Last night I couldn't sleep. Every time I was falling into the arms of Morpheus, howling gusts of wind hit the house with violence. I was turning in bed, when I heard a big, stunning thump. All the walls shook, and I had the feeling of falling out of bed.
She stood up suddenly, throwing away the duvet. I was as always slower, calmer. We stared at each other, in the cold darkness of the room, seeing the eyes of the other more with the mind's eyes than with the bodily's. All was silent again. Even the wind had dropped.
But there was something in the living room, we started to hear a squishy, soft, sound, and a foul smell which exhaled more and more. It was like a dumpster full of rotten sardines overturned in the living.
I felt her fiery look on my face, and it ignited my courage. I got up, and we tried to sneak as silently as we could in the other room. When I opened the door, I suddenly petrified myself. She stumbled on me, cursing under her breath, and we made an unwilling and unbalanced entry.
There were three glowing ghosts cluttering all the living room, stranded on the sofa like whales with a plankton's indigestion. Our living room is open-space with the kitchen on one side and the house entry on the other, but the glowing shapes were filling nearly every bit of space.
I thought I saw the double-leafed window wide open, with the curtain floating in the icy breeze of the night. Certainly there it was very cold, even more than in the bedroom, and I think only the frozen air kept the rotten fish smell at a bearable level.
Photo by Juhasz Imre from Pexels
We did not have time to put ourselves back together, that the first ghost spoke. It was the smaller of the whales, and was plasterd with fishbones. When it opened the huge mouth, ghostly thorns and scales splashed everywhere.
"I'm the ghost of the past whale", said with a raspy and cavernous voice. "When your words were worth nothing."
"Nice alliteration, you freak" she said mockingly behind me, before I nudged her, afraid to enrage the ghost.
"My name is Tamòrti", that thing continued without giving any sign of having heard. "If you don't want my wastage and my misery burden on you again, you must follow the way Fenisius showed you."
"Y-y-yes, I'll do it", I stuttered. Fenisius, my bizarre, volcanic, cunning, chameleonic friend. So this affair was the fault of one of his diabolical plots!
"Goooooood!" the rotten whale belched, fading in a cloud of fishbones.
"I'm Tepòssino" the second ghost said without giving us a break. When I looked better at it, it seemed to me that an entire school of silvery fishes moved in unison under its translucent skin. "I'm the ghost of the present whale. I've got many names, because I'm many. I'm Morayanne, I'm Impcod, I'm Snookerel, I'm Brysbass, I'm Byneedlefish, I'm Deacongereel..."
"I'm boredfish!" she blurted. Another nudge.
"I'm the many that become one, and from the smallness of many, the power of the one grows. You are one of the many, the smallest of all, but if you if you will act in unity you will find strenght." When the whale spoke, it seemed like many voices speaking in choir.
"I understand" I said, now more confident . The ghost nodded, and it was gone.
Only the third ghost whale remained in the freezy room. Alone it filled half the space. It was the bigger, fatter, sperm whale ever. Its skin was glowing white, but at a closer look, it also seemd composed by numerous fishes, or better, darting dolphins with tonic muscles and strong fins.
With a booming voice, it said: "I'm Mecojòni, the ghost of the future whale!"
"Oh, I need some popcorn" she said behind me.
"Listen careful, young mini-minnow!" the multi-dolphin sperm whale nightmare continued. "There will be hard times, times you will give up, times you will be fed up, but if the school of fish will continue to remain united, it will grow up, and in the end there shall be abundance for all, and strenght, and beauty, and a new sea to swim in like leaders! Keep on swimming, little mini-minnow! Keep on swimmmmmmmmmiiiiiiinnnngg...." the dolphins inside the sperm whale began to spin in a whirlwind faster and faster, until they disappeared in a milky glow, that a blink later was only the moon through the open window.
In the living room, there were only me, her staring at me with an upset look, and a light stink of fish.
"Tomorrow we'll have only a veg soup for dinner" she said. "The fish is too indigestible. Close that window and let's go to sleep!"
"Ah!" she added. "We'll better give a clean to the living, too."
This post is part of the 5 Minute Freewrite Contest.
All images are my own unless otherwise cited.
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