She planted an ice cube in the ceiling and in time, it grew into a fine stalactite. She named it Elsa.
The lizards from every room from all of her house came over to visit. Each tiny reptilian face enthralled by the cold crystal, alien to this world that only cycled around four different summers.
They brought tribute and they brought their faith. The birth of religion was inevitable.
Soon, the altars and the chapels appeared across her house's ceilings. Shortly, the churches and the cathedrals followed.
She realized they had to invent a devil, just so they could run a few inquisitions. She had to keep fire extinguishers within reach.
She planted an ice cube on the floor and it grew into a fine stalagmite she wanted to name Anna, but the exiled lizards whose Exodus led to her floor insisted to call by it another name: The Beast, the one to bring the final conflict on Armageddon (it's a couple of adjacent boards in her kitchen ceiling, just above the stove).
They prepared for war.
2018.dec.17
Monday, December 17, 2018
Thursday, December 13, 2018
helsday
I heard her ask, from a table away.
"Do you ever feel the world stalling for time?"
It was a Thursday. Its slow morning saw a sparsely filled coffee shop, caught at a time when most of the working class in this part of the city were either asleep or headed home.
The seconds pass and her question hung in the air, its question mark at the tail behaving as it looked: a hook, stalking the catch.
I glanced her way, and as I feared I found her by herself and her eyes locked in on me. A grin as wicked as that question mark. The catch, I realized with dismay, was me.
I wasn't prepared for this and I didn't want this. But social demands demanded it. My lips rebelled with a half-smile.
She knew her question still hung unanswered. Abandoning ranged assault tactics, she leaned forward. Melee attack detected almost immediately: it alarmingly cut off a couple of inches from the distance that kept my solitude secure. This breach terrified me.
"I know the look. Your calendars and phones and emails tell you what day it is. But in the back of your mind, there's a voice that objects. It's in the exhaustion gnawing under your skin. It's Wednesday or Thursday but you just know you've gone through a week already."
Ah, so it was the worst kind of question, after all: the one with the answer nailed at the end. A right answer.
The kind that demanded a polite, reserved, "Yeah..."
Seemingly satisfied, she withdrew her gaze back to her mug of tea. She inhaled the steam like bounty for bagging my Yeah...
She gave me just enough time to feel that false sense of things reverting back to normal, to safety, then, even without the stare this time:
"Today's a Helsday,"
The gentle pull in her voice, quiet and unmistakably the lure I could never resist.
I tried to slow down the way I clutched my cup, the feeble attempt to make it come off as deliberate rather than instinctual panic. This cup, the last branch on the cliff face, impossibly there for me to dangle onto before falling anyway. A cruel ray of hope for my introverted kind.
Then the cold seeped into my palm and I wished I ordered a hot drink instead.
Yet beyond my social ineptitudes, she made sense. I was bad at peering into those optical illusion paintings, back in the days of the old 3-floor department stores. Those cheap artwork said to have some hidden imagery that once found, your mind made room to accept the realization that absolutely, it was always there. There she sat telling me there's a Helsday somewhere in the middle of the week, and absolutely, it's the only reason why a Tuesday always went slower than a Friday.
Does the how matter? On the concept of hidden truths, it is deep waters I don't want to dive into. On the specifics of a missing day, this was what she told me, straight up, like the most bitter wine unwatered:
"She fell for him, but he would not love her back. It was the last Helsday. She asked the universe to take away all Helsdays from weeks gone and from weeks that will be. Her love and heartbreak cannot be anyone else's."
It was true. Absolutely.
She must have been long gone when I finished my cup, by then the liquid was more melted ice than coffee. Like a truth lingering through long measures of time, it's still there underneath all the great lies and all the lesser truths, and barely showing.
As I stood, I consulted my phone and the clock on the wall and the position of the sun. Still it was Thursday, a slow morning.
2018.dec.13
"Do you ever feel the world stalling for time?"
It was a Thursday. Its slow morning saw a sparsely filled coffee shop, caught at a time when most of the working class in this part of the city were either asleep or headed home.
The seconds pass and her question hung in the air, its question mark at the tail behaving as it looked: a hook, stalking the catch.
I glanced her way, and as I feared I found her by herself and her eyes locked in on me. A grin as wicked as that question mark. The catch, I realized with dismay, was me.
I wasn't prepared for this and I didn't want this. But social demands demanded it. My lips rebelled with a half-smile.
She knew her question still hung unanswered. Abandoning ranged assault tactics, she leaned forward. Melee attack detected almost immediately: it alarmingly cut off a couple of inches from the distance that kept my solitude secure. This breach terrified me.
"I know the look. Your calendars and phones and emails tell you what day it is. But in the back of your mind, there's a voice that objects. It's in the exhaustion gnawing under your skin. It's Wednesday or Thursday but you just know you've gone through a week already."
Ah, so it was the worst kind of question, after all: the one with the answer nailed at the end. A right answer.
The kind that demanded a polite, reserved, "Yeah..."
Seemingly satisfied, she withdrew her gaze back to her mug of tea. She inhaled the steam like bounty for bagging my Yeah...
She gave me just enough time to feel that false sense of things reverting back to normal, to safety, then, even without the stare this time:
"Today's a Helsday,"
The gentle pull in her voice, quiet and unmistakably the lure I could never resist.
I tried to slow down the way I clutched my cup, the feeble attempt to make it come off as deliberate rather than instinctual panic. This cup, the last branch on the cliff face, impossibly there for me to dangle onto before falling anyway. A cruel ray of hope for my introverted kind.
Then the cold seeped into my palm and I wished I ordered a hot drink instead.
Yet beyond my social ineptitudes, she made sense. I was bad at peering into those optical illusion paintings, back in the days of the old 3-floor department stores. Those cheap artwork said to have some hidden imagery that once found, your mind made room to accept the realization that absolutely, it was always there. There she sat telling me there's a Helsday somewhere in the middle of the week, and absolutely, it's the only reason why a Tuesday always went slower than a Friday.
Does the how matter? On the concept of hidden truths, it is deep waters I don't want to dive into. On the specifics of a missing day, this was what she told me, straight up, like the most bitter wine unwatered:
"She fell for him, but he would not love her back. It was the last Helsday. She asked the universe to take away all Helsdays from weeks gone and from weeks that will be. Her love and heartbreak cannot be anyone else's."
It was true. Absolutely.
She must have been long gone when I finished my cup, by then the liquid was more melted ice than coffee. Like a truth lingering through long measures of time, it's still there underneath all the great lies and all the lesser truths, and barely showing.
As I stood, I consulted my phone and the clock on the wall and the position of the sun. Still it was Thursday, a slow morning.
2018.dec.13
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