It was a hot and humid summer day. The air stood sour under the thick branches of the dead tree that stood stiff like a statue. Even the breeze wouldn’t touch the long-dead bark. It only moved above, shifting the clouds about, ignoring the surface, as if afraid to catch whatever killed the big tree so long ago. The ground was covered with layers of rotten leaves so dense they produced a damp squishing sigh whenever anyone dared step on top of them. Few people did at this time of year. Most preferred walking in open expanses where the air could flow and dry their sweat, rather than these areas, where the dense vegetation trapped the air and prevented its escape to the rest of the atmosphere.
Category: Prose (Page 2 of 3)
Sunrise from Space, Credit: NASA Image of the Day Gallery
When she formed, in a vast interstellar womb, twirling and twisting around herself in a graceful dance of rebirth, they all formed around her. Like spectators, they assembled to watch her come to life, growing and shining, giving them warmth, pulling them together around her. And she adopted them as her own.
When I was very little, I wanted to find the physics of the tooth fairy. I didn’t know that’s what it was called, or that this is how science actually works; this knowledge only came to me much later, after years of learning myths about physics and then more years of replacing these myths by truths about what would eventually become the main interest in my life.
But when I was very little, all I knew was that the tooth fairy operated like clockwork, with a clear method. It started with one of my teeth getting loose in my mouth, and ended with a surprise present under my pillow. I decided I should figure her out, the tooth fairy, and her method. If I could only anticipate where she will be, and when, maybe I can get more presents, I reasoned to my soon-to-be toothless self.
I was always oblivious to the things you never were; it was a recurring problem between us. I never noticed how you brushed your hair this morning, slaving over those rich dense curls to make them seem more fluffy and neat. It never really occurred to me that there is that much of a difference between using this blue eyeliner you love and the black one you keep for special occasions. I had to wait until you told me, and even then I just pretended to understand because I saw how much it meant to you.
I waited for this letter the entire year, and when it finally came I was so nervous, I couldn’t make myself open it. It felt like my entire future was neatly tucked inside the bloated yellowish envelope, waiting to jump out and swallow me whole. So I did my house chores and homework and played the computer while it was resting in my back pocket, pretending to be forgotten.
Time literally slowed down, flexing and stretching ruthlessly, forcing me to live through it painfully slowly. I had just opened my eyes from a confused blink to see his hand, raised over his head, holding a pair of shiny metal keys. They jingled loudly in slow motion, the vibrations reaching my ears with significant delay. His eyes stared at me blankly with a cold, uncaring gaze. His lips pursed slightly into an awkward smile, as if he knew me and just asked to say hello. His entire face shone brightly, trapped between fat droplets of water that smashed against his forehead and dripped down his impressive nose majestically; one after the other they hung from the tip of his hawkish nose, dangled for a while, then dropped to the floor, exploding. The hand moved closer, arching, covering the distance between us like an orbiting planet on a collision course.
I had no time to blink again, just stare back, forcing my brain to process faster. The pair of keys approached within his outstretched palm, crushing rain droplets into thin moist plates. These floated on his skin, making it sparkle, drawing my attention away. I stared at it for a long timeless moment, amazed, as the image rushed towards my face without warning.
Everything slowed down to an almost complete halt, the entire street went silent, shocked out of its usual buzzing sounds. Something just happened, something surprising and quick, something that even within this unlimited stretching of time took only a fragment of a second. I didn’t know what it was, or where it went and why it came. What began to be obvious, however, was the throbbing ache on the left side of my face, just above my jaw, just next to my ear, just below the rim of my glasses. It would eventually become a dark ominous mark, which I would pretend to take as small payment for what could have been much worse. But at that moment, it was still just a little red, and a little wet, and a lot painful.
I later learned that I wasn’t the first to have had this unfortunate incident in the middle of a busy street, with this particular hawk-nosed man and a pair of sparkly metal keys. There were other women like me, all in the same area, who he attacked without much cause only to run away immediately after. These women, like me, were likewise graced by an inexplicable expansion of time while their brains stressed to understand reality.
Maybe we were given this insight because time, with its infinite existence, knew that sometimes reality is just inexplicable.