Sunday, November 6, 2011

Re-cycle

A sudden chill of horror swept over me as the only bare bulb on the ceiling burnt out above me. Shattered glass scattered over me like hot coals. Where was I? Scarcely any light came through a few small holes; that most of them were muffled with dirty rags or sealed with stiff cardboard. I saw that I was in a room, rather small, reflections of narrow beams of light in a haze of heat roughly illuminated the backdrop, turning it bloody red. There was garbage everywhere! The paint was peeled off the wall in every direction. A wooden cross was nailed into a rotted window frame still blocking any exit. And a huge portrait of a strange person hung crookedly on the wall. The smell of mildew and decay and, somehow, death hung over the room. The building seemed about to fall apart. Suddenly, the portrait fell to the ground and behind it a tunnel covered with moss, mud and rubble came into view. I guessed it was probably the way out; without a second thought, I dashed in.


Lights became fainter and fainter while echoes of my heavy steps grew louder. Closing my eyes, I felt a warmth like a sun upon my head and my face, humid, moist... No, it's wet! Something tepid was dripping down on me. All out of breath, I slipped and tumbled on the wet ground, hitting my face on the dirt,causing me to lick some gruesome, copper-tasting liquid. Blood, I recognized it instantly, yet it felt like time itself had suspended. It took me a while to collect my thoughts, stand up and realize my current circumstance. I was stuck in a cave of flesh overhung with countless fetuses and live babies tied with dripping veins and umbilical cords. Their muddy eyeballs were wide open, staring at me with luminous pupils. I didn't dare to look back, and yet I saw at the very end of the cave a little girl waving at me. I shouted for her help to take me out of there. Somehow I heard her whisper, "You had your chance to live with me. " The outline of her body became dimmer as I perceived my heart pounding louder and louder, steadily beating slower until it vanished.


It was just a dream. I woke up in the morning. The light of dawn was just beginning to fill the stifling, lonely room. It was inevitable that spiritless babies and dead corpses would remind me of the fate of unrequited love. There was hardly a shelter where I could escape the torments of memories. The dream was shapeless and incoherent, but in time I came to believe that perhaps its disorder could revealed obscure message. The abandoned will emerge again; the forgotten will be dreadfully reborn.


It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” I met my girlfriend eight years ago, and bought a small apartment for us. Our love was unacceptable, but it was precisely her love that completed me and gave me everything I needed. Unexpectedly, she got pregnant. So came the brutal abortion, deserted house, extinguished hopes, dying embers of hapless love and a completely wasted life over the years. I've been trying hard to tear my memories apart and discard them in the recycle bin of my soul, despite the fact that it had become all too clear that I was overwhelmed with the burden of disillusion. My efforts to purge myself of this hell only seemed to provide the incitement needed for malevolent characters to fully manifest themselves in my life.


Funny it was, that the souls of aborted babies being held in tormented limbo was continuously haunted me even though I had discarded so many other things. Merchandises bought last year, faces once encountered but never again remember, dead loved ones left behind, drafts of stories started but never completed, thoughts no longer able to recall, and promises never fulfilled were long since dumped in recycle bin. Do these things constitute my dreams or my reality? Or am I now only a fictional version of the real me that has been lost over time? Does my memory of my self betray me? Fantasy becomes reality. Memory becomes monstrous. And terror becomes destiny.


I got out of bed, stretching myself, stepping into the bathroom when suddenly, the only bare bulb burnt out above me...


I wish I could finish all the things I started.

1 comment:

Henry Chung said...

The writing is based upon a movie, Re-cycle. Everybody knows I have a morbid liking to horror movies. Initially, in fact, I was writing about movie I've watched recently called Don't Be Afraid of the Dark. I was thinking of putting my best, meaning the most terrifying, experience on the writing. It turns out to be "Re-cycle" by Pang Brothers. Though it wasn't really scary in some part, something got into me after I watch it. I went to municipal clinic, big hospital because my mom was freaked out by my odd manner and depressing moods. Anyway, I just can't get the image of fetus cave out of my mind :)