BANAL LIVING

More often than not, he dreamt. Not necessarily the proverbial future life prospects, but he dreamt grisly things; he saw things that were unpleasant in his sleep. The nightmares awoke him late in the night, leaving him staring fearfully into the blackness until his heavy breathing stopped, usually after counting down from 100. However, after the disturbance, it terrified him to sleep again. On rare occasions when he did sleep again, it wasn’t long before a dog’s incessant barking or some disturbing sound of debris carried by the boisterous wind jolted him awake.

The dreams, when they weren’t scary, were meaningless. One time, he dreamt of throwing pebbles into a lake under the orange-yellow light of the evening in a deserted area that was supposed to be beautiful. However, each time before he threw a pebble, like in an ominous pattern, he saw a swirl of wind carrying debris with it – sand and leaves that danced around to the current’s tune, as if to purposely blur his vision before it subsided, only to happen unprompted again. This occurred probably about seven other times, but who was counting?

When awake, he had dark thoughts that never left. The reason for the dark thoughts, as he firmly believed, was because his old life was a recurring motif of suffering from others’ folly. That was precisely why he had left everything behind. It informed his social life – or its marked inexistence. Back then, rarely, when he had a friend, it was a loose friendship. He often posited that humans couldn’t help but disappoint, and it was a show for which he was never available.

The dark thoughts raged on like a wildfire in a dry, windy climate. During the day, it was the thought of grotesque events he wasn’t sure had actually happened. Then, at night, the monster in his subconscious only lurked behind the thin veil and was promptly present when he closed his eyes.

On average, he spoke to at most two people a day, usually only on days he cared to leave his small, squalid room that reeked of a putrid scent emanating from damp, old books. If he could avoid it, he wouldn’t have left the room altogether, but life didn’t seem agreeable on that front, so he occasionally yielded.

The first person he spoke to was the farmhand living in the dingy bedsit opposite him. It was the same one-sided conversation every morning. The rooms, his and the farmhand’s, were built by a native who had fatally fallen off a tree only months after construction and died on the way to a herbalist. Thereafter, the family didn’t want anything to do with the rooms and wanted to live with town people, not secluded as the native selfishly ruled before his demise. Soon after, they had quickly rented out the space to him and the farmhand, who came soon after. He had been there for ten years.

They stayed two miles away from the town, which was visible downhill. “Good morning, boy. A good day today. You should move out sometime; just to see how beautiful life can be?” the farmhand always said, making the same tired statement every day. He had grown accustomed to it, and hearing it made him listless, like that church bell that rang every morning at 6 a.m. He had never replied, and after a minute or so of silence, the farmhand would shrug his shoulders and say, “I’m off to a good day’s work to keep me going, stay well, boy.”

There had always been the temptation to reply to the farmhand, but he wasn’t always difficult to resist. He admitted feeling a tad embarrassed for the lack of courtesy on his part and had given up praying for it to stop. But it had gone on too long; the first few times, he thought that the farmhand would soon learn to ignore him after a couple of cold, uninviting looks, but he was a relentless young, foolish man.

He resolved to stay in his room until the farmhand left, but that didn’t work because he never started a day without pouring water on himself, as he sweated at night. And so, with a shared bathroom behind his room, there was no way to avoid the farmhand. He would just continue being cold because replying to him would evoke questions he wasn’t prepared to answer, let alone have a conversation.

He also needed to eat, so once every two months, an ugly, stout, hairy, limping, bearded man would leave supplies in exchange for a book of his choice. After looking around, he wouldn’t know what he used the books for, because he was illiterate, but the trade was worth it, and books were many, probably taking up half the space.

The second person he spoke to wasn’t exactly specific. Occasionally, he heard a knock on the door at odd times and surely knew it was one of the cretins touring the countryside, looking for directions to the nearby town. These bloody tourists, despite being well-spoken and pretentious, always failed with admirable consistency to find a town with a tall watchtower and shiny rooftops. It baffled him, but he couldn’t avoid them – the damn tourists!

The rooms, his and the farmhand’s, were deserted rooms on top of a vast hill overlooking the town where the farmhand plied his trade, doing any odd jobs he could find. As a result, he was never around during the day, except on the day he wailed in sickness in his room, waiting for his herbalist – maybe twice before. For ten years, he had lived like this, though his life was marred with troubled thoughts for many days without end.

There was that one hour in the day that lit everything up, and he lived for that. At 6 p.m., he moved out, mounted a tree branch with his one treasured possession, a telescope, and mapped constellations he had first glanced at in school as a budding twelve-year-old. While his teacher read children’s homework compositions on hot afternoons, he would rather have been daydreaming. He sat on the tree branch, swinging his legs until it became too cold. Then he walked back to his room.

The last sound he heard before bed was the squeaking sound of the farmhand’s door when he came back from hard labor. What followed were the troubled dreams that soon accompanied the ominous sound of the wind outside, dragging everything in its wake. For a moment, he felt momentarily safe from the boisterous wind, but never from his thoughts. He knew he should feel better, sleep soundly like he did in his exuberant and carefree childhood, and he badly wanted to go back to how everything used to be. However, that day was just not today.

For now, it was just him, the squalid room, and the dingy town ahead, and maybe the farmhand, whom he was sure he could hear snoring.