Someone has painstakingly harvested and lacquered many individual rocks—each distinct from the other—and placed them all into a massive brown sack. The reaping was a prosperous one. What’s the point of keeping it to myself? He thought. It has to be shared with everyone. And so he untied, overturned and emptied his bag atop the galaxy’s highest mountain. The gentle solar winds cradled the rocks—like the scattering of fresh ashes from an urn in summer—and brought them near a scintillating celestial body.
The light emanating from the body embosomed the rocks and breathed lives into them. The glimmering newborns drifted down from above—like the first snowflakes of winter—and lingered in the night skies. The Milky Way looked magnificent through the window grills of the laundry room that very night.
The dilemma was very real: stay and hope for the view to be imprinted in the mind or leave to procure a camera that could encapsulate this timeless moment in a photograph. I have chosen the latter and I took flight. The path towards the dry box in my room grew elongated and became seemingly endless. To make matters worse, my legs were chained to the anchor of a cargo ship conveying thousands of freight containers. Out of the blue, a stretch of windows materialised on the walls of the newly formed corridor and there and then, a divine power chided me for it wants the galaxy to remain inconspicuous and only those who yearn hard enough for a glimpse of the universe get to witness its being.
One by one, the stars plummeted into the abyss, leaving trails of stardust and tears behind as they slowly lose their incandesces. Like all passing of life, even the scattered ashes have to go somewhere… eventually. The meteor shower pronounces the end of a phase; the light that reaches me from faraway is but a remnant of the past, and a pristine history is at this very moment being written and created.
The child manoeuvred and danced his way across the cracks in the sidewalk. He spun rounds, creating massive tornados for inhabitants that are way smaller than his 6-year-old physique. The wind had momentarily suspended the yellow leaves in the air above the earth, allowing the boy to nosedive through the curtain of magic. With both legs bent, he launched and skyrocketed through the leaves, almost reaching terminal velocity when he struck something hard. The made-believe spaceship erupted into flames and when he thought that he would burn to death, a hand reached in and pulled him out of the ordeal.
“Sorry, are you okay?” A stranger, some mid-thirties man had rescued the pilot in distress. He helps the child off the ground and takes out a swirl lollipop from his breast pocket and says, “Do you want it? You can have it.”
“My mom told me not to–” The boy said as he dusted the dirt off his shorts.
“Talk to strangers I know,” The stranger extended his arm to re-offer the candy. “But I’m a nice person.” Enticed by the saturated rainbow colours, the boy accepted the lollipop. “Would you like to go somewhere fun?” The boy has unwrapped the translucent foil and greedily he stuffed the delicacy into his mouth.
“My mom will never let me eat this. Go where?”
“Follow me,” the stranger said as he kicked the pile of leaves on the sidewalk. He walked into and through the veil of leaves, the boy followed closely behind.
Why have I followed him? I have no palpable idea. Zilch. Nada. None. Perhaps I was going through a rebellious phase. Maybe I was looking for adventures to escape from the humdrum of life. But my gut instinct had told me to believe him, and it was right. Never have I in the past 17 years since that chance encounter experience something so surreal again.
Almost two decades back, I was brought into another world that was similar to ours—lifeless men and women trotting about for work and run-down buildings with towering skyscrapers in the background—except that time stopped flowing in this one. I mean, people and vehicles continued to traverse the landscape but there was no clear sense of direction taken. Events and actions have had transpired as usual but they were without meaning or purpose. Maybe that swirl lollipop was merely one powerful hallucinogenic drug.
I followed him down the winding streets. When he lost his way, I was never worried that I would not be able to see my mom again. I was like a pilot fish that swum alongside an oceanic whitetip shark on its expedition in the vast seas. I knew I was in capable hands. I knew that I was safe no matter how dangerous the city was.
The gentle jazz music playing in the background has seamlessly fused with the aroma of the dark roasted coffee beans being grounded and tamped by the espresso machine. The cool air in the café felt cleaner and purer than anything else that I have ever inhaled. I took a sip of my first caffeinated drink—a caramel latte—and I spat it back into the white ceramic cup almost immediately.
“Bitter!” It is not until recently that I have discovered that a caramel latte is supposed to taste slightly sweet with a minute, bearable hint of bitterness. That bitterness has since became an acquired taste.
“Must have been the lollipop. Your tongue looks like a rainbow.” The stranger explained. “I thought that you must have scalded your tongue. It’s still steaming.”
I scrapped my tongue for colours but there was nothing but a viscous translucent fluid on my fingertip. Saliva.
“I’m so sorry. I don’t think that I can lead well.” The stranger said.
“You promised me fun. I didn’t know where you were going most of the time but it was fun following you around.”
I woke up in my bed the following morning. The stranger that I was with did not own a face and whenever I try to recollect the pieces of my memories, his face would be shrouded by an eroteme. I have never seen him since.
Was it a sweet dream or a non-reality?
