Viewpoint of the main character's Hat

Cold, the air is filled with tiny ice molecules that deplete oxygen and bore their way inside me, inside every fibre of my being. Most people seem to think that I feel nothing; that I do not sense the darkness and that fascinating pool of warmth as the sun rises and slowly all the ice melts inside of me, but I feel. I have eyes, I have ears, I even have a nose -- if you can call it that. I am perceptive to each of the five senses, even though I cannot respond.

You see, I am mute. Destined to live a silent life; meant to be used; put down; and hidden away in a closet until winter comes. But today was cold, bright, and my stitches were on fire. Perhaps I was wrong in my thinking, but from the very moment he put me on, I had a sense that nothing could go wrong today. Nothing could go wrong.

I heard the keys jingling, then his footsteps over the wet and drenchy muck that makes up most of the street to his house. The dry spray-on shampoo in his hair was new and smelled of rich pine forest. I swear the smell inside was so much better than the smell outside -- where I had the pleasure of soaking up a pithy smell of grossly sweet cookie dough from the factory by which he lived -- I remember this smell quite well since last year. The year before that had been complete and utter void for me: I lay in a department store with tens of others just like me -- we were all the same, looked the same, felt the same. The others did not say much, because like me, they are mute, but as I was lying there in an odd sense I was uncertain about my own existence. What made me, me, after all? I was just laying there with dozens of other just like me, identical, we were all experiencing the same, and nothing ever happened. I was in the storage room (you guessed it). That was until he purchased me.

Until I was pulled out of the silent, empty room, where everyone lay staring at nothing, waiting for something, not knowing whether they would ever be useful. With nothing to do. I was brought out of there by a pair of large fleshy hands, and before I knew it, the bright lamp lights beamed at me from all directions, from everywhere -- and I glowed. I positively glowed.

"I'm afraid this is the last one we have got in stock," said meaty hands -- that was a lie, of course, he was just telling that to the client in order to drive up the price.

No complaining here. If all went well, I would be flying out of that shop in no time. So I put on my best act and hugged his ears (when meaty hands finally let go of me), and exercised all of my non-motoric functions in order to appear softer, more elastic, more pliable than I had ever been before. I did not want to go back there -- not to my brothers and sisters who were all alike, and among whom I was sure again to lose my sense of self. He gave me identity.

As soon as he paid for me, and he stepped outside, my senses came alive with a multitude of stimuli: the sun beaming on me from outside -- I thought I was on fire; I thought I was going to die -- but I didn't; a wetness or humidity so strong I had never sensed inside the shop, or even in the factory where I must have been produced. I don't remember much about that, to be honest. All I remember is the store. What came before it, eh? God knows. So a wetness on my surface, a wetness in my fibres, and a wetness on his skin! Man, he was so sweaty those first couple of days. He took some getting used to having me. You'd think he'd never had a hat in his life. And I was barraged by a multitude of scents: something I later learnt was called 'coffee'; fumes that oddly felt reminiscent of that fire I so feared once I felt the sun on me, a terrible foul smell that to this date I cannot place but always disliked with vigor -- I don't know why -- it is sort of salty, like cheese, but instead of being cheese, it is too highly acidic -- I swear something that smells like it would bore a hole right through me if ever applied directly to my surface; something what I later learnt was his hair gell -- a vile substance that made me greasy from the inside, but I bore with it last year due to all the experiences this man gave me. He has truly shown me the world.

Anytime I'm with him I feel like defying gravity.

He does not blow smoke up in large tufts and toss ashes into the sky, but his friends do. Every time they do, I feel a little bit uneasy -- did I mention I'm afraid of fire? The fear of being burned alive? That seems like the worst death. If anything ever were to happen to me, anything, I do not want to die in a fire. Heat gives me the creeps -- and each night he leaves me on the radiator to dry, I sit there rigidly, careful to let as little as possible of me touch the metal heating element, not letting my guard down for even the slightest second.

Of course I know I can't -- since I have no voice -- but I think that if I do get singed while drying, I will shout.