Set 'em Balloons and Fish Free

"Nice one!"
- Adie, Bagets

Like boozing like there's no tomorrow and waking up the next morning without a hangover. Like the closing credits of a sitcom you pray won't get cancelled. Because I can't remember the last time Saturday was that much fun, this goes down as a Sunday I don't wanna kill myself. Or other people for that matter. And on a good day this plays automatically in my head:



Australia
The Shins

La la la la
La la la la
Laaaaaaa
La la la la

Born to multiply
Born to gaze into night skies
All you want’s one more Saturday
Well look here until then
They gonna buy your life's time
So keep your wick in the air and your feet in the fetters
'Till the day we come in doing cartwheels
We all crawl out by ourselves
And your shape on the dance floor
Will have me thinking such filth I'll gouge my eyes

You’d be damned to be one of us girl
Faced with a dodo’s conundrum
I felt like I could just fly
But nothing happened every time I tried

Wooo, ooooh!

A duotone on the wall
The selfless fool who hoped he’d save us all
Never dreamt of such sterile hands
You keep them folded in your lap
Or raise them up to beg for scraps
You know he's holding you down
With the tips of his fingers just the same

Will you be pulled from the ocean
But just a minute too late
Or changed by a potion
And find a handsome young mate for you to love

You'll be damned to pining through the windowpanes you know
You'd trade your life for any ordinary Joe's
Well do it now or grow old cause
Your nightmares only need a year or two to unfold

Been alone since you were twenty-one
You haven't laughed since January
You try and make like this is so much fun
But we know it to be quite contrary

La la la la la la la

Dare to be one of us girl
Faced with the android's conundrum
I felt like I should just cry
But nothing happens every time I take one on the chin
Yeah Himmler in your coat you don't know how long I've been
Watching the lantern dim starved of oxygen
So give me your hand and let's jump out the window

(from the album Wincing The Night Away)


* * *



Cats Sing Karaoke
Part I

There is a pond right in the middle of the college I go to. Really. If one were to measure the dimensions of the college grounds with a fork he will find out for sure that, from the pond, it’s 750 forks to the edges of our world in all directions. Believe me, a classmate once did it. Out of whatever it is that compels young people to spread our arms out wide and embrace madness. A lunchtime she was having cake, according to hushed accounts.

Halfway through dessert she jumped from her seat, licked the white icing off her fork – some would claim it was chocolate, although this came about much later than the vanilla version – and started measuring. It was a really hot Monday, near 40 degrees so it must had been the heat. In a matter of weeks she became a legend, her name whispered again and again in breathless bafflement over cheap rumcokes in countless student watering holes surrounding the campus.

We were never in the same class after that term so I rarely saw her and when I did, she would always be eating and the glint of her fork would scare off the curious cat in me. I was afraid of her jumping off her chair and using her fork to measure me. It didn’t matter if she did it figuratively and said Hey, your character’s worth is this or that number of forks, or literally, with her declaration that my bloody heart was, after all, much shorter and softer than a fork after ripping it out of my ribcage. One can never know with these crazy types, I thought. And so she went on with lunch as the rest of our world wondered.

***

One could count on the energy of the bored, and soon the episode was bumped out of our collective consciousness with more news of college kids being their college kid selves. So and so split his lip in a fistfight with so and so, so and so fell in love with so and so who was with another so and so, that senior got the ax for cursing this Philosophy professor who gave him a failing mark in a critical paper on Objectivism. The professor, it turned out, was a firm believer of Ayn Rand. Nothing much exciting happened to me, however. The highlight of the term was my dropping out of Statistics class and joining a music club to kill some free time. I could have completely forgotten about her had it not been for two dreams I had shortly before summer vacation.

I can recall the minutest details even now. In the first one, cats the size of people are boozing around a table and singing karaoke by the pond. On the table are live Koi fish writhing in the absence of water, their orange scales glimmering like wildfire under the full moon. Then one of the cats, the boss cat I assume from his size, grabs a Koi with his snow white paw and shoves it into his mouth. It is dead silent despite the cats’ singing and I try to make sense of the words formed by their mouths. Their throats quiver whenever they swallow. I woke up drenched in sweat I did not know my body could make in a night, until then.

The next day went as usual with the dull drum of classes, breaks, and club meetings. It was not until I was eating lunch by the pond and looking at the fish swimming in the clear water that I remembered. Helplessly, in confusion, I started looking for her in the lunchtime crowd. As I stood up I saw the midday sunlight flashing on her fork. I allowed myself one quick, deep breath and brazed myself for her.

* * *

Why did you do it?

With slow, painful tenderness, she put her fork down and proceeded to stare at me blankly.

The fish should be freed.

I’m sorry?

The fish are in grave danger. They should be freed. Was trying to show them how far. That’s why.

What are you talking about?

If not they’ll die in there. The Cat King and his devious plans…

Cat…king? Just then I felt our world sinking somewhere dark and faraway. A deep breath betrayed my struggle for air. Why? What is he planning?

The Feast of the Paws is fast approaching. Cats, you must know, feast on fish.

You mean you’re worried about the cats? Here? In the campus? I heard myself bursting into laughter. Oh, you have nothing to worry about, those are just normal, everyday cats. Scared to death of water. They won’t go near your Koi. To emphasize my point I laughed again, only louder.

You don’t understand. You don’t hear.

I started writing a letter in my head warning school authorities of how crazy or drugged-up she was and how, accordingly, she should be expelled from the college. Out loud I asked her why, of all things, she used a fork.

It was the only way could show them. How far. They asked. Could have used shoes but didn’t bring an extra pair that day. So told them, this many forks.

When are you planning the escape?

Tonight. Before the full moon.

I sat there wondering whether I should tell her about the dream or not. To tell her would be to join in on her madness, I thought. So I decided, to my later regret, to say something else.

You do know that, uh, freeing the Koi would be considered theft of school property and that you would be suspended in a best case scenario?

She picked up her fork and went back to lunch, effectively ending what would be our first and only conversation. I would never see her again.