
firefly at 1.05
There were two pigs, large and hairy ready to be butchered, about the size of five year old children; they were snuffing each other in a suburban garden in full day light. The sun appeared to cast no shadow over the various bushes and trees, and rows of roofs surrounding the area. The pig's bristles looked clear; however, despite the clarity of their coats they had an obvious filth that enveloped their skin. They were not eating the grass; they just stood there like any other normal animal when one of the pig's heads rolled off, onto the grass it made a small thud, the sound of fist beating against cement. I had been watching from the window of my friend's house, I wasn't startled or frightened. Simply out of curiosity, I headed over to the other wall's face, and peered out of its window. The inside of a pig, was nothing of what I had expected: the contents of pulled muscle, artery, vein. Instead, the back of a pig's head appeared like a dirty human bellybutton, a twist of skin, pulled back from inside.
‘It was one of the ugliest things I've ever seen. It was then I woke up.'
The bedroom was dark, a thirty by twenty feet space of tiles of wooden floor, filled with a solitary bed at the corner, a working table, bookshelf and unplugged bed lamp. I felt around under my pillow for the wristwatch, and leaned the watch by the window. From the light of dim street lamps and the full moon, it had read 1:05 am. I had only been sleeping for thirty minutes. I glanced around the room. I thought I had seen something small flash by, green and very slow. I'd see it flash by again, but my gaze was elsewhere. It was then that it stopped at the corner's ceiling had my mind registered what it was. There was a firefly in my room. For a while, I just starred at it, wondering where it came from, the windows were closed, as well as the door. In a busy city it they hardly exist. Their existence a provincial myth along with the thought that river water can be drunk and that fresh air was indeed pure.
From the corner, it swam around the air above me, a single green bulb along a string of Christmas lights, its light blinking. I couldn't time when the light would go on or off. I was blindly following the firefly, I knew at any time it would give. Just as quietly I had been thinking all these thoughts, it had disappeared into the blackness of my room.
‘the power of negative thinking, eh?' ‘yeah, haha'
A conversation had begun in my head.
It was so strange but all I kept thinking while following the light, was that we were all in some way kind of similar to the loneliness of a solo firefly, especially in the current trends of habit.
"The lifestyle of living in a city of drudgery, crib, school, office, home, tombstone. I'd imagine my life, a little something like that."
"It's not that depressing and predictable as you think."
He formed out of a ball of smoke that had slowly been building in front of me, a proportionally small man, but obviously aged, well-dressed in the manner of a business suit and tie. He gave the impression of having just stepped out of a funeral visit. Wearing a suspicious bowler hat. He gave a small bow.
With that statement hanging in the air, he strolled off, down inside, sucked into the dirty navel. Only his bowler hat remaining atop, a small black bump to cover the hideousness beneath, like a rug placed over dust hard to sweep.
The area was quiet; the grass strewn ground was no longer visible. The dream sequence so bizarre, I kept thinking I must remember this when I wake up, I was bound to. I had been recounting all this things.
It was the second time that night I had woken up.
The room was dark the bowler hat man was standing in the corner of my room. It was 1.05am.
I realized my watch had stopped working 2 days ago.
"Do something with your life. I'll come to collect in five years." was all he said.
