Sleep, Whale

Sleep,Whale

Do whales dream? And if they do, what kind of dream would they have?

Whenever he let his mind wander, these thoughts would creep in like little mice lurking in the shadows, waiting just for the right time to seize control of his brain. On better days, he would share his thoughts, sprouting what others would deem as nonsense. They usually let him talk for as long as he could, waiting patiently before the string of words finally died upon his lips. They were not unkind, but they never took him seriously. So, most days he just kept to himself.

He was well aware of the weird, pitiful glances people sent him when the topic spun out of control, their initial amusement faded after his fourth attempt to convince them his dreams were real. It was the look you gave someone when they were just over the edge of sanity.

He was alone now, but there used to be someone else. She was his best friend. They had adopted a stray cat together and she had named it Whale, said the irritated snarl it produced was like how you pronounced the word “whale”. She was an odd one, even to his standard. There was always an air of detachment surrounding her being. Whatever she did and wherever she was, veils of loneliness shrouded her eyes, and she seemed to have a habit of talking to herself when no one was around. He had never told a living soul, but one late afternoon, when the sun was just below the horizons, throwing their long shadows against the wall, he saw her shadow splitting into two, and one of them was crooked with jarred edges. It looked like a pair of wings.

Not knowing what to do with the discovery, he pretended it was the trick of the light. It added to her charm, peculiar though it was.

When she was in high spirits, she always sang a lullaby. It went like this:

Blue whale, killer whale, humpback whale.

And don’t forget the Belgian whale!

The white, lovely creatures that always smile.

They sing like sirens, dance like faeries, and laugh like humans.

And so they smile even as they mourn their lovers’ deaths.

That pretty, permanent curve, where did it go?

In a circle, they grieve, heedless to the hunter’s sly grin.

And in a circle they die, their last breath bubbled red overhead.

From time to time, he found himself humming to this tune unconsciously, his eyes tracking distant rolling mountains and rivers through the barred window of his room. It was two months after she had left that he was clinically diagnosed with mental disorder. Nobody had believed him until the result came. Indeed, some still held onto their doubts.

“You look fine to me.”

“Everyone feels unmotivated sometimes, it’s not a big deal.”

“I don’t see how you are different from yesterday, or the day before yesterday.”

He didn’t feel different too. Or maybe he was different, he couldn’t tell anymore.

“Stop being so negative!”

“Stop being so unhappy!”

“Cheer up!”

Bold of them to assume he had control over his body. He didn’t think he was being negative, or unhappy; this was just the way he perceived things. And yet their words, most likely unintentional, cracked something not to be named inside him. Sometimes, he felt the need to cater to their stereotypes, to prove to them that he was indeed over the edge. He could hear their voices, see their sneering faces, mocking and jeering at his bad attempt to mimic the abnormal normality.

He could be screaming his lungs out, but to their ears, they would say he was laughing.

He could be cutting his wrists open, blood soaking his sleeves, claw marks tracking his blood-stained cheeks, and they would say he was doing it for show. It was all bluff in their eyes.

These were all quite hard to bear. Some days, the weight became so crushingly heavy that even breathing was a laborious task that demanded every ounce of strength.

He wanted to tell them that depression was not a state of unhappiness. It was the sense of despair toward life itself, the belief at the prospect that nothing could ever make his heart soared. It was an anchor hurled deep into the Arctic Ocean, the rusted metal chains firmly attached to the vessels of the beating organ, the only key lost on the other side of the ocean. It was difficult for him to recall a time when chocolate still tasted sweet, when singing was the outlet he needed, when writing could still mend his broken soul. Had stars always looked this dull, had trees forgot to wear their evergreen coats?

What was this feeling that refused to be named? Was it sorrow, was it grief? He had the impression that something hidden deep inside him was crumbling — he could hear how it slowly fell apart, the sound was delicate, like a child playfully stepping on seashells, yet it rattled the marrow of his bones, tearing apart the very fabric of his being.

Unable to stop the ruination, he abandoned himself to Fate and watched how it continued to tear him limb by limb with helpless indifference.

Amazingly, despite the chaos within him, the external world moved on without a care.

The sky was still blue, beautiful as ever — it was only he who couldn’t stop staring at the grey tiles coated with blood from his bleeding wounds.

When she told him all these were happening inside her, he didn’t understand. He couldn’t forget the disappointment in her eyes. Then, one day, when Whale, the stray cat, went missing, she left to search for it and never came back. In one way or another, the two were not so different. Underneath their gentle exterior was a beast that refused to be tamed.

Memories of her were what kept him going. Every night he longed for dreams to come, to return to the days when she was still there to share the weight of the world with him.

In his dream, he was swimming in a pool made of galaxies, soaked in a bath of twinkling stardust. The glowing waters were soft like the finest silk, cool and smooth against his skin. His tears were comets streaming across his cheeks; they gathered at the chin, and fell into the pool, breaking the calm surface with gentle ripples.

Then a sunflower popped up out of nowhere. It was facing away from him. Lifting his gaze to search for the sun, he found none. Rather, more sunflowers sprouted from the soil that were the clusters of constellations. Soon, his vision was filled with yellow, brown, and green. They kept growing, fed by an impalpable force that was his mind, stretching their leafy stems to touch the intangible. Their roots coiled around his body into a tight embrace, he wanted to return their passionate display of love, but he couldn’t feel his arms.

It was a beautiful cage of sunflowers.

That was before they began to burn. The sun must be hidden somewhere invisible to his human eyes. It set the sea of sunflowers on fire.

It was truly a devastating sight to behold.

Then, her familiar figure entered his vision. She was dancing not far away with the grace of an elf, beautiful in a way he knew would not last. The fluid spinning of her legs sent water splashing in all directions. Woven in her hair were plastic sunflowers, he wanted to take them down. He plucked some flaring flowers, their petals ablaze in magnificent flames of orange and gold. They licked at his fingers greedily. For a second, he forgot he could burn.

She shook her head and laughed.

In her arms were a bunch of forget-me-nots. Handing them over to him, she sent him away with a teary smile, though her eyes were dry. Her lips opened and closed in a soundless song, then she kissed his fingertips and disappeared like a waft of smoke.

The world was caught in flames, with him the only onlooker. He should have gotten out, though he didn’t have the heart to leave.

“Do you know whales could fly?” She said in earnest, her arms flailing to imitate the flapping of wings. “They used to be the most magnificent being, their large wings brighter than even starlight.”

Out of the blue, her words came back to him. They flashed through his mind, tracing back to a past long buried, an unremembered tune that celebrated the origins of all whales.

Blue whale, killer whale, humpback whale.

And don’t forget the Belgian whale!

The white, lovely creatures that always smile.

They sing like sirens, dance like faeries, and laugh like humans.

And so they smile even as they mourn their lovers’ deaths.

That pretty, permanent curve, where did it go?

In a circle, they grieve, heedless to the hunter’s sly grin.

And in a circle they die, their last breath bubbled red overhead.

There was more to her lullaby.

Whales, whales fly away,

Far from the gaping jaw of clay, or the bumpy tumbling of waves,

Dive into clouds and don’t be the prey,

Unless it is to dig their graves.

Like the reawakening from an ancient calling, he finally remembered who he was.

He was the whale, asleep in the deepest part of the oceans, not knowing how he used to fly.

He was the whale, huge and bulky, weighted by the chains of the ocean, the axes of her words pierced through the thick skin straight into his beating heart. The ghost of her was the guardian of his prison cell, the seaweeds intertwined to become prickling thorns, and laced in them were their memories.

If only whales could fly once more. If only he remembered how to fly. But they were indeed born to soar the sky. His fins, heavy and clumsy, used to be layered with feathers, stretching long into wings. His body was slender and light, made to glide the horizons with ease.

And so he flapped his wings, and let the innate, wild animal named desire took over his body. Up he went, leaving behind his beloved ocean that was engulfed in red. The wind caressed his cheeks, they sang in the chorus of ancient languages long forgotten by humans. He howled with them, his loud roar echoed through far-off fields.

Clouds floated around him like fluffy cotton candy, teasing him with their softness. He dove into them and felt their whisper on his skin.

There, he heard it. The wind carried the sound of a horn back to his ears, it was calling to him.

Wiggling his tail to better pivot his flight, he flitted across the sky like a shooting star.

A white whale greeted him, she lovingly brushed her rostrum against him and slid up her wings at his side. A sweet sensation burned his throat, as though he had swallowed red-hot coal.

A sharp cry pierced the air. Without any warning, she crumbled, a splotch of crimson bloomed at her chest, a silver, honed tip poking through her skin. She plummeted back to the welcoming embrace of the ocean, lost, and never to be found.

At that moment, he understood the helplessness all living beings must acknowledge — the inevitable solitude that came with existence. The expiration of life made any forms of sensation surreal, intangible, and obscure. Like a shooting star, it was often brief, the fire burned out too quickly before he could register its beauty, though the knowledge of its impermanence made it ever more lovely. Perhaps that was the price stars must pay for breaking free from the boundary of earth.

Unable to touch, capture, or even remember ever beholding this sight, he could only flail his hands blindly in the darkness as waters closed over him.

She was the dying star he couldn’t save.

A new weight settled on his chest that was unlike what he had felt before. It was feather light, soft and almost gentle, like the thin thread bounding a ballon. Nonetheless, a binding was a binding, changed in form but served the same purpose . It tugged the thrashing animal within him persistently. Once, twice, he was still struggling against the hold. Made it a thousand times and he stopped resisting.

As he readjusted himself to the new cage, he came to the conclusion that he had been chasing the wind on foot all his life, dragged by the heavy, broken wings at his side. As weariness overwhelmed his senses, he relaxed his body, tucking both his wings and tail so he could just float in the void.

So, once again, he fell into a long, peaceful slumber, his wings melted back to fins, then to human limbs. The memory of ever mounting the sky dissipated like an early morning mist, leaving only a lingering aftertaste of bemused sorrow.

This was the dream of a whale.

In his last moments of clarity, he had the brief, epiphanic sensation that there were no shapes, forms, and states that could remain unchanged; no mind, heart, or soul that could escape the deformity of another. The corruption would continue to permanently bend the will, the human bonds always marred by mutual destruction.

The beautiful wings of the whale were clipped, torn, and distorted into monstrous claws by none other than the envious, cruel hand of time, only so it could have their wings.

Only in a dream could whales be free.

So sleep, whale, and dream of a world before even time began.

Fin.

(2271 words)