close and said, “I want to try something. Hang on a moment.”
The Dream King closed his eyes and let all his facial muscles relax, and an expression of serenity seemed to spread throughout his body. The air around his dark clothes shimmered, and a low vibration traveled up my arm and into my body, to settle in my stomach. Staticky hissing filled my ears and intensified to nigh unbearable levels, and then just as abruptly stopped.
It was completely quiet. The noises of the thousand-plus people milling around the area had been utterly silenced. I wondered if I had gone deaf. But then I looked around. Each person was frozen in place, caught in amber, as it were. The Dream King had stopped time.
He opened his eyes and looked down the queue, then turned back to me. “Wonderful,” he said, smiling brightly. “I had no idea if that would work.”
“How have you done this?”
“An old man in a shack in Guangzhou taught me how, in exchange for a copy of Sandman #74. It was the last issue he needed to complete his collection. Funny, he didn’t even want it signed.”
“Um. Okay.”
“I want to apologize for not being able to take more time with you. Grateful as I am for this career and this wonderful life of mine, it does mean I’m stretched quite thin. However, we do have a few minutes to ourselves now.”
“Can you show me The Secret Handshake?” I asked, half in jest.
He smiled and said, “Of course. You won’t remember it by tomorrow anyway, but still.”
And so he showed me The Secret Handshake, and How to Talk to Cats, and Which Sushi Increases the Flow of Qi, and Which Shade of Black is Repellent to the Elder Gods. In more ways than one, it was magical. One of my literary heroes was sharing his hidden knowledge, despite his exhaustion and his commitments. And he was right, I remembered none of it the following day except for the fact the he had shown these Mysteries to me.
Finally, he said, “Think it’s time we returned to the real world?” and then he let go of my hand. Sounds and motion rushed in as time resumed, and I had to grip the table as the accompanying dizziness unsettled me. I took a breath and looked up. The Dream King glowed, and I smiled.
“Thanks so much, Neil.”
“You’re very welcome. My best to your wife and baby daughter.”
And then he turned back to the queuing hordes and resumed his duties.
Lion City Daikaiju
That night, Singapore's landmarks declared war: the Merlion lurched off its concrete pedestal and flooded the riverfront with its eternally gushing masticatory fountain, catching untold numbers of tourists unawares, forced to leave behind their $20 mixed drinks and plates of tapas; the Raffles Hotel, in all its colonial splendor, leapfrogged across the downtown area, knocking over bank buildings and squashing flat petrol tankers and cars plastered with adverts; the twin metallic durians of the Esplanade curled into spiny balls of hedgehog lethality, and rolled over and through every upscale mall they could find, taking especial care to utterly demolish the shopping district on Orchard Road; the National Library took flight and glided to the MediaCorp building, dropping barrages of encyclopedias and folios onto transmissions towers and backup generators, destroying the link between the viewing public and the badly acted and written serial dramas that filled the broadcast airwaves; the twin statues of the country's patron saint, Sir Stamford Raffles, one dark bronze and one white polymarble, lay siege to every construction crane in evidence, leaping nimbly from structure to structure, leaving bright yellow wreckage in their wake.
Who was to blame, the people cried, why has this happened, could it be Jemaah Islamiyah and that terrorist who escaped, or was it resurgent aggression from Japan, or could it be an intelligent group-mind of dengue-carrying mosquitoes, or revenge-seeking Americans with outrage and the image of a public caning in their minds, why oh why is
The Dream King closed his eyes and let all his facial muscles relax, and an expression of serenity seemed to spread throughout his body. The air around his dark clothes shimmered, and a low vibration traveled up my arm and into my body, to settle in my stomach. Staticky hissing filled my ears and intensified to nigh unbearable levels, and then just as abruptly stopped.
It was completely quiet. The noises of the thousand-plus people milling around the area had been utterly silenced. I wondered if I had gone deaf. But then I looked around. Each person was frozen in place, caught in amber, as it were. The Dream King had stopped time.
He opened his eyes and looked down the queue, then turned back to me. “Wonderful,” he said, smiling brightly. “I had no idea if that would work.”
“How have you done this?”
“An old man in a shack in Guangzhou taught me how, in exchange for a copy of Sandman #74. It was the last issue he needed to complete his collection. Funny, he didn’t even want it signed.”
“Um. Okay.”
“I want to apologize for not being able to take more time with you. Grateful as I am for this career and this wonderful life of mine, it does mean I’m stretched quite thin. However, we do have a few minutes to ourselves now.”
“Can you show me The Secret Handshake?” I asked, half in jest.
He smiled and said, “Of course. You won’t remember it by tomorrow anyway, but still.”
And so he showed me The Secret Handshake, and How to Talk to Cats, and Which Sushi Increases the Flow of Qi, and Which Shade of Black is Repellent to the Elder Gods. In more ways than one, it was magical. One of my literary heroes was sharing his hidden knowledge, despite his exhaustion and his commitments. And he was right, I remembered none of it the following day except for the fact the he had shown these Mysteries to me.
Finally, he said, “Think it’s time we returned to the real world?” and then he let go of my hand. Sounds and motion rushed in as time resumed, and I had to grip the table as the accompanying dizziness unsettled me. I took a breath and looked up. The Dream King glowed, and I smiled.
“Thanks so much, Neil.”
“You’re very welcome. My best to your wife and baby daughter.”
And then he turned back to the queuing hordes and resumed his duties.
Lion City Daikaiju
That night, Singapore's landmarks declared war: the Merlion lurched off its concrete pedestal and flooded the riverfront with its eternally gushing masticatory fountain, catching untold numbers of tourists unawares, forced to leave behind their $20 mixed drinks and plates of tapas; the Raffles Hotel, in all its colonial splendor, leapfrogged across the downtown area, knocking over bank buildings and squashing flat petrol tankers and cars plastered with adverts; the twin metallic durians of the Esplanade curled into spiny balls of hedgehog lethality, and rolled over and through every upscale mall they could find, taking especial care to utterly demolish the shopping district on Orchard Road; the National Library took flight and glided to the MediaCorp building, dropping barrages of encyclopedias and folios onto transmissions towers and backup generators, destroying the link between the viewing public and the badly acted and written serial dramas that filled the broadcast airwaves; the twin statues of the country's patron saint, Sir Stamford Raffles, one dark bronze and one white polymarble, lay siege to every construction crane in evidence, leaping nimbly from structure to structure, leaving bright yellow wreckage in their wake.
Who was to blame, the people cried, why has this happened, could it be Jemaah Islamiyah and that terrorist who escaped, or was it resurgent aggression from Japan, or could it be an intelligent group-mind of dengue-carrying mosquitoes, or revenge-seeking Americans with outrage and the image of a public caning in their minds, why oh why is
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