IT WAS INDEED A VERY DEEP GRUDGE TO WATCH THE HUNTERS FIRE ON THE BEAR. It crawled and hardly let out a sarcastic moan which was resonant along the slightest movement of the dense and freezing air around. And that was finally renescence -- a deadly blur view of the corpse which was then evaporated along with its soul that has been encroached on.
My eyes closed. The sense touched me again. The familiar but unfathomable magical abracadabra flushed into my vision. As the very essence of this particular grief-stricken memory came into emergence and started enthusing in its stark contents, I was finally diving into my abyss of hallucination.
It nearly formed half a decade since what happened that winter in Hokkaido. With all my old buddies, a trip to this angelic place was almost tantamount to wandering in the cradle of the beauty of Oceania. We booked a resort for two weeks of group living amidst the enormous and gorgeous valley profoundly surrounded by thick, white forests. From a certain distance, the chimney of the little resort and the soot that paced vertically up into the air with a regular rhythm can already be seen.
This winter was just perfect for vacation. We played poker all night and ate steamboat on that teeny-weeny wooden table that was crafted neatly and beautifully. Despite the hardly describable sum of money needed for the expense of eating and living and footing the bill, it was rather worthwhile to stay here enjoying the ultimate breeze of coolness and relief.
Snowboarding was the chief game that played the crucial role as to quench our boredom. Cold, it was snowing out there. The sky darkened by and by yet we insisted on boarding. It was too difficult to suppress the thirst and need to accelerate on the plain white snow ahead of us. We couldn't even be patient to just glance at the plan view of the map for one or two seconds -- the ice boards, now having five pairs of ravenous feet securely fit and tied along with, were the only radars applicable.
It started then. The freezing snow was like ice-made daggers that combated with my inner defense against the abjectly frosty surrounding. Soon an epiphany twinkled and eventually in hurry nascence, emerged within my logic sense of thinking. I didn't want to get defeated in this race with all these natural facilities presented right in front of me. Nastily, I freed myself and took some strength, with that I rotated and felt as if the ground revolved beneath my nearly unstable figure -- a perfect fifty-degree slant towards my left, still speeding. Cool, thought myself quite aggressively, might as well duh -- rendezvous with them all after personal rest yeah. I'm going to have a long rest down there with this velocity driving me along this deserted hillside that looked much steeper, much advantageous for my need for haste.
I imagined rocketing downhill like lasers now. The snow never had stopped nor had it receded somehow, but it soon condensed into more watery particles showering the entire field, which was just flipping from my view pages by pages. I didn't have an inkling of how much on hell the temperature now was, but it was bitingly cold, as though the snow and ice simply penetrated my thick woven jacket and deeply rested themselves in my blood vessels through one superficial layer and another...
The snow was incredibly heavy now. Never on earth had I met an outrageous climate like this. My front view, in distorted version now, still shortened hastily feet by feet. I never had realized until the fierce snow surprisingly receded and eventually stopped later all of a sudden. I tilted my dizzy skull and gazed on top of me, and through the misty pane of my goggles, in nascent amusement I noted an indistinct mosaic pattern of the forest canopy. I was in the forest now.
An abrupt flush of anxiety bubbled in my train of thoughts, ungraciously jerking my mind forth and back. I stopped boarding and halted in the midst of nowhere. Subconscious commanded me to tie the snowboard onto the back of my frozen spine. I maneuvered every item on me and adjusted them into correct positions, I felt desperate to peering into what would come into my view next. It was later then I noticed the front part of my snowboard posed a few clear linings of cracks. Perhaps it was the forest floor that exerted a force against it as I opposed the friction before I woke to my unseemly visit. I paced slowly and carefully to stabilize my figure as the snow was too thick along the unknown path I took in deep hesitancy. It was hapless being here. The snow, flakes now, whispered something faint I couldn't possibly comprehend.
Disheartening, I held to a tree trunk for support. I was too fed up to continue pacing into nowhere within the still thickening mist. It occurred to me to insert my palms into the two side pockets at the bottom part of my jacket. Fate, I imagined being toyed, being a laughing stock by he who was named sarcasm, would I simply just die in this deadly maze which I hardly had the due denial saying that me myself being miserable here wasn't a root of my filthy fault? Options were clear, and I chose diving into this hazard; I was the one who did the choice.
Still managed to breath, nay, gasp in bewilderment and astonishment; I pulled my hood further down to my nose level. I questioned my faith, would I just have the slightest fuel in me as to really get me out of this nightmare? The thought echoed around, still a blank thing -- nothing really did return.
Being left stranded alone, confined in this invisible cul-de-sac, I couldn't help searching for God's words -- please, prognosticate for me for only this once.
No reply, still.
I slowly resigned to kneeling down by halves. Now the air I exhaled against the windy atmosphere was unexpectedly renewed by a whole new, strange and odd scent. It was an illusion, I thought convincingly. Half a loaf is better than no bread, a stupid philosophy which I was compelled to follow now pulled my feet forward. I held out my right hand which balled into a frozen fist now and shook vigorously towards where the scent might have originated. As soon as that scent befell onto me as a sense too faint and dim, an owl appeared into view, taking me by astonishing surprise; it shrieked so loud that it made me halted.
And now my sixth sense magnetized my vision downwards to look at my feet, which now scrambled into a hidden cross under the sponge of thick snow. It startled me. At instant, I lost my entire balance and stumbled backwards. I barely had sufficient consciousness to realize that it was a tiny hill behind me and as these images shot into my shocked and bewildered complexion just in time, I was rolling and tripping along the gradient of the hill with tiny stones and frosted snowflakes ramming to and fro around me. Still in rough and hasty motion, I instantly dozed off into deep unconsciousness.
A mixed variety of hallucinations that could hardly be caught into sense seemed like nonsensical cries and bombardments circling my mind. Darkness and fear shouted all around me in anguish and slowly burned my nerves into dried, contorted ashes. Throughout this catastrophe contented with grief and fright, all I could do was to stay calm in virtual darkness.
A small and tiny force pressed on me. The sense was real and unreal at the same time. But slowly that object now generated a little heat around my arms and feet. I couldn't open my eyes, but it was indeed comfortable. It was hard to relinquish the temporary relief now to the mundane reality out there.
The heat expanded and it convinced me to open my lethargic eyes. The distorted view slowly revealed to me and it was first unbelievable. In front of me -- a huge gray bear who posed almost nil offensiveness, laid my head onto its bare and furry chest. Aghast, I thought of escaping, but my feet were entangled to the ground, and it was surprisingly comfortable and the warmth really did shelter my nauseated awareness. Most of all, I felt safe. It slept, too -- with a human, who was so weak and vulnerable that presented to him as no more than an easy prey which, normally, it should have simply taken for granted. It was too strange, too odd to feel even the slightest sense of comfort and relief within its mighty chest. A strange thing, I thought in utter stupefaction.
I fixed my eyes on its complexion -- relaxed, peaceful, harmonious, etc. etc. more words to describing that. In wonder of amusement I discerned the situation whether it was real or totally phony that was merely a phantasy, a gift, a consolation right at the threshold of the entrance of heaven, a soothing sanctuary built solely for me. But this tendency of discretion in me was paralyzed and overwhelmed by the comfort I did truly feel now. It felt much warmer, and livelier, much more hopeful than I could have imagined. I slowly closed my tiring eyes -- I prayed for a miracle, a wonder that will appear in front of me after I reopened these eyes. It only seemed impossible, but at least, still hopeful -- hope, the last thing I shall lose my grip of.
Eventually I reopened my eyes. At that split of a second, what came into my auditory sense was a cocking sound of a familiar rifle too vivid against my awaking response. Over-audible, I begged something would stop that. Time always ignore the rules, cried an annoying repetition within me, and bullet is just as rapid as that... The cocking sound never had forsaken evolving into explosion before the fragile seconds might at least suffice my nerves' reaction to explain -- to explain everything -- it wasn't harming me, muttered the inordinate craze now quaking inside me, it sheltered -- hopeless, totally hopeless, was the message on the frontier straight after the bloody murder was done. Full stop, I minded. It all ended right after one second and the poor creature's mourning and struggling and hypertension and roaring and gasping and wobbling relatively terminated.
I drifted in and out of my range of belief. I didn't want to choose to believe. All of it was a dirty concoction of the dark blood, still flushing out from the giant's skull, and the inexorably flooding adrenaline inside me.
The two hunters brought me back to the resort.
The untold memory never succeeded to wipe itself off from my still disoriented mind. Never had I confided it to anybody else. Alas, I didn't want to restraint myself within this terrible experience of agony and woe.
Time always ignore the rules, thought myself in confounded retrospect, and innocents are who this hateful culprit victimized, always.
I didn't want it to succumb to death, to die, merely because of me.
Authored by H.C.Lai
~2009.9.3~
My eyes closed. The sense touched me again. The familiar but unfathomable magical abracadabra flushed into my vision. As the very essence of this particular grief-stricken memory came into emergence and started enthusing in its stark contents, I was finally diving into my abyss of hallucination.
It nearly formed half a decade since what happened that winter in Hokkaido. With all my old buddies, a trip to this angelic place was almost tantamount to wandering in the cradle of the beauty of Oceania. We booked a resort for two weeks of group living amidst the enormous and gorgeous valley profoundly surrounded by thick, white forests. From a certain distance, the chimney of the little resort and the soot that paced vertically up into the air with a regular rhythm can already be seen.
This winter was just perfect for vacation. We played poker all night and ate steamboat on that teeny-weeny wooden table that was crafted neatly and beautifully. Despite the hardly describable sum of money needed for the expense of eating and living and footing the bill, it was rather worthwhile to stay here enjoying the ultimate breeze of coolness and relief.
Snowboarding was the chief game that played the crucial role as to quench our boredom. Cold, it was snowing out there. The sky darkened by and by yet we insisted on boarding. It was too difficult to suppress the thirst and need to accelerate on the plain white snow ahead of us. We couldn't even be patient to just glance at the plan view of the map for one or two seconds -- the ice boards, now having five pairs of ravenous feet securely fit and tied along with, were the only radars applicable.
It started then. The freezing snow was like ice-made daggers that combated with my inner defense against the abjectly frosty surrounding. Soon an epiphany twinkled and eventually in hurry nascence, emerged within my logic sense of thinking. I didn't want to get defeated in this race with all these natural facilities presented right in front of me. Nastily, I freed myself and took some strength, with that I rotated and felt as if the ground revolved beneath my nearly unstable figure -- a perfect fifty-degree slant towards my left, still speeding. Cool, thought myself quite aggressively, might as well duh -- rendezvous with them all after personal rest yeah. I'm going to have a long rest down there with this velocity driving me along this deserted hillside that looked much steeper, much advantageous for my need for haste.
I imagined rocketing downhill like lasers now. The snow never had stopped nor had it receded somehow, but it soon condensed into more watery particles showering the entire field, which was just flipping from my view pages by pages. I didn't have an inkling of how much on hell the temperature now was, but it was bitingly cold, as though the snow and ice simply penetrated my thick woven jacket and deeply rested themselves in my blood vessels through one superficial layer and another...
The snow was incredibly heavy now. Never on earth had I met an outrageous climate like this. My front view, in distorted version now, still shortened hastily feet by feet. I never had realized until the fierce snow surprisingly receded and eventually stopped later all of a sudden. I tilted my dizzy skull and gazed on top of me, and through the misty pane of my goggles, in nascent amusement I noted an indistinct mosaic pattern of the forest canopy. I was in the forest now.
An abrupt flush of anxiety bubbled in my train of thoughts, ungraciously jerking my mind forth and back. I stopped boarding and halted in the midst of nowhere. Subconscious commanded me to tie the snowboard onto the back of my frozen spine. I maneuvered every item on me and adjusted them into correct positions, I felt desperate to peering into what would come into my view next. It was later then I noticed the front part of my snowboard posed a few clear linings of cracks. Perhaps it was the forest floor that exerted a force against it as I opposed the friction before I woke to my unseemly visit. I paced slowly and carefully to stabilize my figure as the snow was too thick along the unknown path I took in deep hesitancy. It was hapless being here. The snow, flakes now, whispered something faint I couldn't possibly comprehend.
Disheartening, I held to a tree trunk for support. I was too fed up to continue pacing into nowhere within the still thickening mist. It occurred to me to insert my palms into the two side pockets at the bottom part of my jacket. Fate, I imagined being toyed, being a laughing stock by he who was named sarcasm, would I simply just die in this deadly maze which I hardly had the due denial saying that me myself being miserable here wasn't a root of my filthy fault? Options were clear, and I chose diving into this hazard; I was the one who did the choice.
Still managed to breath, nay, gasp in bewilderment and astonishment; I pulled my hood further down to my nose level. I questioned my faith, would I just have the slightest fuel in me as to really get me out of this nightmare? The thought echoed around, still a blank thing -- nothing really did return.
Being left stranded alone, confined in this invisible cul-de-sac, I couldn't help searching for God's words -- please, prognosticate for me for only this once.
No reply, still.
I slowly resigned to kneeling down by halves. Now the air I exhaled against the windy atmosphere was unexpectedly renewed by a whole new, strange and odd scent. It was an illusion, I thought convincingly. Half a loaf is better than no bread, a stupid philosophy which I was compelled to follow now pulled my feet forward. I held out my right hand which balled into a frozen fist now and shook vigorously towards where the scent might have originated. As soon as that scent befell onto me as a sense too faint and dim, an owl appeared into view, taking me by astonishing surprise; it shrieked so loud that it made me halted.
And now my sixth sense magnetized my vision downwards to look at my feet, which now scrambled into a hidden cross under the sponge of thick snow. It startled me. At instant, I lost my entire balance and stumbled backwards. I barely had sufficient consciousness to realize that it was a tiny hill behind me and as these images shot into my shocked and bewildered complexion just in time, I was rolling and tripping along the gradient of the hill with tiny stones and frosted snowflakes ramming to and fro around me. Still in rough and hasty motion, I instantly dozed off into deep unconsciousness.
A mixed variety of hallucinations that could hardly be caught into sense seemed like nonsensical cries and bombardments circling my mind. Darkness and fear shouted all around me in anguish and slowly burned my nerves into dried, contorted ashes. Throughout this catastrophe contented with grief and fright, all I could do was to stay calm in virtual darkness.
A small and tiny force pressed on me. The sense was real and unreal at the same time. But slowly that object now generated a little heat around my arms and feet. I couldn't open my eyes, but it was indeed comfortable. It was hard to relinquish the temporary relief now to the mundane reality out there.
The heat expanded and it convinced me to open my lethargic eyes. The distorted view slowly revealed to me and it was first unbelievable. In front of me -- a huge gray bear who posed almost nil offensiveness, laid my head onto its bare and furry chest. Aghast, I thought of escaping, but my feet were entangled to the ground, and it was surprisingly comfortable and the warmth really did shelter my nauseated awareness. Most of all, I felt safe. It slept, too -- with a human, who was so weak and vulnerable that presented to him as no more than an easy prey which, normally, it should have simply taken for granted. It was too strange, too odd to feel even the slightest sense of comfort and relief within its mighty chest. A strange thing, I thought in utter stupefaction.
I fixed my eyes on its complexion -- relaxed, peaceful, harmonious, etc. etc. more words to describing that. In wonder of amusement I discerned the situation whether it was real or totally phony that was merely a phantasy, a gift, a consolation right at the threshold of the entrance of heaven, a soothing sanctuary built solely for me. But this tendency of discretion in me was paralyzed and overwhelmed by the comfort I did truly feel now. It felt much warmer, and livelier, much more hopeful than I could have imagined. I slowly closed my tiring eyes -- I prayed for a miracle, a wonder that will appear in front of me after I reopened these eyes. It only seemed impossible, but at least, still hopeful -- hope, the last thing I shall lose my grip of.
Eventually I reopened my eyes. At that split of a second, what came into my auditory sense was a cocking sound of a familiar rifle too vivid against my awaking response. Over-audible, I begged something would stop that. Time always ignore the rules, cried an annoying repetition within me, and bullet is just as rapid as that... The cocking sound never had forsaken evolving into explosion before the fragile seconds might at least suffice my nerves' reaction to explain -- to explain everything -- it wasn't harming me, muttered the inordinate craze now quaking inside me, it sheltered -- hopeless, totally hopeless, was the message on the frontier straight after the bloody murder was done. Full stop, I minded. It all ended right after one second and the poor creature's mourning and struggling and hypertension and roaring and gasping and wobbling relatively terminated.
I drifted in and out of my range of belief. I didn't want to choose to believe. All of it was a dirty concoction of the dark blood, still flushing out from the giant's skull, and the inexorably flooding adrenaline inside me.
The two hunters brought me back to the resort.
The untold memory never succeeded to wipe itself off from my still disoriented mind. Never had I confided it to anybody else. Alas, I didn't want to restraint myself within this terrible experience of agony and woe.
Time always ignore the rules, thought myself in confounded retrospect, and innocents are who this hateful culprit victimized, always.
I didn't want it to succumb to death, to die, merely because of me.
Authored by H.C.Lai
~2009.9.3~
