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Wednesday, March 23, 2011

The Birthday Girl, Part 1 of 2: The Melodica

It’s the impression of truth in your dreams that’s underrated, not the falsehood of reality.
She had somehow slept the whole night, and had woken up to the sound of melodica. Everyone would remind her time and again that it wasn’t the best way to start a day. But to her, this was perfect, as perfect as it could be, better than anything. She fiddled through her stuff on the night stand, arranged flawlessly to a degree that could redefine flawlessness itself. In a rush, she reached down to a book, spoiling any possible pattern in the way, displacing anything placed over it, producing a muffled noise every time, perhaps the only sound other than the melodica, which was still piercing its way through a damp silence.
Her eyes, as always, were profound, and displayed an extraordinary sense of fidelity, sure and rather tenacious of anything she would do or say. Right now, the same persistence dwelled on resisting and rejecting any impulse to say anything at all. There was no one in the room to judge her, but she made a constant, conscious effort not to utter a single word for she was alone, and talking to herself didn’t quite appeal to her saner self.
In a moment of condensation, she seemed to be looking through the cover that read “A Bottle of Sand, Dream Journal, Madeline Phyn” All set to make the final, most beloved entry, once again she rushed in hunt for a pen.
“I’ll forget it. I shouldn’t forget it. I can’t forget it. I won’t forget it.” Her short held control over unspoken words, to her surprise, had betrayed her conscience, yielding to a deeper splendor instead. But she let the feeling pass with an understated laughter. Deliberately, she flipped one page at a time up to the last, which she knew was still unwritten, forming words and sentences through the way.
But there was already something scribbled on the last page, “They say that the dreams you can remember are more likely to come true. I know what I wished for, last night and in my dream I got…” This wasn’t something she had written earlier but what she was about to write. It didn’t say what she had wanted, just that in this dream of hers, she had got whatever she wanted. The melodica, playing serene until now, echoed through her, from head to the feet and then back.
Agitated, she half-closed her eyes and reached out to the clock in attempt to turn it off, but she couldn’t. Decisively, she returned to bed to read the rest of it. The journal was nowhere to be found. For the very essential commonsensical reasons, she was convinced that she hadn’t woken up yet, that her dream hadn’t ended. She observed the sound of her breaths dropping, then of herself dropping back on the bed. Sure, persuaded by herself, but still filled with fear, she looked back at the clock. She wanted to go back to sleep for the most paradoxical reason- to wake up.
The intensity of the current dream made her question the remembrance of any other she’d seen hitherto. The melodica was now to serve its greater purpose, to consume the melancholy and reproduce it in a form acceptable to a troubled mind. Before falling back to sleep, she revisited her idea behind the title of the journal. She had called it ‘A bottle of sand’ for it was a collection of sharp, reflective, and authentic desires of an innocent mind, wrapped up in timid, awake, and believable words.

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