That was the reason why I liked that room. I felt the need to see those shades and feel the happiness of dreaming. In a world where I never grew tired, I still hoped of seeing my dreams come alive. That world of dreams was the only escape I had to empower my solidarity and to rule a word that I once tried to produce myself. Though it was also a place of ironies because even as it presented itself as a place of my rule over my own world, it also had its own rule of presenting the sequence of events and it was never my call.
*** ***
Fingers. Nails.
Screeching sounds.
Blood.
Fingers. Nails, no more.
*** ***
Eyes.
Brown. Blue. Black. Gray. Hazel.
Eyes shut close, rusting nails pounding. Blood flows.
Cheeks were warm and I saw the beauty as before but redder than the rose.
*** ***
The events of the past were slowly returning from memory. The wind blew like the way a monsoon would every August along the shores of an unnamed heavenly island. The sky grew darker and farther from me. Then rains started to fall. I saw a drop on my head. I looked up to the sky and closed my eyes. There I found the ultimate solitude. The rain drops were falling and touching my face. It swung along my eyelids. Then one dropped right at the tip of my nose and it just stopped there. The rain drops stopped. I saw a tear fell.
It was so fascinating. Red, orange, and yellow hues of the fire covered the entire room. The three colors illuminated the openings of the corridors. I saw different people from the different times in my life. There were the school children from my elementary, the friends I had from high school, the neighbors we had from the past ten years, my grandparents, and a lot of unnamed faces.
Unnamed faces?
The horror of the past or the pleasure of the unknown, the unfamiliar. That was my life. That was my dream. But as soon as these words came running on my mind, these words flashed across the sky: Reality is not real. Your dreams are not dreams. Please stay forever.
My heart started pumping as hard as it could. No time to stop. No turning back. One missed beat and I would be out, with no air to breath and no place to move. No second left unused. I was staring blankly at the sky. Those words did not matter at all. I was not in the state of analyzing texts floating across the horizon.
I was now standing on top of a high-rise building. This time the longing was too strong, the wind was too harsh that it almost blew me away. I was starting to feel the sensation of being alone. I would like to try how it feels like to jump off this place and embrace the unwavering breeze of a cold night’s wind. Dropping with a speed of 130 miles per hour, my body would be floating. Heart pumping. Excitement.
I tried to reach for something. Someone. I was not sure. I suddenly felt the gush of blood trying to escape from my veins. The veins were too visible. I saw the green strands then it all turned to red. The elegant red was filling my body like a warm hug from a friend.
I learned to appreciate these coincidences. At the end of this course, I knew in my heart that the veins would turn back to green then it would fade and would lie beneath my skin as flat as the table’s top. My veins showed my life. I was still alive. Bummer.
I was running around, making a fool of myself. I turned my clothes to a blue floral dress and I hopped my way to go, downstairs, upstairs, crossstairs, sidestairs, upsidedownstairs. I wanted to scream, to fly, to escape the collapsing stairs. Then I bumped at something, someone. Just right before I was about to end my sanity and The Fear was overwhelming, flooding my entire body, someone was there. Just there, standing.
For the first time, I really felt that I was not alone. I wrapped my arms around the person and tried to hold him or her so tightly. The collapsing stairs was not important anymore. I had forgotten about The Fear that was holding me back, the shout that could never be released. I just closed my eyes and wrapped my arms around this savior. The only thing that puzzled me was that I was not able to feel anything. It was as if I was not really holding anything. The Fear started to eat me up again. My heart stopped. One, two, three. Three seconds indeed did my heart stop. That was the time I felt something. I felt the smooth and soft touch. I was relieved and my heart started pumping as insanely.
Yakapin 