The Sewer Resident

“This place is nice, really comfortable.” With the curiosity about all the novelties, together with a little fear for uncertainty, I started my first day in this metropolis, namely, the first day in this house.

It was a small but comfortable apartment which belongs to an old lady. She was in her middle sixty. The first time I first met her, I perceived something around her that was unspeakable but unusual. I knew she was a good person since she charged the apartment for such a tempting price, but that kind of feeling kept haunting in my mind until one day, it suddenly occurred to me that a woman in her middle sixty should be like those dames sitting over the path in my hometown who are chatting with each other under the topic of some superficial entertainments and the scandal of those flashy celebrities in order to kill their insipid retiring life. How would she, I had to say even it was a little offensive, look like a factory lady who work for over 20 hours a day without rest?

It was at that time when I surprisingly heard that the lady had a son named Paul. Unfortunately, her son has been missing for many years. It has taken almost all the efforts and money for my poor landlord to find her son. That was why she always wore exhaustion on her face. “Maybe one day I should come to accompany her.”

However, several days later, with tons of jobs waiting for me, I totally forgot my plan. This story tells us that scheduling for our days is important. After half a month, I eventually had some leisure time. This time, without schedule, I went out to take a look at the city on a whim.

Hardly had I prepared to go out when the young boy knocked my door and asked for rat poison. I sent him away even he kept shouting that he was in a jam. “I didn’t see any rat here, lad.” That was the only sentence I threw to him. He had no choice but to stood in front of my door, seeing me walking away.

“But your apartment will burp, sis.” The shy boy said in a low voice.

What a wonderful day! Everything is fantastic except that it is too hot today. When coming back home, I couldn’t wait to take a shower to wash away the tiredness. If you ask me why I choose to rent this apartment, I have to say that it was because of the bathroom. If you ever take a look at it, you will soon find out what I mean. The only problem was the sewer. I wasn’t ever diagnosed by any doctors with the phobia about holes, but this sewer really frightened me. I really believed that one day it will swallow me. Moreover, the water sound in the sewer was too noisy, like the roars from feline carnivores. “Maybe I worry too much.” I said to myself. After the shower, I went to the bed, said “Good Night” to myself, and had a sound sleep, might or might not, with a sweet dream.

“What a feast!” A greasy voice from a man came under the floor, from the sewer. “What a nightmare tonight!”

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A Centimeter Away from You

My name is Paul. I am a dwarf. I will always be a dwarf.

“Oh my god, Paul, what are you doing?” That was the first time I found myself abnormal owing to my dear mom’s scream and crooked face. Instead of imprisoning me into the asylum or somewhere else, she held me into her arms, with tears on her face, and told me never let it known by any other else. Therefore, I won’t mention it here.

But my mom did do something. After that thing happened, going outside became a taboo in our family. If I dared to put my foot out of the threshold, my dear mom would depart without one word to farewell. Waiting for her to come back was the toughest things in my life. And the big man living next to us was such a brute. Every time I cried out loud for the loss of my dear mom, he would instantly lose his temper and grabbed his massive ax, trying to break into our houses and cleave me into half. He hacked away in front of our little weak wooden door with the aim of breaking it and he almost made it at a time. If the siren hadn’t come and scared him away, I should have lost my life. “Never let my dear mom down again.” I said to myself and behaved myself day after day. The irrational thing was that my sweet home and my dear mom together made me a purgatory where I was much more tortured than the infamous asylum in my city.

One day, as mom had my gaunt and deformed body cleaned, I slipped and my foot was stuck in the outlet of the sewer. Somehow, I didn’t feel nervous or hurt at all. There might be some chemistry between the sewer and me. Then, a damn crazy idea came to my mind. With my mom’s absence, I started escaping from my home. I squeezed myself across the outlet and slid into the sewer. “Now you can call me il barone rampante (樹上的男爵，卡爾維諾著).”

The odor in the sewer is for me the fragrance of freedom. However, as one philosopher said, freedom always lives together with pain. To me, the pain was hunger. Fortunately, the odor in the sewer attracted some little rats. What natural protein they are! I couldn’t wait and swallowed them one by one. They defended themselves so fiercely that my throat and tongue was gnawed by their sharp little teeth. “It’s the price of freedom.”

Poor mom! Maybe she was too money-tightened to subsist, she rented her house to a young lady and settle herself in a shack made up of aluminum boards. My heart was full of guilt and that made me not be attractive for rats. But, since the girl often took a shower after work, I “met” her quite often. It seemed that I was only one centimeter away from her. Her body fragrance was more of a treasure. Every time she took a shower, the scurf and furfures, together with the running water dumping into the sewer, added with the body fragrance of my beauty, directly went down into my stomach. “That must have been the best way for me to absorb protein for so many days.” I was on cloud nine and had a long and noisy burp.

“What a feast!” I couldn’t choke back my happiness and made a genuine exclamation.

I must appreciate it that she rented my house. But for her arrival, I would have no chance to survive. “Can you hear me? My muse. I’m one centimeter away from you.”