Thursday 31 October 2013

Plastic Dream, Part 1

Inspired by the song "On Melancholy Hill" by the Gorillaz. 


"Up on melancholy hill
There's a plastic tree
Are you here with me
Just looking out on the day
Of another dream"
~

"Wake up!"

The boy looked around him. He was outside on a field of grass. Everywhere he looked, a green perfectly flat landscape, except for what seemed like a hill. It was hard to distinguish because the hill was just as green as the grass. But there seemed to be a swelling in the midst of this greenness, a swelling of undetermined mass. It even seemed, to the boy, to be increasing in size as he got closer.

It didn't take long for him to reach the foot of the hill, which now appeared to loom steeply above the boy. As he looked up, he could distinguish an otherness, something other than grass and its constant companion, a bright blue sky. He squinted his eyes to make out what it was. It nearly seemed like a tree. A tree? The boy thought. He could climb it and perhaps see more of where he was.

As he mounted the grassy hill, he tried to think about where he had been before. He couldn't remember. Whenever he tried, it always felt like a hard and cold barrier was blocking his brain from passing to his memories. Hard, cold, and white like… metal? Thinking this hard made him uncomfortable as if he shouldn't even try. It also made him feel weird. His body felt weird as if his limbs weren't really his to command.

The tree was close, very close, but he suddenly felt his legs give out from underneath him. Did he get stuck, he wondered as he fell to the ground. He looked beneath him, at his torso which looked different than he imagined and finally at his legs, which… were gone. Under his torso, which looked as hard, cold, and white metallic looking as the barrier to his memories, there was nothing. He didn't understand.

He looked up again and the tree was right there within the grasp of his hands. He stretched them out, equally hard, cold, white metallic fingers reached for the trunk of the tree. He touched it but instead of the coarse texture of bark, it was smooth and flat like plastic. As he pushed more he felt the tree give away and move away from him. It fell flat onto the ground. It looked like a picture of a tree painted on the grassy hill.

A large bolt of despair rushed through the body and mind of the boy. Where was he, why was nothing as it appeared? Where would he go? He looked around again and saw nothing that would offer a hint to any of these questions. There was only him, the grassy hill, the flat plastic tree, and the blue sky. But he did feel heat and as he turned around on his back, he could see that the sky wasn't blue any more, instead it was a flaming orange circle of fire that seemed to be growing in mass the longer he looked.

"Wake up!"

The boy felt his hands give away and without looking knew that they were no longer there. Pretty soon there would only be, perhaps, his consciousness.

"WAKE UP!"

He opened his eyes, only to look at an elderly gentleman, white-haired with the broadest moustache imaginable. On of his rather sizeable nose was a very petite pair of glasses, at least relative to everything else. The man smiled, showing his yellowed crooked teeth. "At last, you are here." He reached out with his hand and patted him on the head. It made a hollow sound. "Not quite here." The man made the exaggerated grimace of a sad face. It didn't seem quite sincere.

The man walked to the back of his workshop, with lights sparking up as he stood underneath them. There were literately little sparks flying off the lamps onto the man's bald spot on the back of his head. The boy wasn't sure if it was because they were broken or because of a reaction to the man's presence. The man retrieved a tool from the back of the workshop and something that he balled into his hand, away from the boy's site. The light dimmed behind the man as he returned.

"Let's take care of that little problem, shall we?" The man took the screwdriver and unscrewed something above the boys head. He could hear the screw falling down his skull and onto the floor as the man grabbed both sides and started to pull. Apparently it was difficult, because he stood up and pushed his big stomach against the boy's face. Finally, hearing a loud pop, he pulled something loose, stumbling back a little before sitting down again.

He held what looked like the top of a skull in his hand, but made of the same material as he saw in his dream. He then placed it next to the boy out of sight, and started tinkering with it. He was busy for well over 30 minutes before sitting back down and holding it up for the boy to admire. It looked completely different.The colour had changed from white to a light pink skin-like shade and it had a bush of brown hair attached to it. That must have been what the man had balled in his hand. He placed the part on top of the boy's head gain, he could hear a hiss and a click, and finally he screwed the screw back in. The man then reached around the boy's head, his stomach pressing against him again. He first thought that it was a hug, but then everything turned black.

~

He woke up on the grassy hill again. The sun was shining and he felt warm. Next to him was the plastic tree, stretching high into the sky as if the previous incident never happened. The boy leaned on his arms and raised his legs up to his knees, both of which were re-attached to his body. He tried to block away any thoughts of what had transpired in the workshop, but felt panicked and trapped. He had to leave this place and leave the man who seemed to be assembling him as if he was a toy.

At least here, it seemed, he was free but it was hard to tell for how long. He decided to resume his original plan of climbing the tree to see if he could find a way out. The tree wasn’t flat anymore, but instead its trunk appeared to be made of wood, at least feeling the texture of the bark it felt rough and alive. He could get a good grip on it and the lower branches were within reach if he managed to climb a metre or so above him. He didn’t think long and just reached around it and grabbed it with both hands, using his feet as a lever to lift him up a short distance at a time. Soon enough, his head reached the first branches and he could use them to push himself farther up. The tree was solid enough for him to get to the top, standing with both feet on a branch and using the tip as a pole to lean against, while peering into all directions.

To the left of him, which he guessed was the West as the sun was floating in that direction, was a desert-like land, a reddish brown and flat, with as its only distinguishing feature a shiny blue mass, which could be water reflecting the sun. Every other direction was as green as the hill he was on. So, he decided to head there. Perhaps there was someone there that could help him move across the desert.

As he climbed down the tree, he suddenly felt a branch collapsing under his weight. He tried to reach for another branch, but it was too late. He was falling with the ground racing towards him. He started to scream, but could only utter a little yelp before his face hit the grass. It didn’t hurt. He knew that he must have fallen at least 5 metres or more, but he might as well have sat down on a  chair. He got up, realising that even if he wasn’t quite normal, he was extraordinary. And that thought made his heart soar, where it previously had felt pressured. Even if he was lost and trapped, he couldn’t get hurt. He felt so free that he started to run downhill, jumping and tumbling towards the desert.

It was hours later and he hadn’t stopped running. He felt perfectly energised, his motivation in part to beat the sun that was sinking and to find out what else there was out there. The sun started to set when he reached something that stopped him dumbfounded. The brown mass that he saw hadn’t been land at all, it was an incredibly large amount of brown-furred donkeys. There were donkeys next to donkeys, donkeys on top of donkeys, and even donkeys that were just lying there, sleeping, while other donkeys just stepped above them. They donkeys, obviously, mostly grazed furiously at the grass, much of which had disappeared, leaving behind the loose dirt underneath. A large brown mass of donkeys and dirt.

The boy wasn’t ignored though. One of the donkeys, apparently wearing a jacket and a hat, looked at him and started honking loudly. Soon, other donkeys turned towards him, many of them wearing clothes as well, started honking in unison with the instigator. He felt like perhaps this wasn’t the best place to be, but he had no other choice but to walk forward.

As he approached the first donkey, it first looked at him intently through its dark eyes, but then it moved to let him pass. The next donkey repeated this behavior, and the next, and the next. Some honked at him, but most stayed silent. 

As he moved deeper into the herd of animals he came upon one that wouldn't move. A chubbier donkey than the others, it just stood there looking at him, sadly it seemed to the boy. He approached it slowly, only its head responding to his movement. When he tried to squeeze past it, the donkey moved closer to its neighbouring donkey, blocking his path. When he tried to crawl under it, its hooves kicked out sharply into the air, making him flinch away. He finally picked up the nerve to crawl over it but, just as he sat down backwards on the animal, it turned and started to move into the direction that the boy needed to go to. He had found a ride.

After hours of shaking--the boy had tried not to fall asleep out of fear of waking up in the workshop again--the donkey stopped. They were at the blue shiny mass that he had spotted from a distance, it was a large lake surrounded by thousands of donkeys, some drinking, some sleeping, some swimming in the water. He could only faintly see the other side, but he thought he detected human-looking figures, children it looked like, standing there. He tried shouting and waving, but he didn't think that they could hear or see him.

He had to get to them. He pressed his feet against the donkey's flanks, but it just stood there, unflinchingly. He slapped it, but no reaction at all. When he finally kicked the animal again, it suddenly surged forward towards the water, breaking abruptly before, causing the boy to fly over its head straight into the water. He dove in head first, and tried to react as quickly as he could, but all he could do was sink. Apparently his body wasn't designed for swimming. He tried to breathe, but all that happened was that water came into his lungs so he held his breath.

He sank for what felt like forever. The water kept getting darker and looking up, he could see a bit of light very, very far above him. Finally his feet landed in soft sand. He looked around him. No indication of what direction to take. There was nothing left to do except start walking, hopefully he would reach one of the edges of the lake.

Holding his breath didn't seem to be a problem, making him wonder again what he was exactly. He couldn't get hurt, as his tree fall had proven, he didn't need oxygen, and he certainly couldn't float. His only clue was the workshop and seeing the man just take off the top of his head, which still made him flinch inside, more than the thought of being stuck at the bottom of the sea did.

He hadn't walked very far when he saw a shadow on his right. It was small at first, but kept getting bigger. He stood there, more curious than anything else, hoping that it would help him out of this situation. As it got closer, he still couldn't discern its exact shape. Suddenly, it moved above him and he could see that it was a rather large fish with a white underbelly. Large may be an understatement, it could easily be as big as a house. The creature just floated past him and he looked at it until it turned into another shadow disappearing in the other direction.

He kept walking, sunk in thought about the events that had transpired since his "birth" into this world. He didn't know whether this was the dream, in which case it was an adventurous one, or whether the workshop was a dream, in which case it was a nightmare, or at least the beginnings of one. He remembered the sparkling lights above the man's head, his crooked yellow teeth, and his insincere smile. He wasn't sure if the man was evil and had imprisoned him, or if he was rather setting him free. He liked where he was now and even though his memories were blank he could see himself transforming into that what he most wished to be: human. Though his current body did come with some advantages, he smiled.

Suddenly, he felt a bump on his back. It was soft at first and he didn't feel particularly alarmed while turning around. But then the bump was harder and he stumbled forward. As he fell on his behind, he could see an enormous grin in front of him. White long teeth filled the mouth of the biggest fish he could imagine. It was a whale in fact, likely the same one that had floated above him. He couldn't see its eyes but suddenly teeth floated apart, the mouth opened, and the creature swooped forward, inhaling the boy with it.

To be continued (after Nanowrimo)...