Excuses, excuses

It was nearly noon by the time I managed to find my way out of my apartment. The air was already thick with the sticky heat that daily grips this little island. The night before had been nothing short of restless; mosquitoes kept up a ceaseless raid on exposed skin and the damp stench of the hovel I was held up in would have allowed no rest anyway.

Now tired, hungry and entirely agitated by the swelling red bites that covered me, I found myself stuck in traffic because of a giant whale. The beast was laid out on the back of a truck, being taken somewhere for something. At this point, however, it was only succeeding in slowing traffic and drawing gawkers from the stores, cafes and dirty alleyways. They, in turn, slowed traffic to an unmerciful crawl. A traffic cop was trying in vain to open the lanes of traffic once again.

A stench rose from the drying beast and mingled with the smell of exhaust, roasting chickens and ducks, frying fish and rotting garbage. I was no longer hungry. I was growing more impatient with each passing second. The little motorbike I was on normally made most traffic problems irrelevant, but then again, I had never encountered a whale in traffic before.

The signal ahead of the truck turned and the cops hurried to push children and their parents from the lane and the whale lurched forward. With a clear line along the curb I hammered down on the throttle and threw myself around the side of the trailer on which the leviathan lay. I found myself coming along the underside of the beast and made my way forward to just about the midpoint. My progression along the beast was halted by another motorcyclist and his camera-toting passenger who seemed intent on taking every inch of the whale’s underbelly in close detail.

Already angered by my own tardiness I found this an unnecessary annoyance. I blew my meager horn, but to no avail. I looked for ways around them, but we were once again slowing as the crowds came into the street.

It may have been my eyes, but I nearly swore the whale was growing larger, as though it were drawing in a final breath. The skin looked stretched, taut as a painter’s canvas. As we stopped I heard a creaking noise and thought the truck bed must be splintering beneath the weight. Then a force I cannot describe threw me from my bike and sent me sliding into the storefront to my right.

I found myself unable to rise; not from pain or broken bones, but from slipping on something slick when I tried. I couldn’t see through the visor of my helmet from the same slime in which I sat. As I raised it clear of my eyes I couldn’t believe my eyes. Before me on its bed lay the whale with a gaping hole in its belly, burst like a balloon.

She looked at me in disbelief, as though I were making it up. I had to return home to shower, I protested, she wouldn’t have wanted me arriving a stinking pile of whale blood, guts and half digested tuna! But she would not be convinced by such a flimsy story. She got up from the table, announced she had finished her lunch and left me the bill as she walked away.


Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction: http://www.etaiwannews.com/Taiwan/2004/01/27/1075168255.htm