Issue #93

The Elbow of the Sky Doesn't Bend

by Fendy Satria Tulodo

I once met a bird that wasn't a bird, and it blinked twice with no eyelids before vanishing into a floor made of old mail. Things like this don't come up when people speak of time or truth. But if you stare long enough at a corner of a room you've never cleaned, you might hear the carpet breathing.

The boy, whose name was not important and probably never existed, woke up upside-down again. His ceiling had grown windows—real ones, with curtains and little flowerpots. This was the third time this week.

His mother used to say, "We don't own gravity, dear, it's borrowed." She stopped saying that after she floated through the toaster and didn't return. Now, he just eats cereal while standing on the wall, milk hovering near his mouth like a soft drone.

On Thursdays, he visits the Cabinet of Coughing Things. It lives in a hallway that didn't used to be there. You can only open it if you're sneezing. Inside, there's a glove that claps itself, a fish that hums recipes, and a tiny radio that only plays static from the future. He once tried to sell one of the items to a traveling ear—but that's another incident.

He attends school once a month, but it's only held when the moon hiccups. His teacher is a pair of glasses with no lenses. The other students are shapes that change when you try to name them. Last time, he got a C-minus in "Non-Linear Navigation" because he walked forward and arrived yesterday.

At night, the wallpaper rearranges itself. One evening, it turned into a subway map of someone else's memories. He followed it, crawling like a bug, and ended up inside a clock tower made entirely of questions.

Someone asked him, "Do you believe in square roots of laughter?" He nodded, and everything smelled like burnt ink.

He's not sure if he's dreaming. Or if dreams are dreaming him. But either way, he's begun writing letters to furniture, just to be polite.

Sometimes, when he blinks, his face changes. Last Tuesday, he had six noses and the ability to speak Umbrella. None of his friends noticed—mostly because they're all imaginary. Even the janitor who cleans his thoughts once a week says, "Consistency is a myth. Like spoons that don't lie."

The boy has no plan. Not really. He just walks through walls made of maybe, and sometimes sits inside his own elbow to think.

When asked, "Where do you live?"
He answers, "Somewhere left of morning."

And that is entirely true.

The days start and stop like clocks that tick backward. No one ever tells him what time it is, because time doesn't have a handle. The boy had learned this after trying to wind the clock, only to find that it ticked when he wasn't paying attention. Still, he learned the quiet dance of waiting, watching the world bend and twist like an old photograph.

There's a shop down the street that sells memories on wooden shelves. No one goes there, because people can't find it unless they forget the way. The boy visits once a month when his shoes decide they need a vacation. He has never bought anything there. But sometimes he sits, waiting for the owner to return. The shopkeeper is a man made of dust, and he's usually busy sweeping up his own thoughts.

"Do you want anything today?" the boy asks, for the hundredth time.

The shopkeeper pauses, then looks up from a corner. "Can't say...," he mutters, eyes narrowing just a fraction.

"I was here last week," the boy reminds him.

The shopkeeper thinks, his face falling apart into particles. "Then you weren't."

They both understand. The boy never stays in one place long enough to be remembered.

One Tuesday, the floor turned into the sky. It had been a slow, quiet transformation. One second his boots were planted firm—then gravity forgot him. He glanced down to find clouds curling between his toes like smoke.

"This isn't real," he said, but then again, nothing ever was.

He'd been halfway through some book—philosophy or cosmic nonsense—when his focus slipped. The pages warped in his hands, twisting into something... else.

Unrecognizable. Alive with a dissonant, twitching vibration—like a gutted piano still trying to sing.

Floating is an odd thing. You don't fall, but you don't exactly rise either. You just... exist between. The boy found himself in a place where he could see everything and nothing. There were trees that spoke only in numbers, and roads that led nowhere. The air tasted like a place he could never visit, but he could smell it, thick and unripe.

He started walking. There was no path, just the soft press of gravity against his chest. The world had flipped on its head—somehow, it didn't bother him. After all, his ceiling had already become his floor before.

Then, he came across a window. It was the first window he had seen that wasn't attached to anything. It floated alone in the sky. The window was cracked, and through it, he saw a man holding an apple. But the apple wasn't red. It was the color of silence.

"You want this?" the man rasped, words gritty as sand.

"No," the boy lied. He wasn't certain he wanted anything now.

A dry chuckle. "Nothing's free."

"I've got nothing," the boy said, the hollowness in his chest agreeing.

"Everybody's got something," the man countered. The window creaked wider, spilling in the scent of overripe fruit.

The boy stared at his own feet. When had he last moved them?

Time here was shattered—had always been. He sensed the fragments skittering away, like dropped puzzle pieces, but didn't reach for them. What was the point?

He had never really known where he was going, anyway. So he sat down, right where he stood, and let everything swirl around him. The world was a whirlpool of strange things, most of which were impossible.

But there was one thing he knew. He knew that if he looked long enough, the world would stop asking questions. It would stop giving answers too. And everything would be quiet.

In that quiet, he could finally hear his own heartbeat. But that's a sound you forget to listen to, because it doesn't fit the noise.

When dawn came, he found himself floating—feet tangled in clouds, the hardwood gone to swirling fog beneath him. He rose, grasping at yesterday's memories, but they dripped through his fingers like rain that vanished before hitting earth.

He would probably forget, like he always did. It didn't matter. It wasn't important anymore. Because if you never reach the end of something, you can never really say it's over.

And anyway, who cares about endings when you're only ever somewhere left of morning?