You know how it is.
You meet Her in some random place, far away from home. She is beautiful, exciting, multi-faceted, entertaining and, more importantly, She is everything that you’ve been craving. She is coy, and somehow She always seems to be averting your gaze. You ask Her a few questions about this and that, and the sheer sound of Her voice is enough to make your mind wander to the most fantastic places.
So you take Her to the best bar you know and offer to buy Her a drink, thinking it might loosen things up. But in the light fluttering brought on by the alcohol you say or think or do something that sets Her uneasy, and then there’s distance. She is still there, of course, hovering about the room, but never spending too long in your glance. You don’t know it, but She’s just as interested in you as you are in Her. Which is a lot.
But you are care free, so you spend the night socializing with your wingmen, and you have a great time. At some point, She leaves, but you don’t see Her go. You just carry on carousing until you pass the point of making sense. And that’s when you set out, broke and probably in the middle of some god-awful non-summer season, on some hour-and-a-half long journey to your bed, which might as well be on the moon.
And then at 3 am, when you are staggering home stoned, drunk, and alone (or so you think), your mind starts to wandering. Primordial, rarely seen combinations of chemicals splash through your neurons at irregular intervals. Colours and shapes take on new meaning in the early morning darkness, and then you start imagining things up. Another bunch of chemicals tumbles into your synapses and you get a flash of memory—bright as the dawn and nearly as glorious: shadow of an idea of a glimpse of Her face. It causes you to skip a beat and stop on the spot.
And so you, being a perfectly normal drunkard stumbling through suburbia, start singing at the top of your lungs. In honour of Her.
Repetitively. Out of key. It’s always something people might otherwise enjoy—like Beatles, in this case—if it weren’t being drunkenly brayed out to the street and darkness on repeat for thirty minutes. And then, when you’re almost completely out of air at the top of a hill, the most peculiar thing happens.
Everything changes.
It’s always the same; or very similar, anyway. The sound of an orchestra fills your head, and the moon cracks out like a brilliant silver yolk from a curiously puffy-looking egg, its light transforming the houses and the trees or whatever you’re nearby into cyclopean shapes both ominous and alien. And then an enormous dragon (or some flying thing) swoops out from behind a tree. You’re so drunk that it doesn’t really come as a shock. More of a pleasant surprise, like when you see a shooting star. So you just keep singing, like everything you’re seeing is emanating from your voice. You probably look (and sound) like a stupid cock. But that doesn’t occur to you. It’s very late and you are very intoxicated and high on
something else.
And suddenly She is with you, and you’re running incredibly fast through cloudscapes, singing about showing each other the world, and oddly it’s in perfect five-part harmony. There’s a choir over behind that dragon (or whatever).
But before you’re able to kiss Her, you realize you’re not in the sky at all. You’re in a deep forest filled with everyone you’ve ever known, but they’re Ewoks. And although you’re totally unable to understand the words that are coming out of their mouths, you somehow know what they are telling you. They are slowly being killed off by something in the air. And it’s coming from the plants. You have to save them! But can you?
You think it’s a bit like the plot from The Happening, which you recently watched just to laugh at Mark Wahlberg’s confused expression, but then the trees come alive and start dripping ichor, and it’s more like Lord of the Rings, only if it were directed by Guillermo Del Toro, which would totally have been sweet. Too bad he didn’t direct The Hobbit.
And then She comes back to you with your first pet dog, Rusty. His breath is strong and warm against your face as he leaps to hug you, as if you and he had never grown old. Suddenly you’re all on the moon, and She introduces you to a Ninja Princess named Mina who rides a magnificent golden stag and throws shuriken tipped with poison that only harms the unjust. Plus she is totally sexy. And you think all of that is fucking awesome! So you ignore the similarities to other pieces of literature and just go with it.
So you decide to team up in her quest against the harsh and unjust empire of human kind. But it is only then that you realize that you’re actually a soldier with commitments to King and Country, and there is a great war across the globe against the evil robotic empire. In this grim world, all of the people you have ever known are being mowed down by machine gun fire shot by warriors made of steel. Bombs fall from the sky. Buildings collapse. Few survive…
And then, when all seems lost, you’re actually saved by this Ninja Princess named Mina!
That sounds like a few other stories too, but it’s okay. You’re alive.
But wait!
Rusty is still in the building! And She is gone. You run back in to save Rusty, your dear friend. You find him there, but then you remember that he died a long time ago. He is dust, but those sweetly strange-smelling memories... they’re still alive. It seems like you might be able to escape when the world crashes down around you, and your eyes finally open.
And just like that, you wake up with a sore head and a hazy recollection of the night before. You roll over in your bed, and She is gone. Maybe She never came home with you, but you know you met Her at some point. The pillow still has Her smell. She was here.
You can just barely remember Her face and you’re not sure you ever even knew Her name.
Inspiration.
