Senko Hanabi Dream
It burns away...
This is a short story I rushed for the Strange Pilgrims open call. It was rejected, so I’m posting it here with minor edits.
Romeo pressed on her lighter. It was a cheap thing, plastic and vivid red, its fuel tank half-full, yet its sparks would not make a fire.
She had a candle to light, and she was in a hurry. The more she hurried, the less the lighter cooperated. She tried again, and again, until a woman in a dress as red as the lighter stopped by her side.
“Need a light?”
The woman in red was holding a lit candle inside a glass beer mug. With a smile, she held it toward Romeo as if for a toast.
“Thank you.”
Romeo plunged the tip of her candle into the small flame. The fire passed from wick to wick, warm in the night.
“Name’s Carmen,” the woman in red said.
“Romeo,” she gave her own name in kind.
“Are you also a pilgrim?”
“That goes without saying.”
Their candles illuminated the gates, a ruined bike, a rusting mailbox on the wall. The edifice before them was long abandoned after its mall went bankrupt and its roof caved in, after the people who tried to live in it were chased out or arrested, after the goldfish that multiplied in its pooling water was removed with the water.
It was the carcass of a place killed many times over.
“I used to visit this place with my mother,” Carmen recalled with fondness. “There was a store for magazines, which my mother loved. I… Say, Romeo, are you also here for the old stores?”
“I am.” A pause. “And a little more than that.”
Romeo lifted her left wrist. The greenish glow-in-the dark hands of her watch indicated 11:56.
Each of the women produced a small slip of paper. They took turns inserting that inside the rusting mailbox.
A phone rang from inside the edifice, from the direction of the security office. One ring. Two. Three.
They heard footsteps, heavy, from boots. They were familiar with the well-worn boots and the old man in the boots: he passed away half a decade ago, a man who never smiled and never angered, the perfect doorman.
The gates lit from the inside and opened wide. It was silent and empty, and its light traveled no more than the confines of the sidewalk before the mall.
Had either of the women taken a step back, they would only see the ruins of the edifice, dark and collapsed, its gates sealed.
Carmen took a step forward. Romeo followed.
Mall music filled their ears. The aroma of food came from the direction of the food court and sweets stalls. People dressed like the era past filled the mall with laughter.
In the bright illumination of the mall, Romeo could see that Carmen, already gorgeous, was dressed like she was going on a formal date. The sight made Romeo hold her breath, and an incomprehensible feeling surged from her heart.
Carmen, too, studied Romeo. The latter was in her usual boyish clothing, jacket and jeans and sneakers. Her gaze lingered on the stainless steel wristwatch, counting the number of scratches and scars.
They both kept their candle alight, despite the bright light.
“You know the rules,” Carmen said in relief.
“We both know the base rules.”
Where the mall had a map, etched into a solid slab in the hubris that it would be lasting, there was a notice printed on many sheets of paper taped together, taped to the slab:
Welcome to Bloodstained Fingernail’s preserved Mall of □□□□□□! Bankrupt and shut down in 1997, taken over by ruffians in the same year and left for nature in 1999, I have salvaged this beauty from reality and encased it in a lasting dream.
But a dream is a fickle thing, and it turns into a nightmare all too quickly. To ensure a dreamy experience, please follow the rules:
1. Fire is the soul of Civilization! While this mall is fully illuminated by electric lights, fire is what keeps you safe. You’ve entered here in the light of a candle or lantern’s flame, and it will keep you safe by casting your shadows into safety. Do not let it out.
2. Time is the keystone. You may purchase any good from any store, as long as you only use money from 1997 and prior. Do not show anyone money from the future they will never see.
3. No mall is 24/7. Your stay here should not exceed 8 hours. Time your journey and leave on time. Out of courtesy, the mall will inform you of its closing time. Do not miss your cue.
4. No photography. As much as you may wish to keep a forever memory, and trust me that I understand, because I made this place, you do not want to look at any photo of this ghost. I have made this illusion with stage magic and the truth of stage magic is that it cannot withstand a different perspective.
5. You may eat and drink food from here. Offered, bought, stolen, they are all safe as long as they are offered by the stores within this mall. Eat food and drink liquids offered by other visitors at your own risk.
There, five rules, simple enough.
In the misfortune of your failure to adhere to the rules above, I cannot help you. The moment I finished this encased dream, I had exiled myself from this place, a price of my great work.
May you enjoy this dream for as long as it may last.
“What an outdated list of rules,” scoffed Romeo as she tore off the notice, revealing the map underneath.
A middle-aged woman approached with gratitude. “I can read the map now,” she said. “You wiped it well. The black oil is all gone.”
She had three eyes on the left side of her face and none on her right side. Her teeth were rather crooked, but each of them was pearly white.
Her voice was beautiful.
“You’re welcome,” Romeo said with a blank face.
The woman waved and looked for a store on the map. Though it was etched into a solid slab of plastic, it was ever-shifting, like reading inside a dream.
“Dead rule number 4, no photography.”
Romeo pulled a flip phone out of her pocket and took a photo of the map. Unlike the etched slab, the photo did not shift.
The map in the photo fit the mall.
“Send me your map.” Carmen produced her own phone. “We’ll stay in the same mall this way.”
They aligned their phones and transmitted the photo over the infrared link.
“So the rule really is all dead?” Carmen asked as she confirmed the map. “Is it limited to inanimate objects?”
“Nah.” Romeo took a picture of the mall and a picture of herself. “It’s safe.”
The photo of Romeo was in the same mall they were seeing with their eyes, well-lit and glorious.
The photo of the mall without the focus on a person yielded an unclear grey texture. It was very different from the darker noises of a picture taken in an area that was too dark, or the paler snow noises of a television receiving no transmission signals.
“It was always safe. Just a little gross, if you could see it clearly. Don’t light this photo up in an image editor.”
“Send that photo of you to me.”
Romeo was taken aback from the demand. Carmen, meanwhile, played with a strand of her own pretty brown hair and smiled with her eyes in the way of a she-cat.
“Please?”
She made her voice sweeter. The flickering light of her candle in the beer mug was making her face both more glamorous and more intimidating.
“If you wish…”
But Carmen did not offer her phone for the transmission right away. She threw her arm around Romeo, the phone in the same hand, her dress floating like the tails of a beautiful goldfish.
Quick as the blink of the eyes, she took a picture of them both.
“In exchange,” she said as she untangled herself from Romeo and her beet-red face, “I’m sending this to you. Hello? Earth to Romeo?”
“Ye-yes, sending.”
“You’re timid for a Romeo.”
“I didn’t…”
She wanted to explain the origin of her name, but Carmen had already walked away.
The mall was filled with people you’d only see in a dream: a colorful lady made of papier-mâché, a trio of monochrome old men jogging, a young couple endlessly talking about books, a grandfather with an arm growing out of his chest and another from his back. Carmen moved between them as if a goldfish in good water, her footsteps a dance; her candle, a guiding star.
In this mall, she cast no shadows, and neither did Romeo. They were not part of this memory, ghosts from a time outside. Yet Carmen fit this place.
Romeo followed her. She meant to, though the reason she came to this place was…
“Say, Romeo, which store did you come for? What did you write in your order request that you put in the mailbox?”
“A memory.”
“A memory?”
“Of a person. I had a partner before. Then I found myself alone. I thought a pilgrimage into old memories will help me.”
“Memories are the most sacred places.” Carmen caressed her glass mug. “A dead person can be revisited within a memory. What is yours like?”
“I did not say my person died.”
Carmen online gave her a sorrowful smile.
They moved into the food court, where Madame Meng sold her soup of forgetting, where Idun sold her fruits of youth. A two-legged pig and a pale-eyed rooster shared a grilled fish with lion eyes and human hands.
“What kind of partner? A romantic one?”
“I believe so.”
They moved out of the food court and into the stationery store, checking out all the holiday cards and fancy pens.
“A Juliet?”
“No, I don’t think so, you see, I am called Romeo because…”
And Carmen was out of the stationery store and into a glassware store. She was waiting with a glass mug matching her own.
“For you.”
“Thank you.”
The candle’s melting wax had dripped all over Romeo’s fingers. Once the candle was in the mug, she was safe from it.
“So, not Juliet.”
“No, because I am Romeo because…”
And Carmen had left the store. Romeo gave chase and found her in a women’s fashion store.
She was about to eat the free food and water.
“Don’t.” Romeo stopped her. “It’s…”
“A dead rule too.”
She put it down. There was a bit of green mould on her fingers.
“And the dresses, are they dead too?”
“Which store did you come here for?” Romeo interrupted her reverie. “You should go for it, quickly. The time here doesn’t flow right anymore, the cue…”
“I’m looking.” She stood up, her feet balancing on her high-heels. “I’m looking, dear.”
“We’re on the wrong floor if you’re looking for the magazine store. It’s in the underground, we’re on the first floor.”
“Hmm. Not sure that I want to go there.”
The underground was flooded. Fish with lion’s eyes watched from its black water, and when the women approached, the fish extended their small human hands like children asking for candy.
“Your memory, however,” Carmen mused, “should be in an electronics store. There’s one on the sixth floor.”
“Huh? Why would it?”
“You’re used to someone else taking care of your tools for you. Your Partner.”
She took the bright red lighter from Romeo’s chest pocket.
“Though she was feminine and loved dresses, she also liked electronics. You bought them for her.”
“I…”
“Come.”
The elevator was filled and the door would not close. A bear had overloaded it, and it could not be removed, as its eight legs got stuck in the walls.
The escalators were occupied by rolling girls. They curled up like pill bugs and rolled up and down, challenging each other to who could roll the fastest.
“Cute,” Carmen noted.
The stairs were waterfalls. Naked youths shaped like ancient Greek statues slid down the clear water once a while, vanishing into a pile of foam as they touched the floor.
Carmen’s high-heels did not slip in the slightest.
Romeo’s sneakers, betraying the expectation of sneakers, slipped as if walking on wet algae, as if the steps became loaches. She climbed the six-and-six flights of stairs as a true pilgrim: on her knees and praying at every step.
“There we are.” Carmen spoke with her back to Romeo. “Look, it’s watching us.”
The two women appeared on each of the television, their faces melting and their hands many tendrils.
When Carmen spun and faced Romeo, their faces were filled with uncountable small lights.
The mall’s announcement came alive. It spoke of an ending rather than a closing, and of a morning in warm blankets. It spoke of love and of remembrance, of a past that stretched into the future, of the tendril of a well-rooted plant seeking a home of sunlight and of rain.
In this message of love and despair, the death of the 3rd rule was confirmed.
“Your memory is in here,” Carmen said with the certainty of a prophet. “Go purchase it.”
Thankfully, it was not a television or a computer, which they could not afford. It was not within one of the many floppy discs or the cassettes. The camcorders were out. The vacuum cleaners and ovens and washers and dryers were definitely out.
The announcement repeated its ending time. Five minutes.
The memory was a nest of magnetic tape resting within a refrigerator. The memory was a tendril seeking a light of love outside the night of its box. The memory was etched in the hubris that everything of theirs would be lasting.
Sparks budded along the magnetic tape as Romeo took it, as was the memory of sharing a plastic box of leftover food with someone precious. She ran with it, the tape budding like the senko hanabi by the river of her childhood home.
At the checkout, the cashier gave her changes from the years of 2002 and 2003, confirming the death of the second rule.
Holding onto the last minute and the last rule of the dream, Romeo seized the tape, trying to find its beginning or ending. It was futile, she saw, as it…
As Carmen blew out their candles, violating the first and possibly the only surviving rule of the dream.
As the last candle went out, the mall went dark.
And the sparks of the tape shining like a hundred senko hanabi blossomed into tongues of fire.
“You’re Romeo because you won’t die until you find a Juliet.”
Carmen wrapped the burning tape around their necks like a scarf for lovers, like a binding for slaves, like infinity.
“And I’m Carmen.”
The fire did not hurt and made no smoke. Yet Romeo cried.
“You’re Carmen because a Carmen would never kill a Romeo.”
Carmen burnt with the tapes, smokes around her, same as the way they used to smoke together, passing the same cigarette between their lips.
“You’re Carmen because you’re a bad girl… but…”
Carmen approached as if for a kiss.
The kiss did not come, because Carmen’s a bad girl who did what she wanted. She moved past Romeo’s lips and to her ear, whispering like a temptress.
“Find me after you wake up.”
The last of the fireworks ended in ashes.
Senko Hanabi is a type of sparklers or handheld fireworks. I used to play with them as a child, and they can get very long, about a metre long, and it was certainly very long for a four year-old child. I remember the sparklers coiled in the plastic packaging, like a bundle of tapes without cassettes.
I wrote this story to recreate a feeling of dreams. Like when I read too much creepypasta and rules horror, and fell asleep with my phone still in my hand. Dreams like to weave nostalgic details together, but when we wake up and try to tell those dreams to other people, rarely people would feel the same way. Dreams tug only our own heart strings.
This work now have a companion piece in :
