Catherina - Day 17

It was a humid summer day when I walked out of the neighborhood, seeking a place for lunch. The sun glared, steaming the dust on the pavement into midair and inhaled by pedestrians like me. Though laid by bricks, the sidewalk was sticky that I devoted effort into lifting my feet to drag myself forward. Beside me, cars slugged by with a fluid layer of tars boiling under the tires, melting the rubber into unison.

I breathed briskly, taking in less than I exhaled – the air was hot as coming out of an oven, baking the delicate inner lining of my lung. I looked on, seeing blurred constructions behind the searing heat waves, quivering as see grasses yielded to the current.

Why did I choose to come out in such weather? Sweating, I criticized my stupidity and complained silently. A drop of sweat dripped down the tip of my nose, leaving a water blot on my T-shirt. Hastened my steps, I went for another two blocks to arrive in front of a glass gate with traditional red papercuts of some foreign letters. "Welcome," announced the four characters.

I pushed the gate open, and a few languid waiters received me with reluctance. Even it was lunchtime, they barely cover up their surprise for seeing a live person coming in – indeed, the tables were all empty on the ground level.

A waiter in black uniform presented me with a menu: yellow background and red printing, it was a feeble rehash of the ancient charm. Still, I skimmed through it and ordered dumplings – a safe bet at most restaurants, while the fatigue from walking under the midday sun had devoid me of the energy of turning away.

After passing my order to the kitchen, the waiter led me to a large private room, where brown bamboos that were my wrist-wide laid the walls. I sat in front of a low tea table carved out of tree stump, facing a framed window opening to a scene of a stream winding across woods. What a lovely sight! The vitality embodied in the refreshing greenness soothed my agitation from the summer heat, and I rested my head in my palms, staring blankly at the flowing water outside.

Knock, knock. The waiter brought in a kettle of tea, which poured out boiling. Frowned, I used my fingertips to snap the edge of the cup and took a sip – I needed water, although the temperature was not ideal. The steam prevailed, lingering around my head into a white, humid mist. When I lifted my head again to see beyond the light fog, the room was different.

The bamboo walls had gone, and replacing them were naked plastered ones in a pale shade of grey. Similarly, the rectangular window disappeared, and a diamond-shaped window had taken its original spot. This new window was much smaller and covered with paper, thereby tuning the brightness down into a soothing creamy white.

I yawned, waiting for the tea to cool down beside my elbow – it went too slow. Everything in the room had slowed down, and idling in the air was delayed, softened sunlight, enveloping the tea table in a silky ivory hue. The light had slowed down, lengthen the journey between my perception and my mind. My heartbeat had slowed down, retiring from a vigorous ball of flame into dwindling candlelight. My breath had slowed down, drawing vitality away from the lung, and sequentially my bloodstream, brain, and slouching body.

Knock, knock. A mere comprehension of the sound had exhausted my logic, and I, with all discipline, turned my eyeballs to make out a vague figure beside the door. One second: I recognized the color being black. Two seconds: I associated this dark shade with the waiter's uniform. Three seconds: I reasoned that a waiter had entered.

He said something, a single digit of syllables. Before my brain could process the incoming noise and segmenting them into meaningful pieces, my body moved. As my fatigue had disintegrated so suddenly, I was physically capable of standing up, accidentally tipping the teacup over, and storming out of the room.

Quick, quick. A burning idea ignited my last reserve of energy, spurring me to sprint down the stairs and out of the restaurant. A glass gate from me, the waiters smiled and bade me goodbye. I had not yet paid for my order, and perhaps the dumplings had never been made.

Jumping onto my car (which emerged by my will), I drove down the street. At the end was a U-turn, along which a thick wood had replaced the city. I slowed down, and only to slam at the gas pedal a second later, accelerating as if chasing a game, or being chased. I was driving on a downward slope, and on its right was a sapphire lake shimmering under the afternoon sun.

Perhaps the reflection of sunlight dazzled my eyes, or maybe I had hastened too much to lose control of the car – it carried me off the road into the lake.

I heard silence. At the instance of the tire touching water, the world had paused, or once again decelerated indefinitely. With me bounded to the driving seat, the car was sinking into the foaming waves, breaking through the peaceful reflection of sunlight into glaring mirrorshades. I saw nothing but a domain of darkness, an abyss swirling and devouring the prey fallen into its mouth – I did not panic, out of confidence or ignorance?

I was drowning. Water had taken gravity's roll, swamping me into a warm jelly. Finally, my fingers began to move and found their way through threads of water to redo the safety belt. Reluctantly the lake loosened its hold, letting my body struggle itself through the opened sunroof, lifting my head out of water.

My chest expanded, bringing wet air into my lungs. I was floating and slightly scared. Turning my head, I saw two men walking along the riverbank.

They came to save me – their prey. The two men were indeed werewolves, and that I had known intuitively, despite their perfectly ordinary human look. Brown hair, brown eyes, brown T-shirt and grey pants - the beasts looked like two neighbors strolling home from the same bus stop, for they worked in one IT company. Above was the description that popped out in my mind, which had recently ditched logic for intuition.

Wiping water off from my face, I saw a little white cabin in the woods, probably out of bricks and had a rusty red roof. What if I can be in the house before the two werewolves have caught me – that was a dear wish. As if responding to my call, the time once again worked incomprehensibly. I struggled in swimming and climbed up the bank with my legs heavy like filled by lead; however, until I dragged along across the street into the woods, entered the cabin, and locked the door behind me, the werewolves still stood at their spot. They were communicating, walking, and breathing – but in a prolonged manner. For them, the time had been amplified.

Inside, the cabin was very dark, and I could not see beyond my feet, under which two swamps of water were forming, and blending. No need to see, for I knew this place in a long-forgotten past - and now someone had hit the replay key.

This place used to be a butchery, and I worked here as an adopted child by the butcher – who had three eyes and wrinkled blue skin. The butcher was bald and cruel – the word "cruel" might misrepresent him as I could not expect him to have any human emotion – which fitted his job as he sold meat. Not ordinary pork, beef, or lamb – the flesh of my species, which I dared not to name even in memory. Plus, I was the stock in reserve, if that could clarify my position in the butchery besides the sales, cleaner, carrier, and servant in general.

My story with this butchery was not long – I had edited so that only a few clips were available in the archive. If I present the most significant piece, it must begin with that evening when I leaned against the counter, recording the day's accounts.

The cabin had a dim, ghastly icy light – the kind that one sees when lying on the operating table. I fidgeted with the pencil when the lady came in; I did not know her name, for she was not a familiar face. To this day, I could recall every detail of her face, for her delicate figure was enchanting even in the dark. She had dark hair in a bob and her eyes in the same shade of starless night. Her face was white as jade, and the lips moist with blood. Wearing a pink kimono and a magenta skirt, she was standing on a pair of geta that I had only seen in anime.

She was delicate like a doll, and I politely directed my eyes away from her gory lips when speaking. "Madam," I said, "how can I help you?"

At that moment, my boss emerged from an adjacent room, and the creases on his face deepened when he saw the lady. "Go to the storage and get meat." He ordered me with the most hoarse and sandy voice I've ever heard.

That was a queer command. Which slice should I pick? I dared not to question and walked downstairs into the freezing room - piles of meat wrapped in plastic laid the floor, and some were hanging on hooks from the ceiling. I focused on the smaller slices, the ones misshapen by chopping and were no longer in their original form.

Then plonk. Startled, I waited beside the door for a few more minutes, still holding a slice in one hand. What was that? Silence.

Maximizing my hearing capability, I lay the meat onto the floor lightly and crawled upstairs. My shirt got dusty with friction, but that was no big deal. I crept along the stair until I was bathing in a hazy moonlight. Over the counter, I could see that the front door had gone, along with half of the front wall. Neither the lady nor my boss presented.

Suddenly, my perspective shifted, relocating into an arbitrary spot in the space. Surrounded by stars among a boundless drop of darkness, I saw my boss coming towards me behind the glass shield of a disk-like spacecraft – a UFO, as known among the Earth's inhabitants. His bald head still bald, and wrinkled blue skin even darker. His three eyes were blood-shot, networks of red filled up the white of his eyes.

My boss was panicking, judging by his frequent turning of the head back to see if anyone is tailing him. Grounding his teeth, he was cursing someone, and I suspected the subject being the lady. He was aiming towards my direction – I was taking the perspective of his mother planet.

Closer and closer, the spacecraft came. I could no longer see the face of my boss (now the ex-boss), for it was shrinking inward as if absorbed into the center of a gyre. With a blink of an eye, his face had gone. A black hole was born.

photo credit: https://www.nps.gov/olym/planyourvisit/images/road-highway-101-lake-crescent-car-maynes.jpg