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I Can't Go Back Home

All attention now turn to a shrouded figure on the flee. An escapee he is not, nor is he a bustling commuter. Night is impossible to bear such muted tone. All the hurly-burly seems to be swept away without mercy. A swirling smoke of dusts he incites in the wake of his hobbling pace. Beware! Night murmurs to itself as the smoke uncontrollably swerves up. Disquiet lurks threateningly in, the murky smoke slowly gnaws.

No music and not a sound are heard. Imagination sets flames on them. Alive, the music yawns itself alive from below. Like the residue of a closed bakery, smouldering melodies emit from below his mud-scattered boots, from below the pulsated earth; the flagrance of music wafts. A mirage he illusions of seeing: little girl dancing under a ring of light in pleated-skirt. Her movement coheres with the arpeggio taps. All perked-up dynamics ironed somewhat at the end of every four bars, in which a slight squeak of the girl’s ballet shoes is audible. Under the conspicuous spotlight a bizarre bronze resemblance vibrates on the skin of the little dancer. The hair is in comparison a stack of straw-yellow, sprawling desultorily about her shoulders mingled with sweats. Her dancing is somewhat ungainly, signified by those pervasive blue veins threaten to burst. He reawakes from temporary halt.

Proceeding on he picks up a newspaper skidding along the empty street from hither to thither. The story of a murder predominates the whole page. Night veils the city but she was one of the many who is still sober from the darkness. A glass of wine on one hand and a scintillating knife on the other she judges with unperturbed curiosity. The serenity of the night everybody wants to galvanize; a palpable revenge she has yet to feel. A startling laughter she tries to stifle. She lets her face fits into the tunnel-version on that of the well-polished hilt; she looks comically timorous.

Later she insists that the murder is unpremeditated. The night is simply too long; too stifling. The cabaret outside her window ceases not of their frolic. They sing, dance or pump noises until beads of sweats creep upon their already soggy shirts. She feels beads of sweats too, above her back. And no, she shakes her head in denial, no reasons can be proffered for her murderous action. A reason which is still in stammering gestation in her soporific head.

Another he appears on the wall, coyly inviting him for an eventful shadow-boxing. He baffles and halts his brisk gait. From the very far horizon of the infinite, he hears, some tentative sounds rumbling on. Remember those days from yesterday, the street sways before him like a sultry hot day. Those sounds in fragments will soon amass into a trooping sea beast. Hands it will extend toward him to draw. Before long like the noiseless city he will become, a skeleton that aches.

“I can’t go back home.” He rushes away leaving the night in the wake.

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