It tossed that card like a coin from its gangling talon tips. The
card enlarged to a life-sized form and moved toward Jatupon. He almost
felt seduced by it as it moved around him in its mating dance. The
mosquito laughed harder and then said that not only had he and his
brothers relinquished their homeland in Ayutthaya on account of her but
that she was a trap or a symbol of a trap. It was not just she, he
explained. It was all of them. Love and marriage was a specie ** specie ? or
species ? **
preserving drug induced into a man to keep him bound and limited
through passion, fear of loneliness, and obligation."
"Then I should feel sorry for my elder brother if it is a sickness
like how I'm feeling now. I mean I was feeling really sick but now I
must still be sick if I'm imagining you. I wish I were able to tell
what is happening to me now. It is like suffering the withdrawals or
dengue fever." Slowly forcing himself beyond his cowardly pose,
Jatupon got up and opened his suitcase. He took out two warm cans of
Coca Cola. He opened the tabs and slid one to the mosquito that drank
up.
"It isn't quite the nectar of blood but it is okay when one is
thirsty," it commented.
He was like a wounded soldier who perceived that the enemy was
another victim in the war and so he wanted to sit down near this
opposing peer. Jatupon crept near it and gradually sat on a mat. A
minute later, after not being eaten, his confidence grew and he felt
like confessing his soul to the insect as if the mosquito's appearance
were only that mask Thai monks hid behind when they said their chants.
"Kumpee said he would live with us but I guess he might mean that now.
After all, his girlfriend is with him. He only talked to her on our
way here." He paused and thought deeply once again. "I don't like what
you say but it's honest. I have no one to talk with, you know." He