Labels: Daryl
penned with passion.
alright. this isn't a good one. partly cause there's alot of conversation in it and i wrote this over the course of several weeks, so you might have a hard time understanding it and such.
from what i gather, it's draggy, confusing and a letdown. i'm sorry :(
think this story has held me up in terms of writing. i have had lots of other ideas come to me, but i put them on hold to finish this one, which i've had quite a writers-block for. you can probably spot all the breaks in the plot.
again, my apologies.
The Mirror
Greg was awoken by the warm glow of the morning sun on his cheeks. He lay on his back and stared at the ceiling with blurry eyes, listening. No shuffling of feet, no clanging of pots and pans from the kitchen, no noisy vacuuming, no sound coming from anywhere in the house. All he could hear was the gentle rustling of trees and the occasional roar of a passing car. It was a Saturday morning and he was alone at home.
Greg got up and stretched himself. He walked over to the window and looked outside. The street was quiet, the flats on the other side were hidden by the neat row of maple trees which were planted down the sidewalk. They swayed gently in the urban breeze. There was hardly anyone outside, only a little old lady sitting on her front porch across the street, stroking her Siamese cat. Even as he was standing there, Greg could feel the lazy heat permeating through the glass of the window.
Almost out of habit, Greg went over to his desk where his computer was and sat down. His finger was a inch away from the power switch when he paused. No, he thought, I shan’t play the computer today. He got up again and went to the kitchen. His stomach felt empty. Opening the fridge, he grabbed a carton of milk and poured it in a bowl with a whole box of cereal.
He sat down on the couch with the bowl in one hand and a spoon with another, and started eating. Suddenly he noticed the television across the living room. He couldn’t recall the last time he watched television, having spent most of his life as a teenager playing computer games. The television was quite new, a sleek black frame with rounded corners and a jet-black screen. Samsung, it read in silver letters on the bottom. Greg could see himself in the reflection on the screen. Ruffled hair, sleepy face, right cheek stuffed with cereal. He was rather fascinated at the television, it seemed almost alien to him.
Something on the couch next to him caught his eye. It was the remote. It looked very different from the television, it looked old and worn out. Grimy fingerprints were smudged all over it, crumb-like things stuck in the buttons. Greg slowly reached over to it and took it. To him it was like a new toy, the buttons odd and unfamiliar. But he instinctively recognised the red button, so he pointed the remote at the television and turned it on.
A soft fuzzy noise came from the television, and the screen came to life. It was the nine-o'clock morning news. An attractive brunette was reporting about a typhoon hitting some seaport, and her glittery eyes gripped Greg 's attention for a moment. A clip of the typhoon came on, with buildings and vehicles being thrown into the air. The pixelated video made Greg dizzy, so he switched the channel.
Zip! It was a cooking show, a chinese chef was chopping vegetables at incredible speed and tossing it into a wok. Zip! Greg flipped the channel again. A suave gentleman with a compelling voice was introducing a dishwasher that could wash dishes twice as fast. Zip! A sweaty girl in gym clothes doing aerobics, with pop music blasting noisily in the background. Zip! Wildlife show. Zip! Another cooking show. Zip! Fashion program. Zip! A small boy sitting on a couch, staring back him. Zip! An advertisement. Zip! A cartoon. Greg lifted his finger off the remote.
A small boy staring back at him.
Not sure if his eyes were playing tricks on him, Greg flipped two channels back. There he was. The boy was a few years younger than him. He had a head of reddish bronze hair, his small pale face speckled with freckles. A pair of black thick-framed glasses rested on his snubby nose. Behind those glasses were two green eyes fixated at Greg.
For some strange reason this whole image on the screen did not seem like a television program to Greg. The was no usual shaking or sliding of the screen, no blurriness, no indication that this picture on the television was filmed by a camera. It was almost like the screen was a hole in the wall that connected this living room to the other, with only a sheet of glass on the screen that Greg could still make out as it reflected the morning sun shining slightly on it.
The boy in the television furrowed his brow, leaned back a bit into his couch, seemingly offended or afraid at the sight of Greg, or at least that was what Greg thought the boy had seen. The boy looked to his left and right, then looked at Greg again.
What happened next gave Greg quite a jump. The boy quickly picked up a remote that lay next to him and pressed a button. Instantly, Greg's screen went out, like as if someone had pulled out the channel cord of the television. Disconnected and uneven strips of black and white rolled up the screen, with a constant noisy buzzing sound blaring from the television speakers. Greg sat there for some time, breathing slowly, staring at the screen. The whole encounter seemed a pretty strange business.
After what felt like hours of noisy buzzing Greg picked up the remote, and flipped a channel backward. The fashion show was still on, with models arrayed in elaborate frills of fabric strutting down a neon-blue litted runway. Greg flipped forward a channel. It was still rolling strips of black and white.
Greg shook the weird feeling off. Thinking maybe it was just his eyes fooling him again, he was about to flip the channel when just then, an image clicked into view. It was the living room with the couch. With the young boy with red hair and freckles sitting on it. This time the boy did not seemed to be suprised, though Greg was still pretty shaken up seeing him the second time.
The boy looked down his knees, thinking. Then he looked at Greg, and waved.
The boy was waving to him.
The subconscious intent of curiousity was too great for Greg. Slowly, he waved back at the boy.
A small smile came upon the boy's face. A smile of reassurance. He got off the couch and moved closer.
"So you're for real?" His accent sounded British, but Greg couldn't be sure.
"Yes," said Greg, "why are you on my television?"
"I don't know. You're on my television too." The boy paused, not sure whether to ask his next question.
"Where are you from?"
"I'm from LA, Los Angeles," Greg did not see a reason to lie about where he lived.
"Las Anjelas?" the furrowed brow expression reappeared on the boy's face again.
"Los Angeles, you know, California, the United States of America?" Maybe not British,Greg thought, he doesn't even know where LA is.
"Califoneea? Amerca? I have no idea where that is."
This infuriated Greg. Apparently this boy was messing with him, pretending not to know where America was. "Never mind," he said irately,"where are you from?"
"I'm from Pachena." said the boy.
"Pachena? Where the hell is that?" Greg was starting to think this was all a hoax. Then a thought struck him. "Wait here," he said to the boy. He put down his bowl of cereal and went to his desk and picked up a large atlas, flipped up the world map, and showed it to the boy. "Where do you live?" Greg asked again.
The boy looked at the map for awhile, bearing a perplexed look on his face. He pointed to the west side of the map, the continent of North America and said, "Beatrot Republic."
"Beatrot Republic? That's the United States of America!" Greg exclaimed.
"No it isn't. It's the Beatrot Republic, and it's been that for a very long time." He pointed to the state of California. "I live there. Do you have a bigger map of Pachena?" the boy asked.
Greg had a gut feeling that the boy was going to mention Los Angeles next, or whatever he would call it, so he skipped the map of California and went to a magnified map of Los Angeles, and showed it to the boy.
The boy looked at the map a moment, pointed right at Atlantic Ave. "Contatre Street. That's where I live. But there isn't a street there, neither is there blocks over here."
Greg couldn't believe his ears. The spot where the boy pointed at was where he lived. Where he was standing right that moment. Greg's mind was racing. The boy was his neighbour? Was the tv a partial hole the wall?
That couldn't be it. The boy said this was Contatre Street. Maybe a different language? No wait, Street was definitely english.
"That's exactly where i live! What floor are you on?" Greg asked, much intrigued. "Please don't say xthird." he muttered, under his breath.
"Third." the boy replied, "There's only one apartment available on this floor."
"B-but... I live on the third floor of this building. What do you mean there's only one apartment available?" Greg said in disbelief.
Upon hearing this, the boy became silent. He rested his chin on his hands and thought. He was very close to the television, Greg could count his freckles. Just then, the boy gave a soft sigh. Greg felt a breath of hot wind blow into his face.
"Woah. Did you just breathe into my face?" Greg took a few steps back from the television.
"You could feel me breathing?" The boy appeared as suprised as Greg was, if not even more.
"Oh my god. I just realised something. When you talk, the sound doesn't come from the speakers. It seems to be coming straight from the screen!" Greg exclaimed.
"Maybe this glass on this screen isn't glass at all." The boy gently poked the screen. Instead of giving a soft thud as it would on glass, to Greg's amazement and shock, the finger came through the glass! As it did, Greg's television screen rippled, as if the boy's finger just touched water.
The boy quickly withdrew his finger and gasped. He looked at his finger like as if it had been dipped into a barrel of toxic waste. He looked at Greg, then he took a cushion from his couch, and flung it at television. A large cushion with sequins came flying through Greg's screen and hit him in the face, knocking him over, and in doing so Greg knocked over the bowl of cereal.
"What did you do that for?" Greg choked, covered in milk and Fruit Loops. The boy was doubling up with laughter. Greg was not going to let that stand.
"I'm gonna get you!" he roared as he charged at the television, and jumped into the screen. As he passed through the glass, the sensation was quite strange. It was like he was diving into a swimming pool, except when he appeared on the other end he landed hard on top of the boy. Both of them were laughing as they sat there, smelling of soggy Fruit Loops.
"I can't believe you actually came across!" the boy cried, "Well, welcome to my house."
Greg looked around at the living room. It didn't look much different from his living room, in fact it looked exactly like his living room. The walls were yellow, the leather couch was facing the sleek black television, which sat on top of a wooden chest of drawers.
Awstruck, Greg moved to the windows and looked outside. It wasn't Atlantic Avenue outside. There was a dirt road, there were no cars, everyone outside was on bicycles, except the the bicycles had four wheels instead of two. Beyond the road it was a long stretch of desert, as far as the eye could see. Greg could see the the sun dipping into of the horizon.
"Wait a minute, it's sunset?? And why is it setting away from the sea?" Greg asked in puzzlement. This place seemed to be a total topsy-turvy from the LA he was familiar with.
The boy returned the puzzled look. "What do you mean? The sun always rises from the west and sets in the east."
Greg looked at the living room. Then he looked outside. The he looked back at the living room. The television was facing the north. The television at home was faced south. The windows here looked to east, while those at home looked to the west. The whole room was an reverse of the living room back at home.
Greg sat down, feeling very dizzy. The boy looked at him intently with his green eyes. Neither spoke for quite some time.
"I think," Greg finally spoke, "I should be getting back. Maybe I'll come by another day?" The boy nodded approvingly. All this was too perplexing for the both of them. Greg walked over to the television, when he heard a familiar voice.
The front door opened. A lady came trudging in, carrying a load of groceries. She saw the mess of spilt milk and Fruit Loops. She saw the television on, an image of a living room with yellow walls and leather couch. Of course, she didn't notice the remarkable resemblance it had to her own living room. She saw her the door of her son's room half-open.
"Greg," she called, " you there?" She listened for a reply. There was none.
She moved to the remote, the grimy, crummy one with the red button. Pointing it to the television, she pressed the red button. Then taking a couple of Kleenexs she start to wipe the mess.
"When I find him," she nagged to herself, "he's going to explain about this mess and leaving the television on like that. Television, the things they do to kids nowadays."
7:42 AM}