The ugly face

I have known her for five years. We’re not the best known couple among friends but we got along well. We seldom quarrel, not to say we had not raised enough issues to quarrel but we had our own way to tackle it, we came to the consent and agreement on things before we got together, we talked issues over and we discussed together to sort out problems. There was once we had a big fight, and hmm, I shall rephrase the big fight to cold war instead. We managed to get back well together again in two days time, it was like two years for us then. After that we came to really appreciate each other. I don’t really remember the detail of reason why we quarreled; I can say it was a rather long story, that it will take two pages to explain. I won’t be explaining the reason here because that is not the main point.

Among my girl friends, she moved me the most. Since the first day we had known each we had unbroken topics of conversation. The conversation was so smooth that even the most tedious and boring thing in the world could become so fascinating, it flowed like a stream; from size of her shoes, we somehow managed to link it to favorite TV programs. We talk from topic of works to her innocent childhood, from her family to number of countries in the world and from her unfriendly neighbor to laundry outsource experience. She liked to eat bread; we went on to talk about bread for hour. Somehow I came out with my own formula of making bread; like how they prepare the flour, what kind of machine they use, how many loafs of bread produced in an hour, what time everyday they deliver the bread to outlets. I described to her in as much detail as possible, she would occasionally give her opinions, and sometimes her opinions were too far out that we laughed out loud together. Physically she was beautiful; I won’t deny that her look attracted me to the ground for the very first time before we started to know each other, she was the girl that worth you turn your head to. She had got long hair with styling of big wave, slightly highlighted in brown color. Her skin was fair, almost perfectly smooth. She had got a full package; slim body, decent breasts, long legs, and curvy waist line. She almost scores ninety for every physical attributes after added up. So what else I wanted some more? Emotionally she was a caring person, we understand each other and I really loved her a lot. I was like the happiest guy on earth already.

However thing took its turn. A sudden twist to the story: I dumped her after five years of intimate relationship, for no reason, a reason that was so vague that I hardly accepted it as a reason, but I will tell the story as elaborated as possible. Like what had happened. However, I can say nothing actually happened, nothing significance that it could cause me to do such a drastic decision. Thing just took its course beyond my conscious mind’s authority. I’m not sure about other people, but it happened to me.

***

We didn’t live together; she stayed with her elder brother while I owned an apartment where I stayed alone. On Friday, she would drop by my house and help me to stock up kitchen and toiletries supplies. She couldn’t stand to see the basket full of unwashed clothes and before long she would put all the dirty clothes into washing machine. Along the way, she would change the bed sheet and pillow cases while collecting the dirty clothes, as her saying: once I step into your room I have a whole lot more works to do, next time I better stay back late in office. Then I would say: Its okay. In the end of the day, you are also benefit from it since you stay overnight in my place, I pointed my finger down to the brown sofa that we rested ourselves on. Then we would have our friendly fight over the sofa or bed, anywhere we could roll on. She always won the fight and of course I let her won. Then we kissed for a considerable ten minutes, looking for what we had missed, like a fresh couple but not all the time of course. I didn’t count the time; just habitually look at the wall clock before we kissed. Once a friend shared to me that he kissed for thirty minutes with his girl friend, until his innocent neighbor came bugging them to borrow screwdriver. I could never break his record and I never felt like to also. She stayed until night and she would stay with me throughout weekend and I appreciated her company.

Friday night, we usually had our dinner out in a better restaurant, for the sack of thank-god-its-Friday. There were a few restaurants that we usually went; she selected one from them alternatively over every Fridays. One of it was a Japanese restaurant that served good smoked salmon and rice. Beside a bread fan, she almost too loved salmon too. I myself not a big fan of salmon, I would just steal a few slices from her plates which she felt glad as she couldn’t finish the portion and I would order range of Tempuras with side order of miso soup, then she would stop me for eating too many fried food, so I ended up ordering some vegetables and eggplant tempuras with miso soup. Why miso soup? Nothing else I could think of, and it always came along with main dishes.

Then there was this restaurant which we ranked it as our latest most favorite. It’s called Super Tanker Restaurant, odd isn’t it the name. At first, we were wondering, who was the boss that thought about this name, such a weird name. It did not even related to food or anything. (Restaurant name does not have to be related to food anyway, let say Happiness Restaurant, it has nothing to do with food.). It was totally out. Why super? The restaurant owner watched too many cartoons or was he a fan of super man? Or game fan, God knows. And tanker also, strangely combined with the first words and the two words altogether was again a big mystery. Did the boss has something to do with the supertanker cruising in the ocean, that carrying thousand tons of crude oil, from one part of the earth to another? Before too long, the name Super Tanker planted into my mind like crystal memory, some thing you don’t need to think to do it, you just do it in anyway, like brushing teeth.

“Are you sure we’re going into this one?” I doubted, pointing my right hand finger to the restaurant signboard fixed on the white concrete wall named Super Tanker, while keeping my left hand to my steering wheel. “Why not just go to the usual place we used to go?”

“I feel like to try something different tonight.” She said, squeezing and stretching her voice a little as a hint for me to back off my idea. She looked at the distant restaurant intensely as I drove pass it slowly, like a kid in the midst of discovering a new hideout place.

“Hmm, we can order something different? Like you order Tempuras and I order Salmon?” I tried my luck, seeing there could be some more room for suggestions.

She stared at me for a while, like I was wearing a clown mask that she didn’t know how to put out her facial expression. Some time she would look at me like that when I teased her, it’s quite usual for me to see that, but I don’t think anyone will have the same set of expression like her. It was unique. “You don’t eat salmon too much and I don’t like Tempura. We came all the way here, quite a long driving distance, why not be a bit adventurous? It’s Friday!” She has got a point, I don’t eat too much Salmon and she doesn’t even touch my portion of Tempura, not that Tempura being too oily for her but she just doesn’t like it. All people are born not to like something anyway. Having driven for forty KMs to this part of the city, I don’t really feel like to backtrack again. So we settled with this restaurant – Super Tanker. I parked my car at the parking space just at the back of the restaurant compound.

“On the safe side, let’s look at the menu first before we plunge ourselves in” Having said that, I realized there was no menu at the entrance and we were like standing in the middle of a desert, looking for oasis. There were no other people around. No people walking into or out from the restaurant, no jockey parking, no guests usher to welcome us, and no nothing. The restaurant itself was an isolated building with own concrete fence to separate itself from the main road and surrounding buildings. There were car parks in front of the restaurant for guests to park their car, which was full by that time. The place was very quiet, the special design concrete wall filtered out and absorbed most of the road noise, only occasional tires screeching noise but it sounded distant away. The place reminded me of some international level government building – when all the big shots are having a meeting, the façade of building will appear like dead. “I can’t guess what kind of food they serve inside, there is no menu.” I said, looking at my girlfriend who was standing beside me staring away from me, who seemed like trying to use her super-power to see through the tinted glass entrance.

“But this place looks nice isn’t it?” She tiled her head up to where there were two oversized red lanterns hung down from the extreme tall ceiling like a twin Mars planets, deadly motionless and almost unreachable unless you call a crane truck. In front of me, to the right side of hers, there was a water fountain that emitted soothing lights. It changed color in a specific interval together with a different set of water spilling pattern. The ground where we were standing was paved with cobblestone that seemed like each of them was carefully selected from a mass of stone and rocks; it extended from the restaurant entrance to the whole foyer.

Before too long, the tinted glass entrance slide opened and a man in his forty walked out in swift pace and told us his apology. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting; we have a lot of customer inside, I’m supposed to be welcoming guest here but I take order from customer today. Really sorry” He apologized to me and my girlfriend while bowing his head. The guy looks like Chinese but his accent was a bit different, maybe Vietnamese or something. He was short in his height, not normal kind of short but like a shrinking size of other people. I don’t really know how to put it, it’s like every features of him shrunk one or two sizes smaller, like you hold a picture close to your eyes and slowly move away, proportionally the size of people become smaller. His eyes, nose, ears, mouth and all other parts all looked like one or two size smaller. He was wearing a black suit, white shirt inside and together with a shiny dark maroon tie.

“If you came out one second later, we would have left the place.” I said, smiling to the guest usher as he bowed a few times swiftly and said his apologies again. I could feel my girlfriend’s hand searched at my back and tried to find a weak spot to pinch on, she did that very often as if asking me to cut the crap and proceed to the more importance, also when I teased her too much. Not a painful pinch as my skin was thick enough to take it. But I held her hand just in time and snuggled it into my jeans’ back left pocket.

“Why not let’s go in now, and I will show you a nice seating place as a token of my apology” He spoke in utmost courtesy with his hand lend out to the direction of the entrance and so we followed him in.

The place was crowded of people, contradicting the international level government building façade with meeting-going-on atmosphere at the entrance, the restaurant were clouded with high density of chatters and dinnerware clanking noise, a faint knocking of wok could be heard in its muffled tone. Waiters and waitresses maneuvered around the place, cut through tables and over the crowds in swift pace, almost too fast, like they didn’t need to open their eyes to move, bringing trays with dishes. We were seated by the wall length glass window with water flowing down into a marble made drainage. I couldn’t recognize what was on the other side of the glass. There were only melted image of lights and objects filtered through the flowing water. Overall the decoration of the place was Chinese, red carpet with details in gold color, like those interior of Imperial building back in thousand years ago. Then there was this elephant statue in bronze, stood in the middle of the restaurant, height of an adult, carved with such a great detail that it looked like a real elephant shrinks to a size of baby elephant. Not a bad smuggle I thought as I stared at the elephant.

“I will get back to you for your order after you have decided. Please excuse me for a moment.” The guest usher handed us two menus, to me and my girlfriend, bowed again before he walked away in swift pace. Does he feel tired walking that fast with a pair of short legs of his? I thought as he disappeared from our sight. After the man had left, my girlfriend switched her seat from the opposite to the seat just beside me so that we shared one menu. The other menu was left across the table. We were planted at the menu. It was all written in Jargon – some description that we hardly understand at first, Chinese dishes name with English translation. It happened all the time when we visited somewhere new, trying to figure out what kind of food they serve. She leant herself close to the menu and me, wanted to have a good look at the menu together, her long hair lied on my shoulder with shampoo scent and her breasts gently brushed against my left elbow while I was holding the menu. Then I frowned at the menu.

“Monkey brain?” I was surprised with a quiet shout. I scanned throughout whole one or two pages of the menu. No mistake, they served whole range of monkey brain with different styles of cooking and flavor. There was starter monkey brain with various marinade sauce, it went with other side dishes that composed of some wild life animals that I hardly recognized the animals’ name, one of the most common one would be bat meat. Huh and that I would call it common, I thought to myself. Beside monkey brain, they served some other dishes as ala carte like squirrel, wild boar and camel. And camel?! Upon seeing this, I felt my stomach started to tip-over so I closed the menu and looked at my beautiful girlfriend who was still looking at menu intensely. She looked at me when I closed the menu. “I’ve told you it’s a bad idea to come in here, just like that. Monkey brain they serve here.”

“Don’t you feel like to try it?” She looked intensely at my eyes while a bit taken aback.

“Hell no, It’s monkey!”

“Monkey, then?”

“Well, we’re not supposed to eat Monkey or anything belongs to it!” I was doing a low volume shouting.

“You eat deer, ostrich, sheep and crocodile and snake soup right?” She pointed her index finger at the direction of my belly as if I just swallowed four deer, two ostriches, a crocodile and half of a snake into my stomach.

“Yes. But those are different, they are meant to be eaten. Monkey is not.”

“How do you justify they are not meant to be eaten?” She raised her eyebrows.

“A lot of people are eating deer, ostrich and sheep. Am I right? And there are people savor crocodile and snake soup. Those are common, very common. But nearly zero people eat monkey.”

“How do you know? They won’t come and tell you they just have a monkey feast right?”

“No I don’t think they are that much. It will be like finding a needle at the bottom of sea. Who the hell in this world will have such weird taste and interest…?” As soon as I said this, or half way through it, my statement grew weak and I started to feel regret as I came back to the reality that the restaurant was packed with awful lots of people who eats monkey, monkey brain in different styles of cooking. I resigned myself by raising a white flag to our argument; I could never won an argument if she really wanted something. I shook my head and gave a quiet sigh with a yeah-you-won kind of look on my face.

“So? Have you found the needle?” Her eyebrows raised high.

“No, you can go ahead and taste the monkey. I will be ordering some other thing.” I said, laying my back down to the chair, holding up the menu up front to let her choose her monkey and wait for my turn. She scanned the list for a considerable five minutes and I flipped the pages back and forth for her before she decided what to order, her long hair swept against my arm.

“You ought to try it if it turns out nice.” She suggested while rested both her elbows on the table and looked at me, chin in her hands.

“Nah, you can have all you want.” I said, taking my time to choose what I consider to be edible food. It turned out I had very limited choice, like black pepper wild boar, grilled bat meat with dried chilies or BBQ sauce and braised camel meat in Sze-Chuan Style. What kind of food are all these I wondered. I started to miss the fried rice I overcooked a few years ago. Any other thing will be good enough, McDonald or KFC. Just don’t give me monkey brain. Never once in my life I feel so helpless about ordering food.

“Can I take your order now sir?” The guest usher sounded behind us suddenly that it startled me.

I asked the man to recommend any food other than monkey related dishes. At that, he seemed to be disappointed slightly, saying that the restaurant’s specialties are monkey brain, all close customers come all the way here are just for their specialty. Also he pointed me a few choice that according to him, were nice. I didn’t buy that of course, but my girlfriend did, she went further to order another two dishes of monkey brain; one of it was a dessert that went with blueberry yogurt and mixed with rum and brandy. How it would taste like I wouldn’t know. I ordered bat meat with BBQ sauce and requested him to get rid all the bone, and he only nodded and said it will be done. And I ordered a bottle of our favorite Porto for both of us. We were couple that loved sweet wine.

I watched the guest usher walked into the kitchen in swift pace and placed our order. I estimated how many monkeys they had to kill for my girlfriend’s order. Let say one monkey brain for one person, she ordered three dishes, which mean three dead monkey in next few minutes? That’s terrible come to think of it.

“You know I read about article some where about monkey brain.” I started my story, not my own story, but I read it somewhere, might be documentary. How true was the story, I wasn’t too sure. I just wanted to share with my girlfriend; maybe I could scare her a little bit.

“Uhuh” She said. Elbows still planted on the table, she lifted her chin up from her hands and looked at me.

“This article says that the restaurant people, like this place, actually take the monkey brain out when the monkey is still breathing; it screams in agony. You know how they do it?” I looked intensely into my girlfriend’s eyes and paused for a few seconds.

“How?” She asked eagerly.

I imitated the motion of hand holding a hammer and trying to hit a nail with all my strength. “Like this. And the monkey skull cracks open, while the monkey uncontrollably twitching in pain. The monkey struggles and struggles, but useless, their effort are in vain, and they are tied up, nothing they can do. People will scoop the soup spoon into its’ cracked skull and drink its brain juice, just like what you will do later, gross eh?
My girlfriend did not say anything. She just looked at me with mouth agape. I continued.

“There are these restaurants with round table, design an opening in the middle of the table, so what they do is bring the almost dead monkey with opened skull, tied up, head fitted into the opening. Now what everyone can see is a bowl of red spaghetti in the middle of the table, and waitress will pour some flavoring hot soup into the spaghetti. Everyone just dig in.”

“This is urban legend right?” She asked, sounded in doubt.

“Who knows? You see, anything is possible in this world.”

She just looked at me without making any comment. Then suddenly I felt sorry for her, and I thought I had gone too far about my story in scaring her. So I comforted her back instead.

“It might be just an urban legend. I mean this place doesn’t look like they will process the monkey like that. It looks clean. They must have done it like chicken.” I explained and pointed my finger uncertainly around the place.

“Done it like chicken?” She frowned at my explanation.

“The way they prepare it. Take its meat after they kill it.” I explained again.

“Hmm” she said, her eyebrows still frowning a bit.

I lent my hand out to rub slowly at her arm for a good five minutes. I always did that to her when I made her angry, I didn’t think she was angry but I just did it. None of us talking at that time. The chatters and dinnerware clanking noise filtered into our little space and table, the distance wok knocking noise was audible again. I noticed something interesting since we came in, beside the other waiters and waitresses, who were wearing normal white and red uniform made of non-expensive fabric, there was this person wearing an exclusive looking uniform made of red shiny silk, gold color emblem as detail and the mysterious thing was that he wore a bronze material mask that resembled the face of some Greek God. Nobody give a damn about his existence despite he was wearing a mask. A mask?! Why would staff of the restaurant needs to wear a mask? And his role in the restaurant was another mystery. He didn’t talk to any customers, he didn’t serve food to customer, he didn’t take food order and he merely walked around the place, back and forth. Sometimes he walked through here, sometimes there. Occasionally he talked to our faithful server – the guest usher which I just named him ‘the tiny man’. Both stood together was just too weird for a picture – a Greek God in red silk and the tiny man.

“What that guy does?” She broke the silence, eyeing me to look at the man in mask and I followed her eyes’ direction which pointed directly at the guy in Greek God mask. I re-studied the man in mask for a while.

“Mascot.” I replied her in flat tone, looking into her eyes in purposeful expressionless look.

She laughed out in a burst; it lasted for a few seconds. “He does not look like he will bring any luck to the restaurant, but the opposite.” Still looking at the man in mask, her lips showed a hint of curl.

“You have not realized. We were out looking for nice restaurant half an hour ago and we end up sitting here. Is that something?”

“Hmm. For all the restaurants out there, we end up here.” She pondered for a while, tiling her head up sideway, staring up at the plaster ceiling to the miniature chandelier hanging down to our table. “I think this is destiny. You know. Something like fated.” She swayed her hair sideway, revealing her beautiful ear with earring resembled a row of dangling mini chains. Then she brushed her tiny finger playfully over the dangling mini chains, creating an inaudible clinking sound in the air.

“Yes, it is.” I agreed and nodded my head a few times reassuringly. “Out of all the restaurants that serve good food, here we are, Sitting here, waiting for some monkeys to get slaughter.”

“If it turns out bad we can just turn our back at the table and leave, and don’t come back again. Is that easy?” she drank a sip of plain water and I did the same.

“That is easy enough.” I nodded. “Yeah” At that, the waitress in uniform brought my girlfriend her monkey brain, a bowl of Udon Mee. And I really meant Udon, the Japanese style noodle, not spaghetti. It came with monkey brain that was cut into small slices, the white longish objects scattered around the milky soup. The finishing of the Udon was parsley applied on top of the soup. It did not look so bad at all, it looked edible okay. The smell after all was not so bad, actually it smelled good.

My girlfriend studied at the bowl of Udon for considerable five seconds before she held up her chopsticks, as if wanted to make sure there was no living monkeys swimming in the soup. With her head bent down, she looked up at me, waited for my encouragement before she started on it, I merely raised my eyebrows. So she picked up a piece of the spare parts from the soup and put it into her mouth and chewed for a while, very thoroughly as I saw the way she chewed it. Her expression changed once in a while to absorb the taste of the thing.

“Hey! It’s nice!” She exclaimed, her left hand waving in over-excitement, after just swallowed the first piece of monkey brain in her life. “You should try it!”

“Hmm” I stared at my girlfriend for a while and gave her a look of disbelieve. She only looked at me, head nodding non-stop with excitement. I could only see her white teeth, like a smiling Buddha. “Are you sure or not?” My eyes fixed at the bowl of Udon with milky soup, slices of monkey brain floated underneath the milky layer.

“Try it.” My girlfriend said, picking up a slice of spare part with chopsticks and extended toward my mouth. I spontaneously avoided her offer by backing off a bit. At that, she frowned at me, so I gave in for it and bit on it.

I gave it a cautious chew; some sauce or brain fluid spitted out onto my tongue as I tighten my jaw. The taste did not resemble any food that I had before; it didn’t remind me of any other food. It was brand new taste. If I needed to think of one thing that tastes similar with this, I would say seaweed scallop. Seaweed scallop I thought to myself, Is there such a thing in the world? You can’t get the result by merely combining those two in the same wok, but it just taste like seaweed scallop. It might be the ingredient or sauces they used which made it special, or might be the mix of monkey brain juice and the special sauce that was crucial, I wouldn’t know. I wasn’t much of a cook, cooking a nice monkey brain dish was definitely out of my league, a very far out one. The bite sensation was just like eating macaroni but more on a spongy side, not too soft and not too hard, the cook must had done a great job in watching over everything in the process. All this while, my girlfriend stared at me intensely, waiting for me to make my comment.

“Taste like seaweed scallop.” I said as I was still swallowing the brain slice.

“Seaweed scallop? Is there such a thing?” She puzzled, looking straight into my eyes, she was still holding her chopstick in her hand.

“Well, not really. I just imagined it when I tasted the monkey brain.”

“Hmm” She gave it a thought. Before too long, she started to immerse herself into the bowl of Udon again. I looked at her when she was enjoying it; Udon noodle went with a slice of monkey brain or two as flavoring, or two mouthful of Udon noodle and a slice of brain slice, either way round. The way she swallowed everything in the bowl would definitely lead the audiences to think that the food was great one, which was indeed true. Then I wondered why not they take her for monkey brain commercial shoot, say something like Angel of Super Tanker Restaurant. After she finishes with her commercial video shoot, we can sit at my house’s brown love sofa comfortably, TV switched on, watch her appears on the TV screen, eating those monkey brain Udon mee with extreme emotion and expression of scrumptiousness. End of commercial video she will show her sparkling white teeth in filling satisfaction and exclaims in a super energetic tone, Supa Tanka Restoranto! (I imagined she speaks in Japanese) I will press pause at the last scene of video and then we make love throughout the night in front the face of smiling Buddha with shiny teeth in over-excitement.

The waitress brought me my bat meat. Nothing attractive about it, the bat meat itself was like many small pieces of burnt charcoals. Scattered about in the centre of a large plate, it was surrounded by a few pieces of decorative plants namely broccoli, carrot and some unknown tree leafs? The dark brown BBQ sauce topped the charcoal, was what they call it finishing. The portion was pitifully little, I could easily finish it within a few bites. Why they have to use such a big plate? Knowingly the portion is absurdly little. Bat meat, I never had good experience with it. My girlfriend was observing me as I studied the oversized plate in concentration.

“It’s okay.” I said, chewing the food in my mouth. “It’s much better than charcoal.”

She burst out a silent laughter, having her mouth covered by her right hand. And I didn’t mean to be funny, it was indeed much better than charcoal, which made me relief, I admitted. I finished my meal much faster than her; consider the small portion and also her speed in food consumption. Every times I would finish my meal fifteen to twenty minutes earlier than her. She liked to take her time in food, chewing every piece of the food into bits. I never lose my patience watching her either. She ate with such a grace. It was just like watching interesting dance show on TV in slow motion. We never got bored when there was silence. I quietly sipped my glass of Porto and watched her while she was eating.

That night she managed to finish her own portion of Udon mee and even helped herself to the side dishes and dessert she had order. Of course I helped her a lot, and I even ordered a few other different flavors monkey brain desserts myself, we shared on it like we usually did. Two people sharing the monkey brain dessert. Can anyone imagine it? Some slimy red spaghetti like spare parts extracted from inside monkey skull, now it was served as dessert for two peoples’ appetites, sucking every essence of life out from the monkey which were now lying somewhere with skull opened, dead, that’s what we did. Just hopefully one day we don’t become like monkey that’s all. We toasted for Friday night, and for first time monkey experience. I could see that the tiny man was apparently pleased with my change of mind that he gave us a special discount on meal, which was not cheap stuff considered the rareness of the spare part, but it did has its’ value. While walking out from the restaurant, it still struck me like how they managed to get pass all the authority and make their business legalized. They sure have their own way, and I could imagine there were hands at the back who dealt with authority, keeping them at bay. After all money is the only thing needed, in this world of capitalism, for things to work out smoothly.

Back to my apartment, we indulged ourselves relaxingly on my brown sofa. Sipping cocktails I made myself, I put on my favorite jazz music; Girl from Ipanema, Diana Krall’s The look of love and S’wonderful, Stacey Kent’s Bali Hai. She read Elle magazine while I watched Discovery Channel in mute, some program about deep sea wild life. Then I changed to Travel and Living. I watched Samantha Brown introduces the hotel in silence, watched her tasting the food that they serve her in silence, her expression changed as she tasting the food then she gives her silent opinions, after that she proceeds to next hotel review. Occasionally my girlfriend and I started a conversation and we talked about it for five to ten minutes. That night we had a great sex, it must had been over one hour of continuous love making without counting foreplay. She quietly dozed off in my arm after that. I watched her sleeping face, her pink cheek that pressed against my muscle, her long eyelashes, her hair lying on the white pillow, and her naked body which was covered in warm blanket. I must have lost almost five pounds in one night. Is it because of the monkey? I stared at the white plaster ceiling in the dark as the faint orange light shone through the window blind slowly faded away before my vision, I dozed off. It was the first dreamless night in my entire life.

* * *

We went to Super Tanker for continuous five weeks. The tiny man must have been pleased seeing us there, each time ordering different monkey brain. We ordered something new that we never tried before, until we ran out of choice from the menu, then we repeated the same dishes. Still, never once the tastes disappointed us. However, the man in Greek God mask started to annoy me, not that he did anything to us that annoyed me. He never did anything either. Just as usual, he walked around the place in business manner, slowly cut through rows of table, here and there and talked to the tiny man in whispering gesture. The man in mask needed to bend a bit to talk to the tiny man. Every times was the same repetition, like a VCR replayed on TV. They stood there looking at the crowd for good five minute, waiting someone to draw them an illustration of Greek God and Tiny Man before they parted. Greek God disappeared somewhere into the restaurant, along the way to kitchen I supposed. His mere existence annoyed me. Anyone cared to explain to me why on earth he needed a mask in a restaurant like this? No one had time for it, the customers were paying too much attention on the food that they didn’t even realize the Greek God was roaming around the place.

“What happen?” My girlfriend asked me, seeing I had been distracted all these while. “You seem to be thinking about something.” She held my hand in hers, spreading warmth through her soft palm, she gave my hand a squeeze that to me was like asking me to come back.

“That guy is weird isn’t him?” I said, my eyes traveled from the kitchen corridor where the Greek God disappeared and back to my girlfriend’s eyes. Somehow the expression on her face comforted me. I quenched the ice coke into half and let out a sigh, the ice cubes in the glass sweated in tinkling.

“You don’t like history, do you?” She turned her head twenty degree from me and looked at me in slightly squinted eyes, as if a short sighted person trying to make out something in a distance. “Those people back in a few centuries were weird.”

“Oh” I said simply. Neither agreed nor disagreed.

“Those remarkable people are always weirdo. No people can understand what they think, because they are just too far beyond others’ understanding. Pity thing is they are always being laughed of and even hated. No matter what they say, it sounds like a lame joke to people.” She went further with her finding of observation.

“Hmm. That sounds relevant to the mascot.” I teased. She’s not the kind that will talk about philosophy, but some time she could get serious about something. To me, it sounded like a lesson to learn, some moral class teacher giving lesson I thought. I realized about that since I knew her, even now I still thought the same. I stared at her while she was taking her time on her meal. I emptied out the coke in the glass, only ice cube was left tinkling on the glass. I said my excuse and left for washroom to take a pee.

The passage to washroom shared the same corridor with kitchen and management room. Every now and then there were staffs gone in and out from the kitchen with busy look. I had to dodge sideway in order not to run into one of the waitress, whom said her sorry to me after that. It is okay I said. Then I came by this room where I supposed the Greek God had just entered, the door was slightly ajar, so I took a casual peep as I passed by. Curiosity just caught me that I might be able to see the guy’s real identity, but to no luck the guy was still with his mask on, even in the room. It could be that his identity was really of some high confidentiality that he needed to hide it away all the time possible. He might be in the trail of police investigation or something that he afraid people will recognize him. Or is he an alien that came to earth and started a business, thinking monkey brain is a common food. What a fictional imagination I thought to myself. Then I headed straight to washroom and pee. An alien whom starts a restaurant business by serving monkey brain as delicacy, I laughed at my own idea while zipping up.

The fifth Friday we came home from Super Tanker, like other previous Fridays, we had a great love-making session. I kissed every inch of her body, which I had not done for quite some times, and she did the same to me. It must have been two hours plus we enjoyed each other on the bed before I came inside of her. Another five to six pounds burnt off. She rested her cheek on my chest, hand on my belly and she dozed off peacefully, and I stared at her for a while before I faded away into my sleep. Darkness clouded my vision as I felt my weight getting heavier and heavier.

I dreamt of a horrible dream that night.

* * *

I saw Greek God, the man in mask. Exactly the same Greek God I had seen in Super Tanker, the same exclusive attire, the same gold emblem on his suit, the identical bronze mask he was wearing, but we were in nowhere like Super Tanker, nor we were on anywhere of the planet. I could not remember where were we, a place that voided of anything recognizable, a place that was totally strange to me, the dark and coldness, just like floating in the space, I could see nothing, and I was stepping my feet onto nothing. I felt the sensation of eternal fall and no place could I fall onto. In this eternal fall, there were only me and the Greek God.

Upon seeing me, he stretched open his arms wide, as if he welcomed me here. “I have been expecting you.” He started with a clear penetrating voice, his tone of voice sounded utmost courtesy while his bronze mask remained in its’ usual cold and expressionless look.

“Why are you waiting for me?” I was puzzled. “Who are you?” I was looking at the bronze mask he was wearing as if waiting for him to change his expression. It remained still.

“Why am I waiting for you? That answer to the question you have already known. Haven’t you? For who am I, It is no importance, what is important is the purpose you are here. You wanted to do that for a long time, don’t you?” His last word reverberated in the still air and lasted for a while before being sucked into the vacuum space. He was speaking his sentence word by word slowly and choosing his word precisely.

“I don’t understand what you are talking about. I don’t know any answer to the question, don’t know why are you waiting for me here and what is my purpose to be here?” I saw myself quickly getting frustrated and impatience, none of my questions were answer, and I would explode anytime soon if the guy kept going on talking in his way.

At this, he let out a strong laughter. A laugh that was so loud that sounded like phone ring beside my ears, it got extremely annoying. His laughter lasted ten seconds before he continued. “I can remind you of your purpose” He stopped for while, that pair of eyes behind the mask must have been looking at me piercingly. “I can show why you wanted to do it for a long time. For a long time, you wanted to kill me.” He stopped dead in his speech.

I didn’t know what to say at first. “I wanted to kill you?” I confirmed.

“For millenniums, you have been tracking me. You have wanted to kill me for thousands years” He said, his tone sounded with a hint of smirk, beside that, he showed no obvious expression in his tone.

“For thousands of years” I pardoned him, calculating how long in time would it be for thousands of years, it is too far beyond my imagination, if I really lived for thousands of year, how much memory would I have accumulated. I could only picture image of myself back in World War II but not thousands of years back. I tried to summon the image of ancient Egypt with myself in it but all that came up was the scenes from fantasy movies staged in prehistoric age. Any historical celebrities I knew back in thousands of years, and If I had any relation with them? “Sorry, I don’t like history. Why you don’t get to the point.” I heard myself said, the voice did not sound like myself but it definitely sounded familiar.

His laughter erupted. It echoed into the deep blackness and sucked into the void, and then he looked at me. I couldn’t see his eyes but I knew he was staring right through my mine, as if he was waiting for the right time to charge toward me. For a moment we remained still, not moving.

“This might remind you of something” He said in a cold tone of voice, slowly bending both his hands to touch his mask. Ever so slowly he removed the mask of Greek God.

I didn’t know how to react or what to say. Or was I not able to? I just stood there and looked at his face while he took off his mask. My mouth was all dried up, my eyes fixed at his, my limbs were numb, and they were not in my control anymore. I tried to back off but my legs won’t listen. His face certainly reminded me of something, like a big hammer whacking the back of my brain, but I wasn’t sure what it was. I have never seen this kind of face before. Not in my life nor I had seen it before my previous life, I swear. But how could I be so sure? It was such a horrible face I have ever since in my entire life, no one living could have seen such a hideous face before, it was absolute evil but no known evil could have take up such a grotesque form, definitely no.

He fixed his eyes at mine, his glaring red pupils like an awakening deadly weapon, looked right through my eyes. Half of his face was badly decayed, maggots nested nearly the whole right side of his face, and it let out an unbearable foul smell. Another side of his face looked like a reptile skin with a few patches peeled off, leaving the bare flesh twitching at its’ own will. As he shook his head, some of the maggots fell into the space, exposing his monstrous jaw and devilish teeth.

“Does this ring a bell?” He started finally, one hand holding his mask. He threw it away as if playing fetch with his dog. His mask disappeared into the space.

I vaguely shook my head for a few times, my mouth was still dried, I couldn’t find my voice to respond. Where is my voice? I could not summon it out. I tried to shout and the voice just won’t come out.

“Very well” He said. Tighten his jaw, his left face was giving a devilish grin. Then suddenly, like a magician, out from nowadays he got hold of a monkey, just that there were no puff effect as it will have for a magic show. He was holding in his hand through the animal’s neck. The monkey was tied up by a fine rope, it didn’t move or struggle. Strangely the poor animal had its’ eyes opened but it only looked straight in vacant. The monkey must have been paralyzed.

I remained still, watching him holding the tied up monkey, up in mid air in his hand. He did it as if showing it off to me, but why? The invisible hammer hit harder to the back of my head, like someone hitting a gigantic gong behind me, it made me grey out for a few microseconds and woke up again.

“Let me show you my restaurant’s delicacy.” He announced in a manner almost like a clown playing stupid trick in front of children. Without warning, he whacked hard into the animal’s skull with a swift blow of hammer. Red blood splattered all over his rotten face and his red suit, it made no difference to the red silk. The animal itself was all deformed from shoulder and above. It was covered in red blood. His expression never changed all these while. With that devilish look on his face, he shoved another hand into the poor animal’s skull and extracted its’ brain, without any force. He held the animal’s brain in his hand carefully, like some precious gemstone – the way he looked at it in expression of amazement; it was still dripping with blood and some non-blood liquid. He tossed the corpse away like some empty shell, it disappeared into the space.

I watched him doing all that, without a blink in my eyes. I didn’t say anything. I felt myself breathing shallow and quick. Something inside me was changing, but I didn’t know what it was. It’s like an unknown cell spreading its influence in my body, trying to overpower my own will, overtaking my body. My hands were trembling, but I wasn’t scared.

He held the blood dripping monkey brain in his hand like a big red apple, holding it up close to his field of vision. He looked close to the brain, like a geography student studying at the rotating globe - he studied it left and right then up and down. His piercing eyes fixed at me before he started again. “Brain is so fascinating, isn’t it. It looks as simple thing as this.” He lowered his hand a bit to show me the blood dripping brain. “Thing as simple as this, but it does tremendous things. It is so intelligent. It can be used to remember, to think, to feel, to react, to hate, to love, to like, to become jealous, to want something, to do something, to not do something, to tell us to say something, and not to say something. The capacity is boundless, the potential is infinite. Aren’t these fascinating? ” He said, eyes fixing onto the monkey brain all the time.

I didn’t comment. My eyes fixed at the monkey brain for a while then back to his eyes, later back to the brain again, so on and so forth. I couldn’t control my focus of vision. My retina focus loosen, the image it projected became blur for a while before it became sharp again, then it became blur. A sudden surge of pain inside my head, like it was going blow my brain apart then it disappeared before long.

“I have been savoring monkey brain for thousands of years, different kind of monkeys, different kind of souls, thousands or millions of them. I have seen the world begin its lives, I have seen them died, I have seen them reborn, I have seen the world collapsed, and then decayed to become dust. Dust disappeared into thin air and got carried away. Yet, I’m still here. You couldn’t stop me. You never could and you will never can.” He closed his eyes, spreading his arms wide with the blood dripping brain in his grip and laughed in utmost devilish satisfaction, it only faded into a weep. “You have come to kill me. I have been waiting for this moment for a long time, a very long time that I have lost track of time, what is the current century? I’m not sure anymore, centuries over centuries, it makes no differences to me. I lived my day savoring monkey brain, sucking their soul and essence out into mine, thousands or millions of them. I killed them one by one myself. But I’m tired, I’m goddamn tired. You are here just the right time. You can put an end to this miserable immortal life of mine.”

My hands trembled violently. I gripped my fists hard but the trembling would not stop. I felt like I was loosing myself but I still felt my own consciousness and my control still present. The gong hitting behind my head getting more frequent and louder, its frequency increased and eventually it became a harmonic of an extremely loud buzz in my ears. It never stopped.

“Come on. You don’t want to miss this opportunity, do you? It is one in a million of chance.” His laughter erupted. It echoed in the blackness, sucked out into the vacuum and faded into a dead silence. He pointed his humanly finger at me, right at my face. “Look at what are you now? You don’t even dare to kill me, despite you know this is not real. This place, this nothingness surrounding me and you, It’s only your dream, you know about it. It is you, who created me! It is you, who created this place, this goddamn place that voided of everything. You are empty! A coward! People like you when they don’t know about you, they start to dislike you when they near you, and they hate you when they are close to you, in the end the world despises you. You have nowhere to go, so you have to look for somewhere nicer in your dream, you end up facing your own fear here with me, yet you can do nothing. You just stand there, shaking like a baby.” He finished his last sentence and burst out another strong laugh, and he was not ready to stop laughing.

I was still at first. Then I saw myself charged forward him, taking big paces. I tried to stop myself, but I couldn’t. I grabbed the hammer from his grip. With ever unimaginable force, I struck the hammer into his rotten face, his skull. Blood splashed out, his laughter hadn’t in time to stop laughing, but as soon as he realized, it was already too late, his skull deformed into a blood mess. I struck him another merciless blow, his jaw, his teeth and his eye sockets were all gone. He couldn’t even make any noise to scream in pain. My shirt and my face were all stained with red blood, but it never bothered me, I struck the hammer for the last time into his head, and it flu out into the space, like a home run baseball strikes, just that this baseball got sucked into the black hole forever. Without his head, his body stood still in front of me, it never fell nor it moved slight, it was just still.

I looked at his headless body, struggling for my breaths, my vision was blurring in front of me. I looked at my hands that were stained with thick red blood and the hammer that was stuck to my hand. The blood was stickier than before as it slowly dried out, it let out a smell resemble hot iron and it had became overwhelmingly dense. Soon my nose tip was all that smell, it suffocated me. I don’t need anything else now, I just wanted oxygen. I choked for oxygen, as if the oxygen had been sucked away into the vacuum of space, it left only the blood smell. As if begging him, I was down to my knee in front of the headless man with ugly face who now didn’t have a face, he just stood still. I felt nothing later, no more choke, no more suffocation, no more pain in my head and I could not see anything, anymore. I fell into the infinity of blackness.

* * *

I sprung up on my bed in the middle of the night, sitting straight with a jolt, I breathed quick and shallow. For a moment I was totally blank of everything. I tried to figure out where I was. Am I still in the world that I am supposed to be in? Am I still alive? I looked around the place, the four walls, the wardrobe, the windows with blinds down – the orange light from the lamp post filtered through, the dull ticking sound of air-conditional thermostat, all seemed perfectly in the world, except it was dead silence, not a vibration in air detected by my eardrums, not even silence itself. Beside where I sat, I saw a girl, she was still fast asleep. My girlfriend? Her face was lifeless, she didn’t show a sign of breathing and she didn’t look all that radiant anymore. She was dead to the world. Who is she? I closed my eyes and shook my head. Suddenly I felt a surge of nausea, an awful twist in my stomach. I stormed into the toilet, heading for the toilet bowl.

I spewed everything out I had for the night. I had no idea where these things came from. Did I have so many things in one night? I draped over the toilet bowl, still catching my breath. My vision was unusually clear, as if I didn’t need to wear glasses anymore, it could be the bright yellow light that was giving me a false sense. I wasn’t too sure. I could not think that straight at the moment. The monkey brain slices and bits floating on inside the toilet bowl, the peanuts I chewed just before the dishes arrived, the rice bits, my high tea and lunch, all of it appeared floating on what seemed like an expired milky colored yogurt. Soon my second wave of nausea struck me. I quickly bent closer to the bowl. However nothing I could throw up anymore, nothing from my food storage. What came out was some yellow bile, a real striking yellow liquid from my gut. I looked down and I could only see the yellow liquid came out non-stop from my mouth and I felt my stomach had been compressed to the max by an invisible force, it twisted and turned. I couldn’t help it. All I could do was to throw up and take the pain in my stomach. Nausea must have struck me for three to five times and I had lost count. In fact I was so exhausted that it didn’t struck me as I could have counted it, but there was no point doing it. My whole body didn’t feel like mine anymore, I had difficulty lifting my head up, my hands were framing the toilet bowl seat but they couldn’t be moved, they were all limp. Or I was too lazy to use my strength to move them, I had to use a lot more effort than usual, what I meant was really a lot of effort.

For not sure how long I lied my head sideway down at the toilet bowl seat so I could stare into the toilet bowl. I didn’t feel disgusting at all, I just felt it was totally natural, and it didn’t smell so bad at all. Was I losing my senses? No, I could see sharper than usual. I made out the ever tiniest details of the substances that I threw out, like a piece of unique art installation I just made. The yellow liquid swirled a little in the toilet bowl and so did the bits and pieces, forming another piece of yellow stone carving with different concept and meaning. I looked closely at the yellow substance and the more I looked at it, the more it reminded me of my bad dream, the ugly face of the man with his mask taken off. I shook my head. But it never stopped taking form. The maggots and worms explored its’ way out from the yellow layer and very soon the worms spread throughout the whole yellow icky layer. Like an unknown life-form in the verge of breaking out amnion, the yellow layer started to wiggle in violent. I felt a urge of nausea, but it was not that serious so I held it back with my mouth covered by hand. I flushed the toilet and quickly closed the bowl cover. I flush the toilet again and again. I heard it flushed.

I stood up to the mirror with basin at it’s’ bottom. It did take me a lot of effort to stand up, it’s like you have been sleeping for a few months and suddenly wake up from you long dream and you can’t find strength to actualize your brain’s command to body action. I was like twenty years older, my reflection in the mirror, and I simply could not recognize myself in the mirror. Slowly, I brushed my cheek, my eyelid, my moustache, my chin and my sideburn with my hand. Yes, the person in the mirror was definitely reflection of me. I looked extremely haggard. How can a person get wear down at this rate? I gulped down mouthfuls of water and spewed it back out, I did it a few times. I splashed tons of water onto my face and washed it thoroughly, I even used the expensive face cleansing gel my girlfriend owned to wash my face. I applied the cleansing gel to my face a few times and rinsed myself with water vigorously. He was still the same, my reflection, as I stared at him through the mirror. Water dripped from my cheek and chin as dried my face with towel. I gave up, I was so exhausted and I needed to rest.

It was four AM in the morning. My girlfriend was still fast asleep, snuggling herself in the blanket. I sat myself on the single sofa staring at her. The orange light filtered through the window blind, printing lines pattern onto the white blanket and her bare shoulders. The light pattern never moved, so did my girlfriend and the white blanket, they lied still in the darkness like a premonition, a symbol I couldn’t tell what it was. The monkey brains that we shared and ate together, were partly inside my girlfriend, somewhere deep inside her. Doesn’t she feel anything about it? Why doesn’t she throw up just like me? It could be all over her by now. I felt the urge to wake her up and tell her about everything, but I could not move myself to do it, it could be too late. So what, what is the point of waking her up and make her believes my story when she doesn’t feel the same like me. I closed my eyes and tiled my head up to face the ceiling, I heaved a quiet sigh.

I felt like a stranger, or was it because of the sight of her strange to me? Who is this girl laying on my bed, sleeping soundly and dead to the world? She is my girlfriend, I was telling myself. I don’t feel the same to her like before. How can that be? We were like a happy couple a few hours back and more. I tried to summon my memories of her, those sweetest moments I spent with her, those holidays we spent straying ourselves in some European countries, the electrified experience when I first saw her, her innocent smile, the way she tugged my arm in hers, all that and it all seemed like distant away now. I visualized these scenes in my brain but it only appeared like an old film aged twenty or more years ago, it had lost colors, it was all black and white and with images broken and scratched. As soon as I summoned up the scenes, I lost the detail of her face or if I thought hard about her face, the stage we set in was lost into space, there wasn’t any complete picture that I could lean myself to.

She was still in the same position, the light pattern never changed. The air-conditional ticking dully on top of the wall, more cold air blew into my room, filled up the space between me and her. The cold air couldn’t connect me and her. However it could only form a wall of mist that blocked my vision of her, making our distance further and further away. How can I go about telling her tomorrow? It just doesn’t make sense, she will be puzzled, she will be thinking it over and over again, yet more questions pop up and she will be more puzzled, eventually it might weight her down. It will never end. And what if I just let it be? I don’t tell her anything and we continue our life as usual. But she bound to know it one day, then what? Only that time I tell her the story happens long time ago, it ends up the same, it might cause more pain. I didn’t know what I should do. I just stared blank at the finite space between her and the other half of the bed, for how long I wasn’t too sure, time was like frozen.

She might not need me and neither will I need her anymore. I picked up a Marlboro light from the side table and lit it up with my favorite lighter. I puffed a smoke into the still air before down the cigarette into ashtray. The smoke conjured an image of a white spirit in the air then it disappeared. I weighted the lighter in my palm, it felt solid and heavier than before. I couldn’t explain why, but something inside me definitely changed. I was sure of it. I don’t feel the same of her like yesterday, I was telling myself as I stared at her sleeping face. She doesn’t attract me that much like before, or maybe not at all already. Her face lost her color, she had never slept like this before and she doesn’t look that good when she is sleeping now, nor anything of her I fond of anymore, and it just started a few minutes ago. I laughed to myself, a silent laughter, accepting the inevitable truth.

I knew the earth hadn’t stopped revolving on its axis and it hadn’t stopped orbiting the sun ever since. Not once it stopped and looked back. It just won’t wait. And I knew that; a few years down the tricky path, if we happen to walk pass each other, we will not say hello to each other. In fact we might not recognize each other already. It was absolutely absurd come to think about it but it will happen to us, to our ever fluctuated human mind. I could not get it back then, but I started to understand it now. She will continue her life as usual, wake up seven AM, make bread toasts with fruit gem, drink coffee, go to work on time, meet her boyfriend after work, they have sex every time they meet and it will not be me whom inserting into hers. But I wasn’t jealous at the thought, not anymore. It was just funny, even now I think so.

Another thing I realized for sure; I won’t be going back to Super Tanker again and I won’t be eating monkey brain anymore, not with anyone else. Without our visit, their business will still run as usual. The tiny man welcomes customers and sits them to the seats while the man in Greek God mask overlooks the whole scenes in quiet. His true identity will forever remains as mystery.