Friday 10 February 2012

I seem to have been mistaken for a German speaker


…Must be the accent.

This week’s been quite normal, as far as I can remember. Our prepaid’s running out soon, though, so I’ll try to get across as much as possible in case… well, you know.

The teachers are still putting me in the same work group as the people I mentioned earlier, which I guess is merciful enough. At least compared to, say, having me among the jocks the size of short-faced bears who I’ve more or less never talked to who would probably forget my tangibility at times.I can live with being inconspicuous for now –lots of worse fates waiting out there, if the online accounts are any indication. Have you ever heard of how WWII bomber crew were apparently fatalistic enough to keep their calm while being dragged off burning planes by the howling wind several kilometers up there? I guess that quite a lot of us who aren’t running around following vague symbols are a bit like that for time being. Flak bombardments do little worse than blowing your head off, though; unlike, say, all the “eldritch shit and nonsense” presently lurking in the dark.

Haven’t gone out much, as I said, meaning that most of the interesting stuff has already been mentioned. Something was a bit wrong, though.

I made the bookstore trip that earned me the Agatha Christie collection in the evening, just after school. Public transportation has historically been a bit on the stray-critter-entrails-over-the-back-seats side in my part of the city, so there hasn’t been many means of getting around save for the feet. I came in around five and looked around for a bit. What I thought was a bit, at least. Everyone inside were acting quite normally, considering recent experiences, and when I walked out… well, I can’t say I remember the precise part, but I remember the sky growing darker and the street being awfully quiet: maybe a car passing by every couple of minutes at best, a handful of pedestrians in the distance, and all the windows were either dark or had their blinds/curtains drawn. The sun had a little glimmer of light left in the horizon. I took a look at my phone.Roughly a quarter to eight. Then the battery expired and it died out.

There’s no clear way to describe what happened next, since my attempts at reminiscing still tend to end up being quite fuzzy. But I’ll try.

I remember walking for maybe ten minutes through what I thought was the way home. Everything stayed vague for the whole length of the time. The streets were all exactly as quiet as the previous one, the streetlights gave out unusually paler lows and all things outside their reach were blurry dark, nearing pitch black. After a while I started to feel light-headed, and my legs were taken over by a throbbing ache (I was still carrying the backpack IIRC, though it was bit hard to tell at times). Then I saw a grass field, running around 200 meters along the street. It bordered a few small houses, wide, unlit and more than anything, unkempt. Next to it was an old defunct city garden which maintenance workers maybe visit once a month, its trees growing into strange shapes against the night sky, slightly lit by a few bulbs here and there. It’s supposed to run for quite some distance before it borders an intersection, compelling me to do take the wisest decision and take a path through the grass field.

It was probably half an hour. Or was it an hour? I have no idea. As I walked through the space, the lights grew further and further away on all sides. The sky was too acting strange: it would seem to be pitch black one minute and a pale maroonish hue full of stars on the next. The city stayed blurry and dark all the way through, the lights little more than sickly spots of brightness lining the horizon. Do I still have to say something about feeling like being watched? Yes? ‘Kay. I also felt like I was being watched.

I was on our street roughly five minutes after I got out of the field. It was mostly normal –everything still seemed quite blurry and contrasted, but there were cars speeding by, people walking around. My backpack felt a little bit heavier, though. I tried to ring the bell on the front door, remembered that some critter had gnawed away the wire, and gave a knock. There was the sound of slow unlocking and Sis appeared on the door. Mum was still out in the town. I looked at the clock on the wall. Ten minutes past eleven. Then I came in and told her everything. She told me to get a rest.

I woke up at six the following morning. Thought to prepare for school, so I unzipped the backpack. Seven novels neatly stacked inside an unmarked paper bag. Didn’t know it could hold that much. Didn’t remember putting anything inside it after I walked away from school either, but meh. Mum asked me if I was okay before running off for work. She was home on the evening and had found some old yarn inside a just-unpacked dufflebag. Then she taught us crocheting.

It was nice. ^_^

Yogurt Man also came. His yogurt is what the world wants, what the world needs.

Cheers.

3 comments:

  1. mmmmmm, yogurt.

    i like you, british guy. i'm going to dub thee...//British Guy//.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you! Where have I mentioned being British, I wonder?

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  3. Hope you enjoy the books then - though not much more than the starry night outside, we all hope? ^_^

    ReplyDelete