Story: gift of the gab
He couldn’t believe what he was hearing and started frantically flipping through his notes. It didn’t work, everything could be unreal, but it couldn’t be so obvious. He paused, then went back to his notes, trying to focus on what was being said. It was as if he had just arrived on Earth as if he was hearing words for the first time. He felt like an ignorant alien making his first contact with humans. His pen started to take notes with a reflex detached from his mind, he realized this by the distortion of the writing. He stopped, looked up from what he was writing, and looked at the salesman in front of him who is continuing his presentation at full speed. The salesman seemed to be giving a lecture on selling what was not there. He quickly glanced around the table and saw that everyone was listening with their mouths open. Maybe physically their mouths were closed, but the mouths of their minds were open. Perhaps that’s why nobody spoke up and objected.
As the presentation ended, the open mouths were filled with the stories told through the overflowing noses. At that moment, my pen dropped from my hand. As I leaned under the table, my ears were filled with a scream. The pen was dying, spilling ink all over the floor. My hand didn’t go to pick it up and the screams slowly subsided. When I returned to the table, noticed that the clock on the wall with only hour and minute hands had melted. It was not a Dali-esque melting but instead resembled a bland, shapeless blob of melted cheese on a cheap pizza. The cost of trying not to stop time had been high, all the energy of the place had accumulated on it, and the poor clock couldn’t take it. I was thinking that maybe the numbers had escaped at the previous meeting when my shoe popped off. It had landed three or five steps away but had fallen into the still-wet ink. Surprised by events that didn’t make sense, the sock released itself as soon as it saw the fresh air, freeing one of the toes. A small fingernail on a huge finger was singing anthems of rebellion, calling the other fingers to join it.
As I turned back to the table, I joined the laughter of those whose noses were eagerly wiped. I joined the laughter — without even realizing the meaning behind it — with a dead pen on the floor, a shoe in ink that hadn’t dried yet, and a nail in rebellion. It might have been the most meaningless laughter I had ever participated in, but I was far away from all meaning.
Maybe that’s why I didn’t speak up and object. I just looked at the woman in front of me, and our eyes met. She was looking around as if she had come into the world for the first time. I looked at her as if it were my last time seeing the world. She felt uncomfortable, picked up her bag from the floor as she got up, and saw the ink dripping on the table as she started to collect her bag without even joining in the laughter. In the forest of meaninglessness, curiosity is like a fast-growing mushroom. When she looked under the table to find the source of the ink, what she saw made her eyes pop out of her head. Her ears were exposed to unheard-of songs, her mind pierced through the darkness within, and her heart had reached its fastest pace ever. It was as if she began to accompany the chubby finger’s tiny nail.
— — — — — —
Written by me, then translated from Turkish to English with DeepL (free version), ChatGPT (GPT 3.5), and Google Translate. Finally, edited by me and ChatGPT.
— — — — — —
