I am sitting, listening to the fans whirr several meters above my head. Like all public places, everything is toned down to a gentle muted murmur, and the only sounds that jerk this curtain away is the occaisional cry of a gurgling child. Things roll overhead thumpily like mythical rotund egg-men jumping in joyous glee.
Yesterday the Canadian soccer team arrived, and I found myself looking way up at their height and their bags. I passed out, and sometime afterwards I found myself waving at the bus with the soccer players inside, folded neatly like collapsible pocket umbrellas in small sardine cans. Scrunched up, they were looking out the windows staring tiredly and confusingly outside at our uniform-clad selves. A few of them waved back, and as the bus left we walked back, evidently pleased with ourselves, for contagious grins were spreading across us like the seventeenth television episode of SARS.
As I step foot outside, there was a slight fog, just enough that everything had been blurred with a medium gaussian. Everyone else was jogging, hunks of flesh jumping up and down under sweaty shirts, and somehow I didn't feel repulsion but rather a strange warmth towards these people. I ran, too, and I caught a bus, 'beep'ed my card and sat with a slight sigh of tiredness in a plastic seat.
I woke up. Everyone was planning to go; everyone had the jitters of pre-flight excitement and nervousness. I was only disinterested; there is something about working in an airport that is distinctively attractive, like sitting at a river and watching the water flow by. Everything is different, from the shoes to the hair; you can see how every single piece of clothing has been prepared for these people, how they know where to go. Ten dollars, a fortune, and I fall asleep. My life must be a set of negatives polka-dotted with spots of bleached white unconsicousness. In and out. The third floor is abuzz, the first is gently muted. The mute itself is smothering, so I Stop, Drop, and Roll and barely crawl out from underneath the burning flames.
I raise my arms a little higher, and people begin to follow me, fanning out behind me like ripples in water distorted by the Doppler effect. A sonic boom spreading outwards, I walk, and people fall outwards as I approach. I am the Bringer. I hold my sign so that everyone may see, so that everyone will follow. I lead my obedient band of sheep towards the sky, towards light. The bright light.
At two, the sunlight streams in between glass and steel poles, a sullen, cold, yet queerly compelling contraption. Beautiful, like the open cage to a bird. Overhead, I hear engines rumbling, people walking, suitcase wheels rolling, and I can almost see this world tumbling over and over in endless circles, downhill.