A short story by Wendy Chen Wong opened his eyes and red was all he saw, with bits of light shining through the knitted cloth of the maroon blindfold. He had to blink several times with his eyelashes rubbing against the surface before finally deciding that there was something covering his eyes. His mind was slow; there was pressure all around in his skull and his neck was extremely sore.
Where am I? He was experiencing an unusual calm, but his nose was blocked with snot and he was hiccupping every now and then; it was a little hard for him to breathe. Was I crying again? He looked through the thin piece of red fiber and thought he had seen three small suns. He blinked again, and they were still there. What? Three suns? Am I outside? His hands were limp, palms up by his sides. As he reached up to rub both of them on the whole front of his body, he felt a puddle in his belly button and moisture in his happy trail. He turned his head left and right to see his surroundings, he still hadn’t removed his blindfold as he was still in doubt, and felt thick wet grass on both of his cheeks. Has it been raining? How come all of my naked body is wet but my blindfold… How long had he been lying there? What had happened to him? Last time he remembered, hardly though, he was in his house… He turned his head to the front again and saw red clouds moving a little bit too fast across the purple sky. The sky isn’t supposed to be purple. I must be in a dream! Suddenly, he heard a series of hurried rustles and bare feet hitting the ground, stumbling. A quiet sob rushed past him. Someone else is here! Wong sat up quickly and took off his blindfold. He wanted to ask what he was doing there. He tried to follow the sound, but the guy had already pushed through a bush nearby, and as he did that, a huge red cloud swept past, too. Seconds later, he heard a series of desperate screams coming out from the bush that was just penetrated. What the hell…is going…on?! Wong hugged his knees as tightly as he could to try to create a sense of shelter in the open space where he was. There were bushes all around him and some trees, but Wong was too afraid to move. He began to rock back and forth gently staring at that piece of cloth that covered his eyes on the ground next to him. Wong whispered to himself. He felt his shoulders tense up to the point that they hurt, and he started shivering even though the breeze that passed through every now and then wasn’t that cold. He looked up and down and all around to get an idea of where he was. It felt like he was outside in some wooded place, but the strange colors of the sky and clouds, and the three suns that kept hovering and revolving above like some sort of UFO, just made Wong feel that he was on a set of a sci-fi film. The thought of this not only calmed him a lot, he was even excited to meet some of the stars that he liked from Star Trek. So Wong relaxed a little and released himself from his cowering position, he even stretched out his legs and leaned back and supported the whole of his upper body with his hands at the back. He was about to start humming the Star Trek theme song when he realized that his right hand was pressed against some sort of stick. He turned around and saw that it was a flag with a symbol of a sun in the middle—it looked like the flag of the Taiwanese Guomindang party, except the sun was yellow and the background of the flag was a light blue. Just as Wong was about to hold up the flag for a closer examination, he felt something wrap itself around his left wrist—the blindfold had moved and tied itself around Wong’s wrist! “Shit, no no no no no no!” Wong shouted in a panic, he tried pulling loose the knot the red cloth itself had made, but it seemed that the harder Wong had pulled, the tighter the cloth became. “Well, you can stop pulling on the cloth now,” said a voice. It appeared out of nowhere and made Wong startle and look up from his hands. Standing in front of him was a man dressed in a light blue toga like the color of the sky on good days back in the world where he used to live. The man’s hair was long and tied up in a loose bun on top of his head. This man in light blue reminded Wong of Confucius, except that he was ten times better looking. The good looks of this strange individual who literally appeared out of nowhere—there wasn’t even any sound of him approaching—intimidated Wong even more than he already was. a
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Authors
The Taida Student Journal has been active since 1995 with an ever-changing roster of student journalists at NTU. Click the above link to read about the authors Archives
May 2024
|