An Unnamed Story

เนื้อเรื่อง

“ _______________________________ ”

Write spontaneously! And have fun!

That was exactly what everybody told her, exactly what she bore in mind, and exactly what she could not do. She used to want to be a writer more than anything. And now she knew it was impossible. When her head was blank, she did not even know what she liked or hated, how to read or write, to feel or react. Time was just another insignificant, or even ridiculous thing. It passed her by and she just preyed for it to pass really much faster. If there was anything worse than pain, it was boredom. At least pain could squeeze some emotions out into writing pieces. But boredom inspired nothing. No destination in life. No imagination. No hope. No feelings. Nothing. It darkened her, possessed her, and swallowed her inside out. It was the moment she became worthless, useless, and everyless. This was not about being a writer anymore. This was about her life and its existence.

It was the morning time; not very appropriate for the expression of boredom, she knew. The dull yellow light shone against the curtain. It did a terrible job. Instead, it cast the shadow of the railing window on the curtain frills, the distorted iron bars of her imprisonment. The room was concealed from the world outside. The air was filled with emptiness. The sluggish fan fought hard to pierce through the stillness and silence. There was, however, a faint echo from a clock, a monotonous ticking sound, which provoked the thing even worse than silence – the endless tedium of life. Everything seemed to work together very well to push her into the darkest corner of hell.

She sat in front of the computer screen. Everything was paused into a masterpiece of artwork -- a painting of an empty room with a small figure of a girl sitting stiffly in one corner. The color tone was excellent; it was completely dull with grey and black, and a tiny space of transparent yellow that signified something that should have been sunlight. The style of the painting was that of impressionistic, only a bit more depressing, or probably expressionistic, only a bit less hysterical. But if one zoomed in at the screen, one could find a very slight movement, an apparition of something, may be a gathering cloud, or probably a fusing smoke, or even a forming of universe. It revolved without any patterns and its color changed slowly from white to grey to very grey to black to very black. She kept looking at it, and then staring at its movement in endless circle. There should have been musical sounds coming out of the computer while the apparition was displayed, or probably there were, it was only that her ears were too numb to hear them.

She stared at the revolving image for so long that she had a headache and decided to shut the program down. Then she just had no idea how to do it. The screen became a strange object, just a box displaying a weird picture and symbols. She remembered faintly that closing programs had something to do with the mark X, but she could not find it anywhere. So she tried to shut the computer down. Of course, she knew how, but doing appeared to be much harder than she expected. She tried to control the mouse, but the arrow on the screen moved too fast. She had to do it. She had to be able to do it. She had to accomplish this piece-of-cake task. She concentrated on getting the arrow to the sign “start” at the bottom left corner. She held her breath. Her toes tensed. Her teeth bit the lower lip so hard that she could taste the blood. She pressed her hand on the mouse; it was shaking. Seeing that only right hand would not do, she used the left hand to stop the right one from shaking. The arrow started to move slowly from the middle of the screen, passing the eye-killing circling image. Her eyes frowned. The arrow moved bit by bit. A second seemed forever. She was extremely annoyed, but just a bit more, she told herself. The arrow at last stumbled to its destination. Suddenly, the sign “start” vanished, right before she was about to click the mouse.

It took her for several minutes to gather all her frustrated pieces of mind together again. She closed her eyes but the confusing revolving picture still penetrated the eyeballs.  It did not work. She did not care about anything anymore. Just shut this computer and her life would be in peace. Was this too much to ask for? Peace. She had no idea how she could feel this much angry just because of this nonsense. She drew a deep breath, opened her eyes, and pressed the power button. The button, however, was too strong to press. She pressed it as hard as she could, then mashed it with her thumb, then pushed it with her palm, then struck it with her fist. All did not work.

‘FUCK!’ she burst out, snatching the mouse and throwing it at the screen. The hypnotic image remained untouched. She could bear it no more. She got up and walked away from the room without even bothering to close the door. Her veins were pounding inside her head so hard that they could explode. She did not understand any single things that happened in that room. How was it possible that the simplest task became the hardest task in the world? And why had she had to make that much attempt and got this much rage because of the silly task? She must have gone insane, for sure.

She walked down the stairs. It was dark inside the house, too dark for daytime. It might be raining outside. She reached downstairs and found the room fused with gloomy purple light which seemed to come out of the blank television screen. Outside the windows was pitch black. Inside was, for her, as terrible as darkness. This was not right, it was supposed to be a daytime. Her skin became gilded with the transparent purple; of course it was fascinating, but also quite horrifying. She had to turn the real lights on and then turn off the T.V.; this fantasy stuff was getting too creepy. Then she started wondering where the switches were. She knew she remembered where. She knew. Well, she thought she knew. Or maybe she faintly remembered where. Maybe she just temporarily forgot where. No. She did not remember. She eventually realized that she did not know whether or not she remembered where. She started searching every corner of the room but no switches were found. Worse, the purple light was getting darker and darker. The room seemed – well, she knew it sounded ridiculous -- to get smaller, as if the walls had squeezed in. Maybe because of the darkening light, she comforted herself. But soon she knew she was not imagining it herself because the walls did move toward her. She ran to the door but suddenly the light went out.

Her hands reached out to find their way in the dark but instead seized nothingness. Each step was haunted by fear. She tried to blink her eyes, hoping to make them see any blur shadows. But even before she could make her second step or see anything, the wall crashed her from the right, then from the back. She was totally numb. Her legs got cramp, her head was  spinning. Yet she knew she had to push back the walls. She gave all her strength as if the bones of her arms could break in an instant. Her hand fought against the rough cement surface that could cut into her skin. All her efforts were useless. The walls kept moving inward. She went hysterical and started to cry. This would have been a very good example of expressionistic paintings, if only there had been no blackness to blind the vision of a girl’s struggle and despair.

She had no strength left and fell down like a feather on the floor. Another wall finally touched her back, and she knew it was the last moment of her life. The air was clustered and harder to breathe. But she would not suffocate to death as the walls would already smash all her flesh and bones and skull and brain and everything that would indicate her identity. She did not want to die. She was not ready.

The walls just stopped moving. Her back leaned effortlessly on one side of the hard surfaces. Her legs lay on the floor. The four walls seemed to fit in her body perfectly. Now she might suffocate to death. She sensed that the walls and the floor getting colder. Their rough cement surface somehow got smoother. Then the chill coated the surface as if the walls had turned into metal. The tiny space was officially her coffin. She should not have left the room upstairs in the first place. At least putting up with the revolving eye killer was much less painful than facing the brain smasher, and now the suffocating executioner. Why had all these happened to her? She must have been dreaming. Yes. Why did not she realize it sooner? All she had to do was to wake up. She had to close her eyes and then opened it and woke up. But as closing and opening her eyes were not much different because of this darkness, she had to try very hard to focus on her eyelids, remember the way to close them, and close them. Again, closing eyes was not that easy. She did not remember where her eyelids were, and she did not know any difference between opening and closing her eyes. Her plan did not work, again. Then she knew she, and her corpse, was meant to stick in this box eternally.

When she was about to pass out, something creepy in the dark touched her skin. Fear sparked all her nerves. She went hysterical. The thing could fly. Its wings made a horrifying whisper. And it kept flying around her. It was the biggest, the most wicked invisible monster she ever faced. It sounded like a bee, and she was allergic to bees; now she must die of a bee sting. Or it might be a flying cockroach, and she was disgusted by cockroaches; she had to die because of cockroach paranoia. Ah, what a dignifying way to die.

She devoted her last strength to waging war against the devil insect when, in a sudden moment, she became lighter. Her bottom bore softer weight, and soon the weight just disappeared. Her feet could not touch the floor, then she could not sense her feet. It was as if her body and self had evaporated, and her soul got out, floating aimlessly in nothingness. She no longer sensed the metal walls, but a vast space of chill air. She tried to move, but there were no legs to run, or even if there were, she would not have remembered how to operate them. She thought she was now dead. So this was how it felt when we die. It was not that bad actually. Confusing, but bearable.

The voice of a bell struck once and frightened her a bit. Then white light started shining in front of her, penetrating her eyes, but she could not close the eyelids. She was spun into all directions. Her eyes were blinded with whiteness. Then she felt someone pushing her back to move her toward the light. There was wing-clapping sound in her ears. She let him – or her – or it – carry her weight which did not seem to exist anymore; she was too sick to move by herself anyway. The mysterious person spoke to her, ‘Are you alright?’

She thought, what?

‘Are you alright?’ The voice sounded clearer to her, but she could not determine whether it was male’s or female’s.

‘Oh,’ she whispered, but was still too confused to say anything more. She saw something now, a blurring of the enormous red patch with the yellow letters ‘FOOD PARADISE’ on it. The place seemed to be a food court as she sensed the smell of soup and the heat from stoves. What kind of heaven -- or hell -- was this? Probably the food center in heaven. She made her best effort to turn to see her rescuer. In a sudden, she was shocked. The next thing she knew, there was the loudest scream which seemed to come out from her own mouth. She wished she could have stopped screaming because it was burning her throat. And She wished she could have run away from what she saw, at that moment, as fast as she could. But she did not remember how to use her legs, or if there were any legs left to use. It was the gigantic monster with the biggest yellow wings she had ever seen, and the enormous antennae and the biggest blackest eyes. She was almost faint, since she was out of breath.

‘Calm down, pal,’ said the lively voice, which seemed to come out of the monster.

She finally managed to gather all the details of the monster and draw a conclusion that it was the biggest butterfly in the planet, or in the universe. Was this some kind of an angel’s sick joke?

‘What a….,’ she stuttered.

‘Oh, come on, not again!’ said the butterfly irritatingly, ‘You’re having a nightmare again, aren’t you? I’ve told you not to eat too many candies before going to bed.’

‘What a…’

The butterfly continued, ‘And it’s always me, me, me, to explain to you who you are and how you get here.’ She was stunned and speechless of how talented this butterfly was; it could speak human’s language. How could all these happen to her? She did not deserve to be fooled with so many tricks, at least not all of them in the same hour.

‘Just listen, pal, I’ve memorized this explanation very well, precisely and concisely,’ the butterfly declared its statement extremely quickly, ‘You’re a butterfly who has a nightmare of being a human thing or a lousy writer thing or something. This is where we eat. Yes, we can eat noodles. No, you can’t fly because you have a height phobia. Yes, I’m your friend. No, I don’t have a name. Who says names are necessary anyway. We fly into the park everyday after lunch. And don’t ask how a desert and a lake and a sea and a mountain and a flower field and a forest and a river are within one park,’ it paused for a second, inhaled one deep breath, and continued, ‘and there are no such things as Newton and Einstein.’

‘What?’ cried she in high pitch.

‘Oh, and ten times ten equals fifty.’

She did not know how to react. She could not even capture any senses from the genius butterfly’s speech. Was she insane? Noodles? What noodles? And a park? Height phobia? And what was fifty? Her head stopped spinning now, but her body was still hanging in the air helplessly. She looked around and saw a huge cafeteria, huger than huge. Its ceiling was as high as the sky. It seemed to belong to giants, despite the fact that there were Jurassic-sized butterflies flying all over the place, rehearsing the loudest buzzing sound she could ever imagine. Then she was enlightened. She was a butterfly. She was a butterfly indeed.

‘I’m a butterfly,’ she could not believe what she had just said, ‘I’m a butterfly.’

‘Yes, you are, yes,’ delighted the butterfly, ‘It’s not that hard to get, is it? Now, come, and have lunch.’ The butterfly pushed her back to take her to the giant-sized table where there were two giant bowls of noodles waiting for them.

She stared at the enormous long strips of noodles in the lake of soup and said, ‘But how can I…’

‘Just eat, chew it, swallow it, eat,’ the butterfly replied while using its tiny antennae to hold up each fat long strip and sucking it into its tiny mouth and body. She stared at it eating up the noodles within less than a minute. This was impossible, where would all the noodles go? Into that tiny body?

‘It’s impossible. Where will..’

‘In my stomach, of course,’ said the butterfly, ‘and don’t worry, a large quantity of things can easily get inside a tiny container.’

‘But..’

‘Don’t argue,’ the butterfly shouted, ‘just listen to me for the millionth time.’ It ordered a new bowl of noodles from another butterfly, who seemed to be a waiter, before continuing his explanation, ‘A large quantity of things can easily get inside a tiny container. A large quantity of things can get inside a large container. A tiny quantity of things can get inside a large container. A tiny quantity of things can get inside a tiny container. That’s it. Now eat’

‘But I thought butterflies supposed to eat nectar.’

‘Nectar, yes, we have nectar at dinner. And don’t ask about brekfart.’

‘What?’ said she in an even more high-pitch voice.

‘B-r-e-k  F-a-r-t.’

‘You mean breakfast?’

‘Whatever. Such a word doesn’t exist.’

After all the freaking things that had happened to her in the last sixty minutes, she was sure she could handle any freaking reality. The butterfly waiter finally took the second bowl to the table. It appeared to be extremely strong, carrying the bowl a zillion times heavier than it. Then it just dropped the bowl as if it had decided not to carry it anymore. The bowl missed the table and fell onto the floor. She looked down, thinking that it would be fun seeing how butterflies did the cleaning. But what she saw was extraordinary: the bowl, including the noodles and the soup in it, was in an absolutely perfect shape; the soup did not spill at all. Shockingly, her bowl’s soup and noodle strips disappeared instead. She was confused, and amazed.

‘Don’t..,’ the butterfly spoke slowly, emphasizing every word, ‘even.. ask.’ It flew down to the floor and started eating very quickly. When it finished its fully-loaded lunch, it flew back to the table and said firmly again, ‘As I’ve told you, there are no such things as Newton and Einstein, no such laws of Grapevity and Rumraisintivity. They are all in your hallucination, pal.’

She decided to ask no more, though it meant that she would not be enlightened why her lunch was gone.

‘We do have the law of time utility though,’ the butterfly sophisticatedly explained, ‘the one who wastes time in life shall get no food.’ It paused and then continued, ‘Speaking of time, I think we should go now.’

Her new friend was a butterfly, and it was carrying her out of the cafeteria as if she were a floating supermarket cart, through the window, and entered the place her friend called the park. She was quite okay with the new lifestyle now, being weightless, tiny, noodle eater, in the world without gravity. It was not bad, especially after seeing the park. Not bad at all.

She and her friend dived into the air, filled with scents of soil and leaves, underneath the clear sky, beneath the vastness of paradise. She could not tell where reality ended and where dream began. She did not know how to describe what she was looking at. Lots of colorful colors. Lavender. Red. White. Pink. Orange. Yellow. Ocean of multicolors. And lots of green. And big trees. And crystal lakes. And sea. And sounds. Voices. From insects. From birds. From leaves and branches. From waterfalls. From seas and oceans. From the wind. Music in the air. She had never realized how she could be so tiny and how the world could be so big.  It was an impressionistic painting, definitely impressionistic. The blurring of million bright colors. The freshness. The coolness. The tenderness. The warmth. She had never thought such beauty existed. She was so foolish. She hoped she would stop being foolish. She would fly. She was dying to fly. She had to fly.

‘I want to fly,’ said she.

‘You don’t remember, do you? You can’t fly. You have a height phobia,’ replied the butterfly who was behind her, carrying her through the air.

‘I’m not afraid of height. I’m up here, and I’m fine.’

‘Who says that height phobia’s got something to do with being afraid of height?’

‘What?’ cried she in high pitch. Now she was really irritated with her voice.

‘Pal, you really don’t know anything. A height phobia is about being afraid of flying, not height.’

‘So why…’

‘Stop arguing, would you?’ snapped the butterfly, ‘you are afraid of flying, that’s all.’

But how could a butterfly be afraid of flying? She wondered. She did not believe it. So she tried to focus on her wings. But where were they? They supposed to be in the same position of her former arms. She tried to look at them, locating them, but could not find them anywhere. She was desperate to fly, but all she could do was to float in the air helplessly. She imagined the time she swam. Yes. Air was just like water, only a bit lighter. All she had to do was to swim, in a butterfly stroke maybe, through the air. She had to use her wings instead of arms and legs, wave them, exercise them, and then fly. Leap. Jump. Move forward. Her body tensed. Her eyes frowned. Her teeth bit the invisible lip. She had to do it. She knew she could do it.

‘You, silly,’ said the butterfly from behind, ‘you can fly only when you really want to fly.’

‘But I really do want…’

‘No, you don’t. You don’t have what it takes to fly. Flying needs an imaginative skill. But you don’t have any imagination, do you? Don’t worry, pal. You’ve got plenty of time.’

‘Time,’ shouted she, ‘is the thing I don’t have. Now let go of me and let me fly.’

She did not know why she had just said that. But she meant that. She would not give up easily, not this time. Flying was not as hard as controlling a mouse, and definitely not as hard as pushing the killing walls.

‘Alright, pal, easy,’ said the butterfly while it let her body go, ‘but you’d better fly very soon, cause we are entering the desert zone and you don’t want to be chased by the desert crocodile, do you?’

‘What?’

Suddenly, there was the clock ticking echoed from behind. She sensed that something terrible was coming on her way. She was right. It was the hugest greenest crocodile flying toward her in supersonic speed. Its eyes cunning, its teeth shining from 50 feet away. Its face looked more and more familiar to her as it approached her. A déjà vu. She knew she had seen it before, but she did not remember where and when. She knew. No, she did not know. She did not know if she knew. She struggled to fly, but it was too late.

‘ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh’

There was a big bang, then pain. She was on something flat and hard. Her bottom hurt, her hands sweated. Wait. She had got hands again. And she saw legs, and two feet. She was on the floor, looking around, and finally realized that it was her room. She got up slowly. Her legs were numb, but she managed to stumble to the chair in front of the computer. The screen was still on. The revolving apparition was paused. She looked at the mouse, then the screen, then the mouse again. Hesitating for a second, she touched the mouse and found that it was easily controlled by her. Then she murmured, ‘Ten times ten equals…ten times five equals fifty.. sixty.. seventy.. eighty… ninety.. A HUNDRED!’

Somehow, her room appeared to be livelier. The sun shone stronger through the curtain. It was hot inside, but she was more cheerful than ever. She smiled, slightly shook her head, and then just laughed. What a friend! What a nightmare! She was an incompetent butterfly who dreamt of being a desperate writer. She needed some rest. She was hungry. She needs a big bowl of noodles.

And eventually, she knew that she did not know anything at all.

And where did that crocodile come from?

The next day, she opened the Microsoft Word program and the blank white paper appeared on the screen. The cursor blinked on the first line. She stopped thinking for a while and then started typing  “              ”  as her story title. Who said names were necessary anyway.

On the next line she typed “Write spontaneously! And have fun!”

Her story finished within a day (and a half, including the revisions). And it was indeed fun to write.