under an unrelenting rain.

She wasn’t awake nor was she asleep, but she was floating in darkness listening to things that sounded like a million whispers in a million speakers. After a while the whispers grew louder, and at one point she caught a few words.

“… I need the chainsaw; she’s wedged under the steering wheel.”

“Back off people, back off! There’s nothing to see here move along! Sir! You! Yes, move along…”

“My God, what happened?”

“… a car lost control...”

“I swear it’s not my fault… my tyres skidded…”

“Collided into another car…”

“CRASH!”

“Horrible… so horrible…”

“I need a medical! Someone go get the stretcher…”

And then she started to see things, but it was bright and flashing in red and blue, and then the voices were drowned in a wailing, repeating noise that sounded like her youngest son going Weeee Wooo Weeee Wooo with his toy police car.

She knew that she was dead, but she wasn’t feeling sad about it. She wasn’t really feeling anything at all, just empty, with silent tingles of warmth, bitter, cold and comfort occasionally reached the tip of her lips, or rubbed past her heart (which, she noticed, doesn’t seem to be doing anything conducive). She was watching people in thick, red coats jostling down to her car, which was in quite the state, and the police were frantically trying to get the traffic moving and keeping the crowd at bay.

And then she remembered her family, and decided that she should go home.

She drifted with the wind, and she felt like the wind was blowing her to the right direction. She watched everything pass by like the little oil streamlets she used to point out to her youngest son, who delighted in it. It was purple and blue and red and green and everything at the same time, swirling into a sensible mess. And she drifted, and kept on drifting for a while, until she was forgetting and remembering a lot of things, like her parents, or her siblings, or where she placed her car keys, or that it was the 22^nd of August and that she was a year older and that she should have a say in things.

And then she was home.

She drifted passed the wall and into the living room.

Her family was sitting at the living room, which was cleaner than usual. Her husband, perpetually delving in the realm of cigarettes, was gingerly smoking on the sofa looking annoyed. Her youngest son sat at the single couch, a grin on his face, and she saw that he was smartly dressed with in a proper shirt and a bow tie, and in his chubby hands was a small and colourfully wrapped parcel, surely tucked into his palms by her husband. Her eldest son was looking into his watch, his other hand twirling an Elton John Limited Collection DVD, and he was looking worried.

“Mom’s late. She’s normally home by now.”

“Your mother, she’s never home on time, even during important days like this,” said her husband. “Always out, always late. Always.”

“I don’t know… she’s never late for her own celebration. Maybe she got caught up in traffic,” her eldest son quipped. “It’s still raining.”

Her youngest son chuckled cheekily, looking at the parcel in his hands. He was 20, but never was.

“She must be out with her friends and forgotten that we have a dinner tonight,” her husband said, in his usual voice that never normally ceased to sound enraged or commanding.

“Dad…”

“Don’t come back and eat. Better, not coming back and eat. I’m not going to eat her dinner.”

And then a phone rang.

It was her husband’s phone.

“Hello?”

There was a haunting silence. A sudden plunge of cold placidity, rhythmically punctured by her husband’s voice, and it was like a stopping and unstopping music track, which the lady accustomed to and felt funny.

“Yes, this is her husband speaking.”

Silence.

“Who? Say that again?”

Silence. And then, in a louder voice:

“What do you mean an accident? Where?”

And then silence. And then

“Wha… h- how is she? Which hospital?”

Back to silence, with a ringing in the air, and then

“Your mother’s in the hospital. She had an accident.”

“What? How?”

“She crashed into a ditch,” her husband shaken, but there was no crack, no fissure, in his calm voice. “Some idiot served into her and she was thrown out of control.She’s in a coma now, the doctor says she’s stable but she’s not doing too good.”

Her eldest son was stunned, a hand brushing his hair as he muttered “No… no…”

Her youngest son was sitting upright, his eyes widened like never before, and for once he looked like a normal man, taking in everything and understanding everything, though she know that he couldn’t.

“We need to get to the hospital. Serdang Medical. Call your grandparents, tell them what happened. Then go and start the car.” Her husband was inside the room now, grabbing his wallet and dialling a number at the same time. “Paul? It’s me. Listen…”

She hovered at the ceiling, watching and listening to frantic phone calls where frantic answers rasped through the phone’s earpiece like gentle rustles of leaves. After a moment her husband burst out of the room, pulling on a coat.

“We’re going now,” he said. “Grab you brother and put him in the car. We’ll send him to Aunt Suzy’s and they’ll take care of him while we’re gone. After that we-”

“I… wanna go.”

Her husband and eldest son stared at the youngest child, perplexed.

“I wanna go… see mommy,” said her youngest son, in his usual, stunted voice, and there were tears in his eyes.

And everyone was in the car, driving out into the rain. And the lady followed, drifted by the winds that were meant to carry her to her dying self.

*****

She was feeling like the small fiery glow at the end of a candle after the flames were extinguish, where at points she felt a warmth welling inside of her, yet as the world passed her by in its flurry the warmth died down, waning, and the shadows were soon to come and take her to someplace else.

She was in the hospital, where she followed her family rushing towards the registration. As she went she saw a host of other people she would have never seen before, in normal circumstances; people that were hovering silently, or gliding alongside passing patients with their mouths open and groaning unheard groans. She noticed that they were like smoke, sometimes solid, sometimes like wisps, almost vanishing.

She tailed her family into a room, where she saw herself.

She saw the bandages wrapped over her forehead, neat but bloodied. She saw the machine she never knew the name of, beeping and ticking as cyan lights flickered across the screen into zigzags that looked like stock market charts, and right now the lines were pulsing in a feeble, unimpressive rise and fall that seemed inconsistent. She saw the doctor tending over her, spectacled and dark skinned, who immediately addressed her husband. Her eldest son was standing by the bed, watching. Her youngest had stood by the wall, the coloured parcel still in his hands, clutched to his chest like a girl would to a doll. He was sad.

She moved towards to see herself closer. And suddenly she felt scared.

She was supposed to be in a restaurant somewhere, eating cheap grilled salmon, and her eldest son would be cracking jokes and telling her another one of his romantic escapades. Her husband would be silent and listening and complaining about his food, and she would’ve been very happy to see her youngest giving her the coloured parcel, and she would feed him his favourite chicken chop and he would’ve laughed, surely. Then they would be at home with a slice of cake, and she would’ve made one of the many wishes she mused over in her drive, and she would blow the candle and they would’ve taken a family photo, which would’ve gone on top of the TV next to the New Year pictures. It was the 22^nd of August 2007, and things shouldn’t have been this way.

“Things are always this way. It could always be another thing, but it wouldn’t.”

She was in a cage, or something that looked like a cage, and outside she saw that it was rising up slowly towards the heavens. The bars were painted yellow, but they were rusting. She was in a Ferris wheel, in a yellow car. The sky outside was dark.

Sitting in front of her was her youngest son.

“Where… am I?” she said, and she felt like she hasn’t spoken for a very long time.

“Here? I don’t know. I never know. It changes, this place. Sometimes it was a swimming pool. Sometimes an office, sometimes a restaurant with a large round table. But usually, it’s this Ferris wheel.”

Her youngest son had spoken, but not in his usual slur; not in his usual numbed and toneless croon. He was speaking in a boyish, but charmingly lively voice, and as he spoke he was smiling a smile that was meant for him; not a crazed, overdone grin. He looked sad, but he looked… he looked like her son if he was 20 in the body, and also 20 in the mind.

“So… I’m dead, aren’t I?” the lady said, and she felt a little scared, but very much calmed by this strange place. The wheel has reached its topmost rotation and now they were slowly turning down.

“You are, somehow. But not entirely.”

“I see…”

They were silent for a while as the lady looked out to the view, and sometimes she thought that she could see blurred glimpses of a carnival, a swim club, a Chinese cuisine restaurant and her work office, but they never stayed in place.

“Can I touch you?” her youngest son said, suddenly. “Just your hand.”

She nodded, and he let his fingers close on her hands. He felt strangely warm, as though she had not expected him to be.

“I’ve always wanted to know how it felt. I’ve been watching. And I can only watch. Now you’re here…”

He trailed off, and as he did the longing in his voice dispersed together with his words. He let go, and smiled gently. “Thank you.”

“You’re… you’re welcomed,” she said. They were silent again. The wheel had made a complete turn and now going up in another rotation.

She said, “What… why am I here? Is this something like, heaven?”

Her son, or the person that looked like her son, took a deep breath and closed his eyes. After a while, he said, “This place – everything in this place, including me, is created, somehow, sometime in the past 20 years. It is moulded, formed, by miracles that the realm of creation harbours yet remain unknown, for the most part, by everyone.

“This place here is formed by memories, and something else that was given by will and in abundance. This place is formed by you.”

She realised that she was frowning, but didn’t say anything.

“This place has flourished under you, under the things that you have done. Things that you did sometimes unwillingly, but as part of a complete obligation you have chosen to undertake,” her youngest son went on. “In the course of 20 years it has changed, blossomed, and now it is almost an entire world in itself.”

He gestured out of the car. She could see the carnival, glittering with its many lights, and the restaurant table in the middle of it, where 16 people were sitting at, chattering happily. Lower down was the swimming pool, and someone was teaching someone else to swim. Her office was right beside it, and she could see someone under the table, giggling.

“This world is slowly expanding,” he said. “One day it may stretch beyond the limit that binds it now, and when that day comes, things will be very different.”

“But why am I here? I’m supposed to be dead. I’m dying…”

“You’re here because you created this place. You created me. This place, us, we have become far stronger that what was originally here. Now we want to return the favour.”

And he gave her a comforting smile. The car has once more arrived at the bottom of the wheel, but it didn’t go up again. It stopped, and the door swung open. She couldn’t see anything beyond the door; there wasn’t light. There wasn’t darkness. There was nothing there.

“The door… where does it go?” she asked.

“You go back.”

She had opened her mouth to speak, but then it had dawned upon her, and she understood the meaning of everything. The meaning of this place. She turned around and looked at the figure of her youngest son; chubby, short, but whole. Complete. She smiled, and suddenly remembered.

“I know this place. I took you, to this Ferris wheel. It was our first carnival together.”

He smiled, and gave her a nod.

“And the office. You were little, and dad was too busy to take care of you, so I took you there. You stayed under the table the whole day, laughing.

“The swimming pool. I took you there, and taught you how to swim, but you didn’t like the water, so I carried you on my back and you started laughing again.

“And the restaurant was you had your 18^th birthday. We ate with grandma and grandpa and all your aunty and uncles. We sat at the biggest table there, and you had such fun…”

She felt like she hadn’t been home for a very long time. She felt like she had been missing everything and everyone. She felt like she missed herself. What she had done. What she does.

And then she started crying.

Her youngest son gave her a white handkerchief; the one she had often used to wipe his mouth when he dribbled food. She dried her tears.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

She had turned and had placed her foot out of the door when she heard him calling, “Wait!”

“Yes?”

“Can I… can I hug you? Before you go. Just to know.”

She enveloped her arms around him. He felt just like he did, always. And warmer.

“Who are you?” she asked, gently, after they had parted.

“I am your youngest son.”

She was out of the door, walking out towards nothing, and she turned around and asked;

“What are you, then?”

“I am Sacrifice.”

And then he was gone. So was everything.

******

She heard voices, once more, in a million whispers through a million speakers. And then she opened her eyes.

“…she’s fine now. The operation worked well, and we had the blood clog removed.”

“Thank you doctor, thank you so much,” said her mother, and she saw her hugging her father.

“She’s coming to! She’s waking up!” her eldest son said.

She looked to her side and saw everyone standing at her bedside. Her parents. Her husband. Her sons. Her sisters.

“Happy Birthday, mom,” her eldest son said. There were tears in his eyes.

She smiled, and realised how hard it was to do so, and how tired she was.

“Mommy,” her youngest son said, slowly and thickly. “Here. Here. Hayppy Buddayth.”

The small, coloured parcel was placed on the bedside table, amongst the flowers.

“Thank you,” said the lady, and she clutched the white handkerchief tighter under her hands.

It was 11.50 at night, and the end of the 22^nd of August, the lady was reborn.

*End*

There are worlds that we create without knowing,

And sometimes these worlds, they make a change.

They make a very big change.

- Wallace Reading -

****************

For Mom, a story that would've made sense if you're fat, short, 20 and not acting 20 yourself, with severe delusions of adequacy.

Happy Birthday!

Horizon

Wasn’t there a time when you wondered,
What you could’ve done,
When you looked into the horizon,
And realised that
You are not meant to cross it?

Yeah, I remembered those words.

Someone told me that, a long time ago. It was during that day when the sun forgot to rise, and in the darkness I found him standing at the edge of the waves humming a sad tune which, try as I might, I could never remember. It was pitch black; darker than any crevasse where any sunlight would fail to penetrate. Like shadows in the darkness.

Don’t ask me why I could see him, but I just could. He wasn’t glowing, nor was there anything around that could emit light in the absence of the sun. It was at the beach, far from any touch of civilization, which of course, meant that it was also far from the madness and the danger. That was why I was there, to get away from madness.

And there he was, standing there, the only visible thing before my eyes. A tall boy, taller than me, perhaps taller than my brother, who used to brag being able to tower most about anyone until he too succumbed to the madness, which rendered him into an entity like everyone else; slouching, defeated, bent and broken. I couldn’t tell if he was older, but he was a boy nonetheless, just like I was, and seeing him standing there humming as the waves lapped at his feet was strangely comforting, like finding a good friend in the pits of a maze; the knowledge of having someone there, someone to be with you, at least, because being alone is unbearable, especially when you’re lost.

He looked at me as I approached him, with his grey, deepening eyes that sang a tune just as melancholic as the one he hummed. He looked at me, fixed, staring at me and into me and through me. And I felt comforted. I felt embraced. I felt as though the world had turned back to the way it was, maybe even better. There and then in the darkness I smiled at him, to thank him for being there.

He smiled back at me, and beckoned me closer.

“I know you,” he said. His voice was light and warm, like the kiss of a mug filled with warm coffee. “You’re the boy who played the violin at the school band.”

I was never good at the violin, but when I was at school I was the only one who knew how to work a violin. Everyone persuaded me to join, and I tried picking up lessons through the books at the library. I could play basics, but never improved. And then world turned mad, and the books were burned and music died together with the passing of art. I still have the violin, but it won’t make a sound anymore.

“I watched you play. You could do that song, the one that told the story about the flaming wildebeests.”

I told him that I forgot how that tune went; I forgot it alongside the many things that left our memories. He placed a finger to his lips, thinking, and then hummed it loud for me to hear.

I thought I remembered, and I thought I remembered a lot of other things as well. The song was about a herd of wildebeest so large and strong that they believed they could run through anything, until a shepherd told them that they could never run through fire. But run through fire they did, only that the fire went together with them instead of being crushed and beaten, and wherever the wildebeests thundered they spread the fire, burning everything to ashes. They ran everywhere, across every plain and mountain, hoping to quench the fire, but before they reached the sea the fire had claimed them.

He stopped humming and I forgot, though sometimes I remember, like this time, but I know when I let my breath escape into the same rhythm of this morbid air, I will forget.

The boy had taken my hand, and we were walking down the beach, letting our legs touch the waves that we cannot see, humming together sometimes, talking occasionally, but silent mostly as we felt each other’s touch. He felt like cotton under my fingers; not for how soft or smooth, but for how that little touch would envelope me in comfort.

After a while we started wading into the water until it reached our waists, and then we sat down so that we were underwater except for our heads, which stared ahead towards the sea, into the bleak darkness that was around us. It was then when he spoke those words to me. He had spoken it like a poem, like a song, with a touch of music that resonated beneath its words only if you had listened to him spoken it.

“Wasn’t there a time when you wondered,
What you could’ve done,
When you look into the horizon,
And realised that
You are not meant to cross it?”

It was question, but at the same time it wasn’t. It was meant for me to answer, but it was also for me to comprehend, to decipher and to know.

I didn’t understand what it meant, even until today, but it doesn’t mean that if you couldn’t understand something you couldn’t feel the weight and importance of it.

I told him what I thought that time, that I feel the horizon is something that will always be there, because the world is round, and however far you walk you’ll always see the horizon. He said Yeah, and stayed silent.

We sat there for a while, until the sea became colder. We stood up and walked back to the beach, treading the sand beyond our feet. There was a wind at that time, mercilessly cold and grasping, and I shuddered at the way it gripped and stole a small part of me, though the boy didn’t shiver or quiver even a bit. It made me wonder.

“Do you remember,” he asked me, after we have taken of our soaking clothes and lay on the sand. “That there was once a girl with red hair that danced on the roof of the school everyday, right when the sun was at its peak?”

I said I didn’t remember, but I think I had a notion of who he had meant, only that I was also in the madness at that time, however little, and couldn’t remember.

“That girl would escape to the roof every time the clock struck noon, and then she would twirl and turn and escape everyone who tried to stop her. After an hour she would return to the ground, and she would be completely normal, and when everyone asked what happened she would say that she forgot, and that she could only remember hearing music whispered into her ears.

One day she went up on the roof and danced as usual, but later the sky turned dark and it rained, and she slipped and fell and died on the ground. I was there, looking at her body, and it made me wonder; what if death is beyond the horizon? What if, when you die, you go beyond everything that ever was?”

I said I didn’t know. We stayed there until the sand also turned cold, and got up and dressed. I had started towards the city when he held me close to his face, close enough for me to feel my skin reaching out in ready to embrace his touch. He held me there, then bent forward and whispered into my ear. “I’m going to walk across the horizon. There’s nothing left here for me. But there’s something here for you, so you should stay.”

And then he was gone. I heard his body splashing into the icy sea, heard his body impede the deadly rhythm of the waves, and heard in the briefest moment the sea calling for his name, which now I have forgotten.

I didn’t return to the city, but had walked aimlessly until I found deserted shack, where I stayed until the sun rose, bringing with it the two new suns which you see now. I then had travelled west of the city until I found the entrance to a sewer, where I stayed with water and with food that never ceased coming. I would occasionally glance at the world above, and saw that humanity had quickly submitted to the wrath of the suns and now sought the bliss of the moon, which provide them the cold and the rain, and in small touches the very little tinge of music. The madness now linger as the air we breathe, as the very fabric of us as people, but never ourselves.

Yes, I think about the boy everyday, and I may have forgotten many things, but never the words he had said to me, and every second I spend now wondering, wishing, if he had crossed the horizon beyond the sea, and when he could come and take me to it.

Because I don’t have anything left here for me.

*****************

This story means nothing. It's something written in a spur and worked from a single word into a mess of tangled nothingness, but it's a story anyhow, and i don't want it to stay unread.

I guess it sounds pretty bad, but like most random things i write i leave them be, because one fine day they become a new idea in one way or another.

Inspired by the loss of my Mp3, which strangely have nothing to do with it at all.

Cheers