nooks n' crannies
梦游者的故事
One. A little delight—I found it in the piano sonata an old man was playing in the midst of a busy square next to the astronomical clock. He laced fairy lights around his keys, and I wanted to tell him it was obstructing his playing. But the soft glow wrapping around his sinewy fingers was so beautiful; despite closing my eyes, the afterimage I saw was accompanied by a thousand tiny blue fireflies.
Two. Somewhere far away, there is a car speeding through a dark tunnel. The headlights are broken, and there is no way to see much of the road ahead. Next to me sits the personification of unease: a light peck on the lips, conveying memories of a story I do not know. I whisper to the driver to step on the gas pedal. He nods in response, and we race through astonished ghosts, who drop their picnic baskets in surprise. Three. She dances in the middle of a vacant living room. With all her belongings packed, the apartment never felt so strange as it did now. She wonders if the next family to live in this space will be a happy one, whether they will own a dog or like to eat a late breakfast on Sundays. Her Agumon stickers still remain on the left wall by the kitchen counter, and before she shuts the door behind her, she tells him not to miss her so much, for he, too, will forget her soon. I had a dream of a hairless Sphynx. It stood up on two feet and guarded the door behind which monsters were said to reside. There is one in each household but any reckless soul would understand that the door does not hide chimeras, but only a certain passageway ruled by cats. Pay the toll of two fish to pass and you are a guaranteed safe journey—teleportations per second dependent on the specific breed of cat unique to your address—to your desired destination. You can also choose not to pay two fish, if you are so inclined. The cats will merely nod in acknowledgement and suck out your soul in exchange, no big deal. This is the fastest way of door-to-door travel, at a steep price.
Sometimes, the cats will grow lethargic en route and sporadically stop in the middle of the road—they are firm proponents of instant gratification, after all. During this brief period, the traveler must not wake the cat at any cost, even if there are incoming cars or elephants that may pose a threat to the cat’s life. In such a drastic circumstance, the household may be inconvenienced for a few days until a new cat arrives at its doorsteps. The cats are known for their taciturn nature, but my Sphynx spoke to me once. In a hushed whisper, as if relaying some profound secret, it told me that they were all looking for their deity. But I was not interested in becoming the god of cats, so I politely declined. I had a dream about a girl who read too much Edgar Allen Poe. And because she, too, was young and drenched in folly, it was very easy for her to fall in love with melancholy. She liked waking up to the sound of squeaky shoes, flushing toilets, and arguing family. Sometimes, she purposefully neglected to comb through her black hair, left the split ends to the whim of air that sat dutifully in rooms without humidifiers. She wore her grandfather’s eyes. They were grey with cataracts but she preferred idealism to clarity.
On her desk, beside a tea canister caked by layers of dust, the girl kept a paperweight of a tiny deity. She found the god in a curiosity shop two weeks prior, having decided that it was the very sort of thing that would evoke just the right amount of mystery. Amusing herself, she secretly wished that it was a god of misfortune and prayed that it may one day speak and curse her for all eternity. Her desires were indeed granted one absolutely ordinary day. Instead of damning the girl, however, the deity told her to stop scowling, to be more grateful, to be kinder to her parents. A girl at her age should know better than to slouch in her seat—instead, she should speak in a soft, singsong voice and take pictures of herself smiling with straight, white teeth. That was how she could get others to love her. |
boolean dream = null;
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