Teaser 3(v), a sad-voiced duct in a wall – for Rohan Quine’s “Hallucination in Hong Kong”

I rise, leave the party and the block, and travel fast to the city’s edge. Foiling guards, walls and spikes with the thoroughness, ingenuity and persistence of unqualified obsession, I climb into a garden, stalk unseen across a lawn, seek a means of entry to the building I’m intent upon, and find one.

A small frosted sash, unlocked. Gingerly I raise it, wriggle through into a washroom and close it behind me. With the caution to be expected, I emerge from the room, locate myself, pursue constricted corridors and find yours. I creep to your door and turn the handle. Locked.

Footsteps approaching round a corner. I dive for the handle of the door next to yours—turn it softly, poke my head in, slip inside, close it after me and freeze behind the door. Dim light shows me another little cell like your own, but unoccupied. The footsteps grow louder, pass and recede.

I breathe again and peer around. A bed, a chair, a basin. Where’s the light from? Looking up, I see it then. One internal window, near the ceiling. And through it?

Through it is a ceiling. Painted bloodless orange, in a liver-blotched light…

I sit on the empty bed and wait, in case of further footsteps. None. No sound; just the click through the wall, every minute, from your clock.

The more I concentrate, however, the more there is to hear. I freeze again, cock my head and listen hard, as if by hearing what you’ve heard so long I’ll know the vegetations of your mind.

A light buzzes blandly in the yellow rubber corridor, cutting through a sad-voiced duct in a wall. A distant cough, through many walls. Then some tiny shred of sound unidentified and odd, like a twist of cellophane across a valley… And underneath it all (to my excitement and discomfiture and growing fascination) the microscopic pipe-line of my bloodsong through the darkness of my head!

Both of us are silent.

Are you ready?

For more about "Hallucination in Hong Kong" by Rohan Quine, see

https://www.rohanquine.com/hallucination-in-hong-kong

For some great reviews of it, see

https://www.rohanquine.com/press-media/the-novellas-reviews-media/

To watch the complete chapter from which this little teaser was excerpted, or to find any of the three chapters that constitute the novella’s video-book format, see

https://www.rohanquine.com/h-h-k-video-book/hallucination-in-hong-kong-chapter-3-video-book/

For links to all of these short teasers, see

https://www.rohanquine.com/h-h-k-video-book/short-teasers-for-hallucination-in-hong-kong-video-book/

And to pick it up from whichever retailer you may prefer, the retailers’ links for the audiobook are at

https://www.rohanquine.com/buy/hallucination-in-hong-kong-novella-audiobook/

and for the paperback at

https://www.rohanquine.com/buy/the-platinum-raven-and-other-novellas-paperback/

and for the ebook at

https://www.rohanquine.com/buy/hallucination-in-hong-kong-novella-ebook/