Black Lantern

The morning, the call came in telling me that the blind tiger was dead. I said nothing. I held phone in my one hand, and used the other to touch the glass that separated me and the rain.

It wasn’t a tiger, and, the tigress he meant wasn’t blind. No, I would say she had a pair of blue eyes. It was a pair of brightened, azure eyes.

I could agree with my memory, only if it wasn’t that old and distant. I can barely see in my mind the old warm sun in the sky, and how the cage was lit. I used to pay miniature feline a visit under lit days. I was so eager to see a sky cleared of clouds because that was when I could go to see her. I remember it clearer now. The street that I would take to her. Everything was old, only, they didn’t seem old. To tell the truth, they looked, to me, live and cheerful. Folks were around tending their business and crowding the street, but memory was kept that way only because the time was an ancient one and it was from the viewpoint of a child who used be amused by a cat. Imagine that when I first saw the tigress, I thought she was the biggest thing in the whole world. How untaught was I. And her cage, to me, it was a glories one, the gray floor made of concrete upon which were the bars. The sun shone down and it was a bright day. Only the tigress was restless. She was still a cub. Her leg was short and her teeth were dull, yet, she liked showing her fangs at her audience and charging at the bars.

Driving through the rain, everything was painted in a greyer tone. My vision shifts between old memories and the present. Suddenly I realize how old can things get to be as I sweep through the street that all these years remained unchanged. Like now, when no one is around, it looked as old as a ghost.

I grew in this town. I know everything that has been changed and all those that hasn’t. The tigress was among the first category. When I was older, I didn’t go to zoo that often, but I still went from time to time, mostly to check on the tigress. She was obviously bigger, and probably stronger, only she didn’t charge at bars anymore, or snarl, or show her fangs. To tell the truth, whenever I got there, she would be sitting in her cage silently. So, I sit, too, from a distance, watching without making a sound. The shadow of bars cast added strip on her body and sometimes, they covered her face. Visitor came and went. Kids would be trying to provoke her into some sort of interaction, but they would always fail. Her blue eyes would only sweep through them, look at the shattered sky for a moment, then drop down to the ground. She lost much of her attraction that way. People came and went. However, I would stay and spend some time. This older version of me appreciated her motionless beauty. She could be stalking soundlessly toward a prey, running full speed, and catching her prize with a powerful leap, all in my mind eyes, and I could not care less if she was kept inside a cage or not. I believed that powerful hunter as her true identity. Again, this was from a youth, a youth that believed everything was born free. Once, and only once, the tigress’s gaze shot directly into my eyes, I doubt she recognize me at all, but she seemed trying to tell me something in those eyes, I closed my eyes and thought to myself, that was impossible, then, I opened them and she was trying to speak to me.

When I told gate keeper why I came, he wasn’t surprised at all. Someone would have to come, he said, and that I had to walk to the place myself since he wasn’t going to lead me there. So, I did. I remembered the direction well. I didn’t konw if it’s because something did change, or it’s simply myself that was changed. When I arrived, the cage I thought I knew came to me totally different. It was dark, small, dirty, hardly befitting the large mammal laying dead inside. I strived with my eyes and mind to find that large, bright cage and the small, vivid animal, to no avail. Then, I gave it up, and accepted the dark pit before me as the place where the blind tigress spends her last days.

How did the tigress become blind? I don’t think anyone really knows. I went to a school in a different town and since lost most of the connections I had with my hometown. The world stunned me, it molded me into another person. I remembered my home, my old friends, and the tigress. But, it was that old memory that held them, kept them the way they was, while in reality, part of that memory survived, part of it did not. One day when I came back, the street was the one I knew, so were the town, the ghost-like stone and buildings, except the blind tigress I had yet to be acquaint with. I did everything in my power to find the context to that event. But, besides the carelessness people showed to it, I found nothing for the cause of tiger’s blindness. Her keeper told me there was nothing. He slept one night, and woke up the following day to find the blood that was all over the floor of her cage. Where there were her eyes laid two bloody sockets. He couldn’t explain it. When I took this in retrospect, I understood he couldn’t. She was always in the same cage, eating same food. What in the world could happen to her? Nothing indeed. The sun shone through the bars and day went by without a sign. The cage turned smaller as you turned bigger. Morning came and the sky was lit slightly darker all because you know it too well. Shadow stretch, longer and bigger, to a point that we all become blind when eyes are needed no more.

I know the tigress won’t need her eyes anymore. She lays there, on the concrete floor, lifeless. I asked where the blood on the floor came from. The answer was unknown, as well as the cause of her death. She was an old one, was everything that staff told me. They were absolutely right. That was an old tigress in an abandoned zoo in an abandoned little town. Who should grief for her? Who should grief for those lost time that we can’t even find a trace in memory? I don’t know. I know it wouldn’t be me.

But, then I remembered, I did grief. Was it so long ago? Yes it was. It was when I came to my hometown and knew the tigress was blinded.

I came back from zoo, from looking at the blind tigress. It was a horrible night. It was the darkest night in my memory. I walked home in darkness since I knew the street without looking. I felt like I was a ghost. The street, of course, was empty. When I tried to recall the bright memories I had with my hometown, myself, my tigress, I wonder how things had turned out.

The tigress in the cage didn’t know about this night. She didn’t know how dark the night was. How could she know since she was blind? Whenever she woke up from her slumber, the world to her would be only darker. Although she was blind, she could still feel, and she felt a pair of large wings on her back. She flapped her wings as if she would fly. Fly she did. As for where the cage and bars was, since she couldn’t see, she didn’t know.

In such a dark night, even birds would lost their direction and eventually crush to the ground, but the tigress was flying. She couldn’t see. How could darkness make any difference to her? If anyone sees a tigress flying, they are bound to catch this anomaly and chain it to the ground. However, they can’t catch a tigress that fly in the darkest night.

Long did tigress fly in the darkness till she was lured to a place lit by lanterns. The lanterns were burning. But the light they emitted was black. How could black light be seen in the darkest night? Surely we couldn’t see them, but the blind tigress could see them. Again don’t forget, dark or bright wouldn’t have made any difference to her.

So the blinded tigress stood besides black lanterns, as once her azure eyes were embraced by sunray.

Behind her was gate that led to another world, and how dark this world was. Tigress lifted her head and released a terrible roar. The curdled blood was again freed from her eyes

There were all imaginations I created out of my grief. As all my other emotions, it came to pass, it has been long gone now. I draw my last glimpse at the downed body of what it once was. I have a feeling that she is staring at me with her empty eyes and blood-red tears.

Now, what is she trying to tell me?