The Cabinet

by Un-su Kim

  It was around this time that I first discovered Cabinet 13. I can’t quite remember why it was that I went up to the fourth floor where there was nothing but empty offices, or why it was that I walked to the file room at the end of the hallway on the fourth floor. Maybe there wasn’t a specific reason. People do all sorts of strange things when they’re bored. Technically I was the assistant manager charged with the safekeeping of those cabinets. But because the cabinets were unable to move from their corner, and because barely anyone used them, the cabinets were safe enough without me. In fact, I thought it a bit silly that they would use the term “safekeeping” for such old cabinets.

  What made me interested in Cabinet 13 specifically was the fact that it was the only one that had a shabby old four-digit lock guarding its contents. That lock intrigued me. I couldn’t help but feel the urge to unlock it. Was I into lockpicking at the time? No. Like prisoners who obsess over useless things, I just needed something to which to devote my time.

  I spent several hours every day dialing numbers into that lock. From 0000 to 9999. But it wasn’t difficult. I only had to close my eyes and file through ten-thousand numbers. Fortunately for me the passcode was 7863, so I only had to try 7864 numbers before it opened.

  The cabinet door opened with a creak and I stared inside. The inside of the cabinet was packed from top to bottom with a hodgepodge of documents, including everything from medical records to questionnaires for depression and alcoholism. I took one file from the middle and dusted it off. And, without really thinking much about it, I sat down and started reading the file. I wasn’t that interested in random medical records, but seeing as I had spent so much time getting the cabinet open, I thought I might as well see what all the fuss was about.

  Chimera-7 Lizard

  The doctors had concluded that the woman’s aphasia was due to psychological factors. However, the real reason she couldn’t talk was because a lizard was growing inside her mouth. From when she was young, the woman was fond of lizards. She believed that she was in possession of lizard-like traits. And as time went on, she eventually began to identify with lizards.

  When she turned 20, the woman started raising a Sphaerodactylus ariasae in her mouth. First discovered on an island in the Dominican Republic, Sphaerodactylus ariasae are the world’s smallest lizards, measuring only 16mm in length from head to tail.

  When eating, the woman chewed carefully so she wouldn’t crush the lizard between her molars or accidentally swallow it with the food. The lizard grew like a weed in the girl’s mouth. And every day the girl cut a small portion from the bottom of her tongue with a knife. She did this both to give the lizard more room and to provide it with nutrients. Eventually, the lizard left the space beneath the girl’s tongue and began to burrow into the actual root of her tongue.

  Little by little, the lizard ate away at the girl’s tongue. And because of this, the girl’s pronunciation began to change, eventually sounding like a foreign language to others. And all the while, the lizard’s cave continued to deepen. As the cave became deeper, the girl’s tongue got smaller, eventually becoming an unnatural thing. Once nothing was left of the girl’s tongue, the lizard stuck its tail deep into what had been the girl’s tongue root and started acting as a prosthetic tongue.

  The girl’s body craved the foods she used to eat, but the girl’s tongue (the lizard, that is) craved the juices of rotting insect carcasses, grubs, and other beasts. And because the girl’s palate was now determined by the lizard, the girl had to eat what her tongue desired.

  Because all of this developed slowly over a long time, the girl did not think she had become a monster. In fact, she loved her lizard-turned-tongue. Her lizard-turned-tongue, or, rather, her tongue-turned-lizard was not used to language. So, when the girl talked and flicked her tongue around, it was only natural for the lizard to be thrashed about in her mouth. Realizing this, the girl started to keep her mouth shut. And slowly, she began to lose her language. Because she neither needed to talk nor wanted to talk, and because she was afraid people would kill her and her lizard if they found out a human was colluding with a lizard, she lived out her life never opening her mouth again.

  Recorded in detail in this thick file was a timeline of how the lizard merged with the girl’s tongue. And in the margins was a chart mapping the genetic sequences for reptiles and mammals, several words like “chimera” and “hybrid species”, and some notes about the possibility of combining reptiles with mammals.

  After a while, I put the file back where I had found it. The first thing to escape my mouth was this:

  “Jesus Christ.”

  My body shook and I felt disgusted that a human would do that to their own body. Even if it was all made up, I thought it disgusting that someone would even imagine such a thing. I quickly got up and left the file room in a sour mood.

  The next afternoon, however, I returned to the file room. I opened Cabinet 13 and took out another file to read. Again, my body shook as I felt a sense of disgust and hatred; I cursed some more, too, regrettably. But even so, by the next day, I found myself back in the file room. And again, I took another file out to read. Something about it was addicting.

  As time passed, my sense of disgust and hatred subsided. Perhaps I was getting used to the feeling. There were also several times that I felt pity and sadness while reading the files. The stories contained in the files were captivating. They were interesting, unique, utterly impossible, and, most important of all, they didn’t have the stench of administrative work. I went up to the file room on the fourth floor whenever I had a free afternoon. And there in the file room with its whirring ceiling fan, I would smoke a cigarette underneath the DO NOT SMOKE sign as I spent all afternoon leaning against the cabinet and reading files. The more I read, the more I got sucked into the cabinet’s world. At least it was better than chewing on dog treats.

  “I can’t talk anymore,” the woman with a lizard for a tongue wrote down on a piece of paper.

  “Does it hurt?” I asked.

  “Not really,” the girl indicated by shrugging her shoulders.

  “Would you show me your tongue?”

  “I don’t want to frighten you.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “Don’t use a flashlight. You’ll scare it. Just look with your eyes.”

  “I’ll be careful.”

  The woman slowly opened her mouth. And quietly staring at me from inside the damp, crimson darkness near the back of her throat, were a pair of glowing reptilian eyes.

  TORPORER

  Torporers sleep for abnormally long periods of time. They can sleep anywhere from two months to two years, not eating anything or waking up once. Some prefer to use the term hibernator instead of torporer, but this is a bit inaccurate, as torporers don’t necessarily sleep in the winter. They can sleep and wake whenever they desire, be it spring, summer, autumn, or winter. And, needless to say, because they’re not bears, they don’t make dens or store fat for the winter. You might be wondering if I’m talking about cryogenic sleep. To that I can only say, no; they sleep just like the rest of us. You know, with a blanket and pillow.

  Hibernation traditionally refers to the several-week-long sleep that lizards and snakes enter into by drastically lowering their body temperature to reduce energy consumption. In contrast to this, torpor refers to the winter-long sleep that warm-blooded animals like bears and racoons are able to accomplish with their reserves of fat. The sleep that torporers enter into is unlike either torpor (because they don’t require large fat reserves) or hibernation (because instead of drastically reducing their body temperature, they actually maintain a relatively high body temperature of 86° F as well as a high metabolism). It is still unclear scientifically exactly how it is these individuals’ metabolisms are able to stay high for such long periods of time without regularly eating.

  One thing that all torporers share in common is the fact that, when they wake up, they are focused and full of energy, compassionate toward others,
and more positive and optimistic. Their health also improves and those with diseases are either magically cured or markedly improved. And as torporers sleep, the waste and feces in their bodies is removed, and they become gaunt as they burn through fat. (I’m sure some of you are interested in how it is that their bodily waste is “removed,” or how it is their body burns fat; but I think it best if you didn’t ask about that. Besides, that’s not really important right now, is it? If you really must know about how your body removes waste, I suggest you go see a doctor or a dietician. They will be able to answer all your questions.)

  After torporers experience their first torpor, they will continue to regularly experience torpor. Thanks to this regularity, torporers are able to prepare in advance for each state of torpor. The problem is the first happening, which comes unannounced. Because of its unexpected nature, all sorts of strange things can happen during one’s first torpor.

  Mr Gwak lives in Bonghwa, North Gyeongsang province, and grows specialty crops in greenhouses. One day, while taking a nap in a large Styrofoam box in the attic where he stores seeds, Mr Gwak suddenly fell into his first torpor. He was in that state for 97 days. A few days into his sleep, however, the areas of Bonghwa, Yeongju, and Chunyang were flooded by a large storm; many people drowned or went missing. His family waited for three months before declaring him dead and holding a funeral. They even prepared a cenotaph. But then on the night after his funeral while his family was eating, Mr Gwak suddenly awoke from his torpor and came down from the attic. “Hey, you should have woken me up if you were going to eat. I was dying of hunger.” These nonchalant words fell on Mr Gwak’s family as they stared at him in utter disbelief.

  When they aren’t in torpor, torporers sleep just like anybody else – going to bed at night and waking up in the morning for work. Personally, when I first learned this, I thought it was quite odd. If they sleep eight hours a day on top of regular states of abnormally long slumber, wouldn’t that mean they spend most of their life sleeping? When I asked this question to a torporer, they gave me a very matter-of-fact answer: “But not sleeping at night is bad for your skin.” I guess they’re not wrong.

  In this day and age when time is money, being a torporer can be a real nuisance. But for some it can also be a blessing. Take Mr Hur, a CEO at a gas machinery manufacturer:

  “The deadline for making a deal was fast approaching. It was a contract for supplying manufacturing parts to the last unsigned plant in the Middle Eastern market; the fate of our company was hanging in the balance. I’m not exaggerating when I say that if we closed the deal we would survive, and if we didn’t, I would have no other choice than to disband our company. At the time, everything was a mess because of the Asian financial crisis. At first, I would work two or three days without sleeping, come home and sleep a little, and then start all over again by working late another two or three days. But then, one day, I wasn’t able to sleep anymore. I was up to my ears in work. And my relationship with my employees was starting to fray. I was irritated. I lashed out at people, picked fights, and was always grumpy. My workers weren’t on the same page like I wanted them to be. They didn’t seem to care. But, even so, I still thought it was our company, not my company. So, regardless of how big or small it was, whenever there was excess revenue, I would give it to my employees in the form of incentives. Despite what people might say, I wasn’t just in it for myself. Of course, my employees had it tough, too. Working all those hours, there’s no way they couldn’t have had a hard time. But when your company’s in a life or death situation, everyone has to band together. And at the same time, when the company’s in crisis, it’s also every man and woman for themself. I was overcome with stress. I couldn’t sleep some nights. And slowly I found myself sleeping less and less. My body was as heavy as lead, but strangely enough, when I lay down, I couldn’t fall asleep. It was like there was a leaky faucet somewhere inside my head. And there were many times when my body felt like it belonged to someone else.”

  “What came of the contract?”

  “We didn’t get it. I heard the company that got the deal was a joint venture that used technical support from England and manufactured its parts directly in Vietnam. We were completely outmatched in both technology and price. I had the ability to avoid bankruptcy if I made some sacrifices, but I couldn’t get rid of this nagging feeling inside me that it was all for nothing. So, one day when I returned home from work, I thought to myself, “Why go on living like this?” Things weren’t so desperate that I contemplated suicide, but seeing my empty house (after my divorce, my ex-wife took the kids and ran off to Australia), my life felt so devoid of warmth. So I packed my suitcase. I had a mountain villa that I had bought for fishing trips a while back. It wasn’t anything luxurious, just a cozy cabin. That’s where I went. And I took with me ten jugs of pesticide. I lit a candle in this spider-infested cabin and began to cry. I’ve never cried so much in my life. It felt like I was shedding every last tear I had in me. I cried so much that I eventually cried myself into exhaustion. There was pile of straw in one corner of the shed, so I went there and fell asleep. For 172 days.”

  “172 days. Not hours?”

  “Yes, precisely 172 days. I went there in early summer, and when I came out, it was winter.”

  “And how was your body?”

  “I felt revitalized. Like I had been reborn. I was a little thin, of course, but nothing extreme. So I returned to civilization. And, when I returned, everything was a mess. But what else would you expect? Leaving so irresponsibly like that, without telling anyone. But I was able to start anew. I was in a really bad situation financially, but I was so happy to just be alive, to be working again.”

  “I’ve heard rumors that you’ve amassed another fortune. Is this true?”

  “Oh, that? It’s nothing. Just enough to put bread on the table. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention! I got back together with my wife not long ago. I flew down to Australia and stayed at a shabby hotel for a month begging her to get back together with me. Can you believe that? Haha.”

  Just as bears and snakes enter a deep sleep to get through harsh seasons, torporers usually enter a state of torpor when they face a crisis. And they come out of their torpor rejuvenated. Still not quite understanding what a torpor state was, I asked a question.

  “Before you enter a deep sleep, do you prepare anything? Do you pack on weight like a bear?”

  The man scoffed when I asked this. He was a veteran torporer, having experienced several different states of torpor and lived as a torporer for about six years.

  “It’s important that we’re well fed when we enter torpor, but we don’t need to eat as much as a bear. We do need, however, to prepare dreams.”

  “Dreams?”

  “It was after waking up from my second state of torpor that I realized this. I was so bored the first two times when I went in without any preparation. You don’t notice it when you only sleep several hours a day, but when you sleep for three to four months at a time, you become lucid in your dreams. And when that happens, it’s reality that becomes dream-like. Anyway, it’s a real bore if you don’t have material for dreams. I bet the afterlife isn’t much different. It’s a world formed by one’s imagination, after all. There, happiness and power come from imagination. But when I first went into a state of torpor blindly, I hadn’t prepared anything, so I was a little bored.”

  “Can’t you just do it in the dream? After all, it is your imagination.”

  “Easier said than done, Mr Kong. We all live very busy lives. So, when we dream for long periods of time, there isn’t much to do. We torporers all ask ourselves at one point, ‘I can’t believe I don’t know how to dream a dream. What kind of life have I been living to not be able to imagine a good dream?’ And because everything in a dream happens so quickly, thirty years in a dream can take minutes out in the real world. Of course, there are times when short periods of time are drawn out for extended periods of time in a dream, too. Anyway, in order to dream a dream,
you need material for a dream.”

  “So how do you get material for a dream?”

  “Read old journals, peruse picture albums, meet with old school friends and old girlfriends. You know, people you don’t see that often. Remember and think about things that happened a long time ago. Recently I’ve been reading a lot of books. The more enjoyable the things you imagine, the happier your dreams are and the happier you are after waking up.”

  I like to think I’d be a good torporer. I enjoy sleep, and I hate getting up. In fact, just once I want to dive into that swamp known as torpor. If only I didn’t run the risk of getting fired from my job, losing my paycheck and insurance, seeing my savings disappear, and hearing my friends and family judgmentally say, “What are you doing with your life?” I would happily forget everything and fall into a deep sleep for six months. But torporers say many people cannot experience torpor because they care too much about unimportant things.

  “If you want to experience torpor you have to be willing to do one of two things: you either have to be fine with everything going to hell, or you have to have a devil-may-care attitude and be bold enough to act completely irresponsibly. You’ll never be able to achieve torpor worrying about every little thing that comes your way.”

  Perhaps they’re right. Perhaps the reason we can’t fall into a deep sleep despite always being exhausted is because we don’t have the courage to risk losing everything, the courage to act irresponsibly.