Writing Fiction Exercise #2

He was hanging upside down at his usual side fence like he had been doing almost every night since summer began. The chilly night breeze and quiet somehow brought a sense of peace to his pondering mind of a possum.

His thoughts were suddenly interrupted by the unfamiliar sound of bare feet running along the pavement below. The sound grew louder as it got nearer and then it stopped right where he was.

Haddon Gelai blinked his eye, trying to make out what this strange creature could possibly be. "Excuse me!" said the strange human-looking creature. Haddon looked around for another human whom this creature could possibly be addressing. There was none. "I'm talking to you. Yes you, dear furry one," the creature continued. It wasn't often that humans spoke to possums in this day, but then again this one didn't really seem quite human to begin with anyway. He was awfully short for a grown man , looking the age he was. Haddon blinked again.

"I'm looking for Lothlórien, the city of the elves. I seem to have lost my way for this city looks nothing like what I would expect of elves."

There was an awkward silence between the two.

The short human broke it.

"Oh I'm sorry, how rude of me. I forgot to introduce myself! I'm Frodo Baggins, a hobbit from the Shire. It's a lovely place really. I do miss it from time to time. The cheerful flowers in spring, fancy fireworks during the festive season, and... well, all that doesn't quite relate to our present dilemma now does it?"

Haddon really wasn't quite sure what to say...

Lost.

An unfamiliar sound blared abruptly, loud enough to wake me from the dream where I was flying. I like flying dreams. I slowly opened my eyes as I moved my feet off the edge of my bed. BAM! My feet had hit the floor almost instantly. That’s weird, I thought, and sat up straight more awake now. I was in for a shock.

The room I was in did NOT look like my own room at all. I tried to remember what happened the night before. Were we on a family holiday? Where were my parents? Was I sleeping over at a friend’s house? No couldn’t be, I was the only one in the room I noticed. The more I looked around me, the stranger it all became. There were multiple photos of people whom I didn’t know, stuck on the walls around me. One particular girl reminded me of myself, she seemed to be in all the photos. This must be her room I thought. The bookshelf next to me had some really thick big books with complicating titles on the cover, and lots of pink stuff randomly placed around the room – which I quite liked since that was my favourite colour.

I got up and started searching the room for something, anything familiar, pinching myself the whole time to try and re-wake-up again if I could. There was a big camera on the dressing cupboard in front of the mirror. I could reach the dressing cupboard! I will own a big camera like that one day I thought briefly. My eyes flickered to the mirror as it always did naturally whenever reflective windows or mirrors were nearby. It was then, that I started feeling suddenly afraid.

I couldn’t recognize the person staring back at me! It was all kind of blur as well. Since when was my eyesight so bad? I thought. Blurred vision. This has got to be a dream still. A pair of spectacles was on the dresser, if it’s a dream, I’ll play along then, I thought. I slipped the glasses on to find that they fitted me perfectly and my reflection in the mirror still hadn’t changed. I realized it was the same person I saw in the photos on the wall. Looking back at them, I found a familiar face. Two actually. Kristy, and there was Joni. But they looked different too, and very pretty for some reason. How come they get to wear makeup? I wondered.

The sun was shining through the slits of the window blinds. Wherever I am, at least it’s still planet earth. A beautiful view met my eyes as I peeked out the window. Blue sky and puffy white clouds! I like this dream.

The loud noise suddenly started again, giving me a shock. It was coming from this small metal thing on the table that looked like a very very small telephone with no handle. The words blinking on it spelled “C-H-R-I-S-T-I-N-A”. Who is that?? Unsure of what to do with the noisy thing, I pressed a few buttons attempting to shut the noise off. It was music actually. Very weird for a telephone to play music. But pretty cool. A girl’s voice suddenly spoke from the small telephone. “SARAAAAHHH!!!! Are you awaaaake?? Class starting soon! Faster come! I’ll save you a seat ok? Quick ah! Don’t go back to sleep!” Uh… okay. And before I could say anything more, much less ask how we knew each other, she had hung up.

That sounded urgent.

I found clothes in the drawers that fitted me just right and put them on quickly. Bras and things. Pink too! I felt quite pleased with this apparent Grown Up Me body that I was in. I had seen how older girls clasp the hooks of a bra to wear it so it wasn’t difficult to guess how. Just needed a few tries to succeed. Bleh.

The next few moments happened quite quickly. I opened my room door and found my way out of the house. Slipping on a pair of huge shoes on my way out. I ran out the front of the house, and found I needed to run up the aisle in order to reach the main road. There were identical looking houses along the row on both sides. Very pretty.

I got to the main road.

And then, I suddenly realized…

I don’t know where I’m supposed to go.

Or what I was doing here.

And why it was taking so long to wake up?

And where was this dream heading to?

And if it wasn’t a dream, how did I get here?

And how am I gonna go back?

And for the first time since I woke up that morning,

I suddenly felt very very VERY

Lost.

Once Upon A Time. Cont'd...

Inside the Strange Sweet Shop.

The strange sweet shop was the messiest neatest little sweet shop one could ever find. It had rows of shelves that held strange-looking multicoloured glass jars with even stranger labels on them. Her eyes glazed over the words on each glass jar briefly, till they rested on the smallest glass jar. It read “2 cents. EVERYTHING”.

Blink reached into her skirt pocket and felt the tiny circular metal bits with her fingers. She pulled out 2 cents worth, and reached out with her other hand and picked up the EVERYTHING glass jar. The shopkeeper was nowhere to be found. So Blink quietly left her coins where the jar used to be, and because I love puns, she was gone in a blink of an eye.

EVERYTHING.

Blink was late for school so she decided to walk to the playground that day with EVERYTHING in her hands. Once she found a suitable swing that held her little bum comfortably, Blink opened the EVERYTHING jar of sweets and popped the first one in her mouth. She sat there swinging slowly, looking up at the sunny blue sky.

The flavour of the little sweet that rolled around in her mouth soon began to spread all over her tongue. A strange sensation started tingling her tongue. It travelled down her throat into her stomach as she swallowed her flavoured saliva. The feeling began to grow from within her and welled up inside her. Blink began to blink her eyes at a very fast rate in sheer bewilderment. What is going on? She thought. Her swinging became faster and she went higher, kicking the ground with a force that grew harder with every swing. The corners of her lips suddenly broke into two points of a curve and she found herself throwing her head back, mouth open, eyes alive, cheeks plumped. Laughing.

She laughed and laughed and laughed, to clouds and to sky above her. Her heart began to dance and twirl, and the blood in her veins rushed with an energy that one would have while skipping around. Never before had she ever felt this something from within her. And she liked it. She laughed till her air ran out of its laughing capacity, and then she calmed down in bundles of giggles that were hard to suppress all at once.

“That was fun,” thought Blink to herself. She hopped the seat of her swing, popping another little sweet into her mouth. This time…

Once Upon A Time.

There was a girl who had almost everything. She had a pair of parents who loved her, a puppy with brown eyes and golden fur, a shelf of favourite storybooks, and she was beautiful. But she was missing something, and she didn’t know what it was, but she felt it. And that missing something soon became quite apparent as her story continues.

This girl was named Blink and she walked to school often. She woke up when it rained, and she woke up when it sunned. And a-walking she would go, often passing by numerous fascinations at the playground, or along the street, or in that strange sweet shop that she had never stepped in because she was just always passing by.

The Funeral.

Her aunt died one day. There was a funeral and there were some flowers. There were sobbing people who were telling irrelevant stories about irrelevant things. There was her mother’s crumpled frame seated on a little chair by her aunt’s coffin, and there was her father’s coat draped over the back of that little chair as he was busy with formalities at the entrance because unlike the usual funeral weather, it was a hot and sunny day.

Blink stood beside her mother’s little chair and her aunt’s coffin, staring blankly at the lifeless face of her dead aunt. She wondered how many eyelashes there were on the edge of her aunt’s closed eyelids and if something magical would happen if she were to count them all correctly.

The next day, Blink woke up and walked to school.

An Odd Encounter.

She walked pass the playground, she walked along the street, and just as she was about to pass that strange sweet shop, a strange-looking person stepped out of the strange sweet shop right in front of her. He was wearing bright yellow overalls with coloured buttons that were sewn at the oddest places and he had a huge shapeless hat that sat lopsided on his curly-haired head. He was not a clown.

The strange looking person with yellow overalls and a lopsided hat smiled at Blink and began to juggle three oranges, which he found in his left pocket. Blink only blinked and maybe the corners of her perfect pink lips twitched ever so slightly. I’m guessing her response was not satisfactory to the strange looking person and his three juggled oranges, because he soon stopped, put the oranges back in his left pocket, and walked off whistling a tune about missing hairbrushes.

That was by far the oddest encounter of Blink’s many passing by fascinations on her way to school. And so with a sudden intense curiosity, she turned to look at the strange sweet shop from which that strange person with the yellow oh you get it already came from. And for the first time, Blink did not walk on towards school.

To be continued...

If Logic Helps, Have Some.

The question for our Philosophy tutorial today was:

What is Reality?

Our lecturer had listed out a bunch of examples asking us whether we thought if each were Real, or not.

Our hand, for example, is tangible. Easy enough to believe its real. We can see it. We can feel it. We can calculate its measurements. It’s real to us.

What about the events that are taking place now. Well of course that’s real. It’s happening in the very moments as we speak. Whether here around us, or in another country where we aren’t. Things are happening now and its real. We’re experiencing it. They’re experiencing it.

How about an event that took place last week. Was that real? It’s not happening now. It’s not being experienced now. Your only proof of that reality is your memory of what happened really. Is memory real? A student argued that our present Being is the consequence of what took place in the past. So in a sense, our present is proof of the past, of that reality.

So we’re back to the present again.

Is reality really confined within time anyway?

Then he asked, what about an event that happens next week. The future. Is THAT real? It hasn’t happened yet. Another student argued that if one doesn’t believe the past is reality, then quite naturally, one wouldn’t believe the future is reality. Because just like the past, the future isn’t being experienced Now.

…

I woke up.

Hey I believe the past is a reality!

Because I know without a doubt,

That the things that took place around me, did.

I don’t care what the theorists say,

MY yesterdays were MY reality.

So that means I believe that reality is NOT confined to time.

That means I don’t have to experience it NOW for it to be real to me.

So does that mean I believe that tomorrow is a reality even though it hasn’t happened yet?

You might say that with the past being a reality, it helps that I have memories in the present.

But then with the future, doesn’t it help that I have imagination in the present?

Memories and imagination.

Aren’t they made of the same matter?

The thing is, honestly it is hard for me to accept that the future is a reality because it hasn’t

happened yet.

But logically, ever so logically, based on the arguments above,

if I can accept that the past is a reality,

I should be able to accept that the future is a reality too.

Whether or not is has taken place.

Whether or not I can feel it, see it, measure it, experience it.

Whether or not I think it exists or will exist. Whatever.

So my reality isn’t confined to time.

So therefore, as Neil Gaiman put it,

“Things need not have happened to be true”

That would make sense to me.

Isn’t that what Faith is?

Believing without seeing.

And so, logically speaking,

I actually have the capacity to have Faith.

Did I learn anything from class today?

Yeah I did.

I learned that my crooked spine is healed.

Whether or not I feel it now, or whether or not I can see it now.

The future is a reality to me.

Because I have Faith.

I get it now.