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Small Talk:
Sorry, I’ve been leaving this place stagnating for a while. You know how it gets when you’re a Uni student. When it gets to crunchtime, you barely get any time to sleep or do much else. Not to mention some other obligations. Today was a major relief, considering I slept for about 11 hours - probably a retribution for the 3-hour naps I’ve been getting the past couple of days.

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I lifted my chin up. My head felt as though a 15kg counter-balancing weight was suspended in the cavity where my brain was supposed to be. It’s a strange feeling, actually. If my head were to tilt in one direction, it felt as though there’s an inner momentum pushing it further. I tried shaking it off, but that only made it worse. Instead of a linear motion, now I’m suffering from perpetual multidirectional angular inertia - if such a phenomena even exists.

I got up, washed my hands and looked down at the deep well of transluscent yellow green, making ripples as some unknown kinetic forces travel through it from within its ceramic chamber. It emanates a most unfamiliar odor. More ripples appeared out of nowhere. I began to wonder if my own urine was mocking me. I leaned forward, the suspended weight in my skull drawing my shoulders closer, surrendering to the apathetic might of gravity.

The tiles were slick and clean. I’m glad I made it a point to scrub it every fortnight. Mossy tiles do not really make good footing, especially when your sense of balance is strongly felt in its absence. I put out my arms and propped myself up against the shiny faux marble tiled walls. Someone was massaging the inner walls of my skull, at the point between my eyebrows. Slow, steady, gentle… but intense.

A gentle intensity. Is such a description even logically acceptable? Oh, that’s right. Logic no longer mattered, at least, not for the past two hours or so. I realised that as my hand slowly found the doorknob. A slow, but firm turn moved the bolts around the inner mechanism. Every click and clutch sounded like a baseball bat hitting an empty steel keg.

With my left hand still propped against the wall, I slowly pulled the door open. Although the hairs in my semi-circular canal might be bent in all directions, at least my legs were strong and sturdy enough to allow precise, linear movement. Before I could take another step, though, I got stopped in my tracks.

There she was. Sitting down on the doormat, licking her left paw clean. She looked up, and gave me a killer glance. Her bright yellow eyes, with a narrow black streak running down the middle, shot through the air, into my eye sockets and out the back of my head. She called to me.

I felt compelled to lower myself. Getting down on one knee, I gave her a little treat, a gentle scrub under the chin - her favourite ‘physical contact reward’. A little brass bell that hung from her dark maroon collar tinkered with each stroke of my fingers. Such a good girl. I wondered if she was worried about me. That was the third time she waited outside the toilet door tonight.

“I’m okay, Girl. I’m okay.” I whispered to her.

If cats could read minds, this one would probably be thinking that the big dwaddling moron should get a fucking grip - and pour her some bloody milk instead of swaggering around like a happy doofus. Maybe it was her mind that affected me and not the other way around. I bet there are some anthropomorphic feline Jedi out there, ’cause this one definitely cast a Mind Trick - Level 4 on me.

I forced my legs to walk in a straight line - which it did. The only problem was I had difficulty keeping my head from swinging off my fucking shoulders. It didn’t take long. Only 10 seconds of walking and I had to stop and hold on to the browned door handle of my 15-year old York fridge.

One thing I like about this fridge is its grand width and depth. Gives plenty of room to organise and maneuver shit around. Fridge makers apparently don’t do that shit anymore. I wonder why.

Modern fridges are now built shallow, thin and tall. Why the fuck is that? I fail to see the logic behind such designs. The average Malaysian grows faster horizontally than they do vertically. What’s the point, you want them to stand on a fucking footstool to reach that piece of steak in the top freezer? That’s some freaking brilliant designs, you dumb motherfuckers! Get a fucking proof of concept before you start selling your stinking shit fridges why don’t you?

After much contemplation in that ridiculously lengthy timespan of 300 milliseconds, I pulled my entire body back and a wave of cold air exploded from within the fridge. Oh, what a welcoming sensation it was. My body was fucking burning up and nothing works better than a nice big shot of chilly air.

You know why I said I fell to a Feline Jedi Mind Trick? I opened the fridge, and out of all the motherfuckest of things in there, I took out a carton of milk. My mind took a 15 second vacation, and suddenly I realised I had just finished pouring the damn milk into my baby girl’s shallow feeding bowl.

Figuring that it’s been a long night, and I still needed some time recover, I thought, what the hell, why not?, and poured a tall glass for myself.

It was 3.45 in the morning. A cool breeze swept in through the balcony windows. From the black of night, lit with ugly yellow and orange street lamps, the air swept up the sheer curtains, revealing a less than appealing view of a city void of life.

Damned little Jedi Pussy couldn’t be patient enough, she clawed away at my feet right until the moment I set her bowl on the coffee table, next to a bowl of what used to contains chunks of ice, now reduced to a deep puddle of freezing cold water. A bottle of Cola lay empty under the table, peanut shells piled up a mound in a white, crumpled Carrefour plastic bag. Next to that pile stood four glass bottles, two of them empty, one still 3/4 full, and the other one still unopened.

The only thing all of them had in common was a label that said something about 50%.

Fifty-fucking-percent. That’s quite a lot, considering the amount that disappeared [into an unknown void somewhere in the Universe] sometime during the last few hours. That definitely explains the massive disturbance I felt in The Force. The Force was so disturbed, it came back to disturb me. And I got to tell you, this Force motherfucker has been pestering me like it was fucking Christmas and Santa was missing a fucking reindeer.

Settling myself down, the smooth faux leather sofa made way and displaced itself as my massive derrière plowed its way following the demands of gravity. Why the hell am I holding a tall glass of milk? Oh yeah, that’s right. I was feeding The Girl when I figured I might as well feed myself.

I took a big gulp and blinked my eyes a couple of times. The Girl sat on the coffee table, her shallow bowl now empty. She must be capable of opening a fucking rift in the universe too for her milk to disappear so quickly. Bright yellow orbs of curiosity and wonder fixed itself on the rubbery surface that covered the frontal area of my head. My face felt like malleable Play-Doh, but the milk kind of returned some senses back. I think.

She tilted her head to one side, studying me studying her. Reaching out, I gave her a pat on the head. She joyfully replied, her way of doing that was by playfully tackling my fingers and gnawing the hell out of ‘em.

“I’m okay, Girl,” I whispered to her, only to have my voice carried away by the late night breeze. I didn’t realise it, but a gentle sob escaped me.

“I’m okay.”