Does six o’clock have a fixed time division? That was the question that came out of somewhere on your mind. However, you were not really sure about the answer, even though you had prepared it carefully. You thought all this time people have alternately called it morning, evening, or night. In this city, you have often been disputing the validity of six o’clock.
At that time, you were sitting listlessly on a park bench, located not far from the bamboo scaffolding that supports a new government building. Your view was surrounded by skyscrapers. You have just finished your work. There, you usually spend the broken night, observing the group of worried people in front of you.
A moment later, you glimpsed at the lanyard on your pale, sweaty neck. The object jumped by itself, circled the top of your head for a second, and twinkled like a star. Along with it, your cell phone shot into the sky and cracked into pieces. Your Casio, which your lover gave you on your birthday months ago, was no different; exploding like New Year’s fireworks. The only thing intact was the lanyard, which glided while intoning a hymn, before reminding you of the days that just passed by, without warning.
You were not mistaken, that lanyard frankly whispered a series of words with meanings given specifically for you. You then realized that it was already past six o’clock and the office gate was already filled with people who were about to leave for home. Meanwhile, you, alone on a park bench, are trapped and struggling with that freak lanyard again. You cursed silently.
“Don’t you want to swim at the bus stop?” the thing quizzed softly, “there’s a motionless ocean there.”
“Swim? How?” you responded briefly.
“Don’t pretend to act like a fool.”
You did not respond immediately. Nevertheless, your brain instantly agreed. You have also seen this ocean these days at the transit station and even under the bridge that lies across from your office. You discovered that you could easily dive between the poles and the speakers, or float limply above the metal canopy. But, you told the strange blue thing, it was getting late.
“In this city, we don’t get paid for the things we love. Keep this in mind: being naive and soft will destroy you,” the words of that tiny lanyard directly covered your ears.
“Is time really created for destruction?” the riddle tumbled out of your mouth.
“What kind of joke is that?”
“You don’t understand, humans should be able to make peace with time.”
In the next step, you catch and put the lanyard on the bench, right next to the cigarette box which is still neatly packed.
***
The first cigarette had been burned. You pondered the true form of time, something that you say continues to be eroded by its own life. In fact, you had looked at it once across the platform. You could vaguely imagine its face grinning like a bloodthirsty psychopath, like a centipede crawling silently on a giant billboard.
Ah, precisely, a multi-faced centipede.
Lately, you have repeatedly seen that centipedes hunting down those people, those humans, including you. But for some reason, they did not pay attention. And somehow, only you can see that unpleasant creature. Your heart is filled with anxiety, trying to tell them, but failed.
“Whereas, that dreadful centipede is everywhere, slithering all around,” you mumbled.
You also learned that a murder has occurred. Yes, a series of murders, which were intensively carried out by that creature. That was the torture phenomenon you have been observing lately. The homicide actually happened not so quickly, but not too slowly either.
The event was as smooth as a cluster of atmosphere that gradually faded from memory, not causing a single scream. And the more you appreciated its existence, the more you were convinced that the centipede was an imaginary slayer that would slice you sluggishly with a blunt knife.
You then rushed as fast as lightning to your regular coffee shop, the only place where you did not find the creature. Nodeles, the name of the coffee shop, has a fairly remote address on the outskirts of the city. The condition was both overgrown and dirty, with a tin roof and covered in various types of graffiti on the walls. One of the scratches that you like to read: “Eradicate Corruption, Impoverish Corruptors!”
Mang Kigi, the keeper and owner of Nodeles, greeted you politely. In this city, apart from being celebrities because of their good looks, men from mountainous areas selling coffee are commonplace. His tone was wavy, as if his throat was filled with thousands of freshly picked coffee beans.
Every time you visit Nodeles, all that appears on your retina is space, and there is no centipede on the ceiling. The rules are clear: centipede are prohibited! In Nodeles, you believed that centipedes would never arrive. You then glanced at two or three people who were smiling while gulping their coffee.
Sitting next to the display case filled with instant noodles and a few slices of bread, you finally enjoy your angry life. You could take a little breath. That’s what might make you feel calm. Ah, is not life just a search for tranquility? Is not tranquility another name for sustenance?
“Here, those centipedes won’t gnaw you,” Mang Kigi resumed his words while stirring the warm sweet tea.
Mang Kigi’s impressive story during his lifetime suddenly rang in your ears. It cannot be denied that you are very delighted when you hear stories that do not involve a herd of centipedes in them. Or maybe you felt jealous, envious of people who were able to control those centipedes, who were able to turn back and stab them.
You then wondered, is it true that the only thing in this world that is impossible to buy is a centipede? A handful of people try to beat it using various methods: using patrols to break through traffic jams, using assistants to complete mountains of work files, and even bribing officials to ensure the continuity of mega projects.
But at the end of the day, based on what you saw, what they received was nothing more than death. In the end, those creatures will pulverize them until they become splinters. Your mind suddenly flew in all directions, not knowing its destination. Not long after, you dodged the contents of your marrow, trying to avoid the chaos that emerged.
“Do you know what makes our mother tongue, our national language, different from others?” Mang Kigi asked in a deep voice.
You sipped your coffee while frowning.
“Just think of this, our language doesn’t use verbs that include a single centipede in them. The word pergi, for example, will be exactly the same whether you did it yesterday, today, or tomorrow, correct?”
After that, you peeked at the lanyard in your shirt pocket. The flat object suddenly rose again and hovered above the hot pot of porridge, attracting your attention with its ramblings that sound like the soliloquy of an old philosopher on a dimly lit hill. Later, it dragged your arm out of Nodeles, towards the crossroads filled with unease.
You glanced around. The lanyard said that the city is the hometown of loneliness. You nodded. In this increasingly decaying place, the object continued, loneliness was born from the womb of hustle, making humans always wary of centipedes.
“We no longer breathe in the womb and you have to learn to live side by side with that terrible creature,” the lanyard’s tone hardened, “remember, every hour is six o’clock, dammit!”
At this point, you said yes for the 22,102,024th time.
*****
Editor: Moch Aldy MA
