Wenlin Tan – The Blob
Since becoming an artist, the days have become a Dali painting – hours, minutes, seconds melting seamlessly; past, future and present like colours blended perfectly. Work was the only constant; never changing, yet always moving forward.
I fell asleep with my phone in my hand, that’s what he said. It was one of those days right after I pulled an all-nighter. In the day, like a late train, the coal continued burning, pushing the carriage forward, but once a station was in sight, deceleration commenced, velocity dropped rapidly, slowing to a halt, just two metres short of the station. I surrendered. I had run out of fuel, completely. There was no indication of the next departure. Between waking and sleeping, a dense fog weighed over me. Sleep painted a watercolour blotch, blurring the lines of memory. Only one outline remains: The blob.
A weight on my belly. I can feel it. Squinting, I peer down at my wrist. A pudge. Or blob. My hand, actually. There’s some semblance of it, but doesn’t feel like mine. Someone switched it off; worse still – pulled the plug. The blob lays cold, limp, lifeless, like a prop out of a movie. Images of amputated bodies, a mess of dab purple and grey, and stories of lifeless limbs flood my mind. Pannick pulsates like a sin wave, but the fog of lethargy is thick; I can’t see through it. Fear rises, but barely grazes the bottom of the peak- the threshold of a scream.
Of course. Bad blood circulation. Grabbing the right wrist with my left hand, I shake it gently, and roll to lie prone on my right. With the viscosity of acrylic paint, consciousness slowly flows back through the capillaries into the hand. Slowly, the blob ceases to exist; I reclaim my hand again. Admiring the contraption with renewed interest, I curl and extend my fingers, practising their movements.
It still feels like a dream- actually, more like a nightmare, or a scene out of a low-budget sci-fi movie. Whatever it is, the thing I know now is – I need more rest.
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