Story of the Account Reviewer

Beware of gifts being granted, as they may be twofold

Whether I was dreaming, I knew not.

When I asked the nothingness in the beginning, as I started weighing people’s accounts, it just smiled.

“Would it make you more agreeable if we said yes?” it asked.

“No. I would feel much better if I just knew the truth.”

The silence lasted for many thousands of tales I absorbed; twists and turns of happiness and devastation, contentedness and pain, most banal and repetitious to the informed master of pattern recognition I had become.

Finally, it answered, its voice pensive.

“Pointed snout, we could ask you now to explain what you mean by dreaming, but let us not dally with that game, as your ears are the perkiest of all our servants. We grant you the gift of once knowing with confidence whether you dream.”

Ages passed, and I knew the stories of millions, and it was as if I were no more.

But one day, I began unfolding a yarn of the life of a man in love and a woman that schemed. Yet it was not the specifics that first made me breathless with excitement, but the clarity. Gone were the grey shades, pale hues and dark shadows, to be superimposed with succulence that overwhelmed my senses! The twofold gift revealed itself, granting me remembrance of both the ecstasy of colours and the livid facts of my own tale.

At its ending, I cried, but I know not whether it was because she arranged my death or whether I would never again feel her lips against mine.

The above texts were first published on Twitter and are © 2023 by David Pahor.
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(The rest of David’s tales on Medium)

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