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Thursday, November 27, 2008

The Machine- Finale

[ The wait is finally over. Here is the final part of "The Machine". Thanks to all you guys for showing the interest that you did in the story. This is turning a little boring, so lets effing get the story on!! CURTAINS UP!! :D ]


He approached the machine. The machine sat on its black side, strangely seeming aware of his approach. He reached the machine and put his hand on the “rinse” knob. This was it. He had suspected throughout about the machine that there was some quality about it, something sinister that separated it from anything else that he had come across in his life.
He had been a loner throughout, so much so that he wouldn’t even find his name if a story was written on him. All his past stared at him like dirty laundry. He remembered every beating, every scrape, and every stigma that his brother had given him. And strangely enough, they were negatives. All of them. Not one drop of goodness in the sea of sickness.

This would be very nasty.
(what are you thinking no no no no stop)

The best part was no one would know.
(everyone would ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod)

He turned the knob.
***

Ronnie’s smile suddenly froze. He stood rooted at the spot where he was for a second. A kid from across the road stared at him.

That was the last thing he saw.

His body spun like a lolling top and fell into an alley, away from eyesight. The kid across the kid came running hoping to draw out a few stray coins that may have rolled out of his wallet. The wind had stopped blowing now. Everything seemed to be stuck for a moment. And then it began to blow again. The kid came in and stared into the alley where Ronnie had fallen.

He was greeted by bare earth.

***

The younger brother walked into what had been Ronnie’s office yesterday.
‘ You ought to be ashamed for coming in perpetually late, Ronnie’, the boss said.
The younger brother, who had ceased to be the younger brother just, gave a polite smile.

‘It won’t happen again sir’; he said and closed the cabin door behind him.

At this moment, the people at Mc Donald’s had been going around doing their chores. There had been no Ronnie’s younger brother working there. Ever.

Never did.

***

A smile had been playing on Ronnie's lips for a while. He now knew what the machine did.He always wanted to get rid of the bad things in his life….his misery, his pain, his grief, his memories…his existence. The machine had helped him get rid of all this and much more. He never would be a loser in life again. Ever. The machine washed.

***

Epilogue

Almost a year later.

He walked into a chemist shop. The guy at the counter, who had known Ronnie for a long time, greeted him. He laid his hands on the table, and bent towards the shopkeeper, a style that had been Ronnie's; something he had grown up seeing. He finally opened his mouth,

" I want a...um...give me a.."

"Yes?",the shopkeeper said patiently.

He nodded his head sideways. Not good. He looked up and said,

" I...I cant remember..."

***

42 comments:

Preeti said...

Oh my god...!!! Scrib...
*me doing the tribal salute*

you are the undisputed emperor, man.

this is like the ultimate culmination of fear. and my heart was just about to pop like a corn...seriously...this was an absolutely brain-numbing piece. and the feeling of discomfort is going to stay with me for sometime now...
PS: why the hell am i not able to stop myself from reading it again and again and scaring the shit out of myself...? DAMN!!!

vinny said...

OMG!!
i waited patiently for the grand finale and i did good...thanks for writing this amazingly, eerie stuff:)
hope u dont have brothers??

Illeen said...

I read all the five parts once again .Each had a twist.But this was..UNEXPECTED.Ronnie's bro becoming Ronnie..?:O
I felt good fot Ronnie's bro until i read the epilogue.. the ultimate twist.

Hats off!

rantravereflect/ jane said...

WOWWWWWWWWWWW...
AREY-O-SAMBA..
ya're a crafty n miserly mister who has sooo much gold to give, n yet sparingly gives it to us in parts!- i dunno if that still makes ya a miser, cos ya share that joy of that fuckingly weird, different storyline n a mind-shattering end..

read teh whole 5 parts all over again for full effect!

man, tehy being the same person n his dowloading n swishing n deoxifying himself with hta washing mahine- n having thats schizophrenic scene-hallucinations/shifting in his head..

temme- what DRUG was he on???!!
whatever it is, it sure did outdo ecstacy , heroin, hashish n the kind..oh the MILLION POSSIBILITIES!

ya're a crafty miser- ya fukn dun give us the gold, n i love ya for that- cos ya make us STUMBLE on a MILLION OTHER POSSIBILITIES of raw platinum in our head's MINE!

rantravereflect/ jane said...

GIVE US MORE OF TEH KIND--
CRAFTY MISER!

Ratzzz said...

daang daang and daang....


Evil evil scribbler's inc... master of words and language...

Ganges said...

You have an amazing blog here! Smooth and vivid writing...excellent!

Stupidosaur said...

Ehhh? What happened here? something like Fight Club???

Mystique said...

I can't remember............woa.

Anurag said...

dude I'll come back to read the full version of the machine series....

But it seems you hv changed your style ...It Ain't spooky anymore ???

Roopa said...

Oh Scribbler! I went through all the parts of the story in one stretch and am still a little confused! Well, I guess you wanted it that way....I loved the whole symbolism of washing - washing away dirt, past, humiliation, guilt - it fits to a T to the context :)

Anonymous said...

fight club is so old!!!
meh!!!

:P

Scribblers Inc said...

preeti: :D

vin: thanks a lot for the wishes. And yes, I have a younger brother, so I should be careful right? :D

Ileen: Thanks for following it so well...you are one of the best writers that I have come across...real good! :D

jane: anytime...and long time! how have you been??

rat: Glad you liked it! :)

Scribblers Inc said...

Ganga: Welcome to the blog! :D

Stupid: No RE!Where do you see fight club happening? The guy disappeared and the machine erased out the memories of the people around...and the brother hence took his place! Ab ismein fight club kahan hai?

Mystic: So is it a good thing or a bad thing?

Anurag: It sure is! That DOES NOT change! :D

Roopa: It was complex? Will try simpler stuff the next time around!thanks for the compliments! :D

Think Tank said...

ooooh... i can't say anything ..it was so scary ....and so perfectly done..lekin last mein kya hua?

Scribblers Inc said...

HUMBLE DEVIL: Arre kahan fight club baba??!?

Scribblers Inc said...

Think Tank: arre upar likha to hai!! -_-

Tara said...

Beautifully penned Scribbler! Just mind blowing stuff! Awesome work yaar! Keep it coming... :)

Sach1 said...

:-) Nice one! Good to read you like always..

Sarath said...

Now, that was good.. a machine that washes people... spoooky

umangexuberance said...

wo wo wo!!
quite the fitting end wasn't it
what irony.. "a style that had been Ronnie's"
loved it

Samster said...

"He had been a loner throughout, so much so that he wouldn’t even find his name if a story was written on him."

thats just one of the 17 bits ive liked. If i call you 'talented' 43 times that would give you a lil idea of how great that story was.
i think im really running out of ways to say 'wow'.

raj said...

loved reading it!
:)
i finally posted again. better photos this time!

Nomad said...

Twisted twisted twisted....The part of the mind that your writing unlocks like some Pnadora's box, makes me totter at the edge of any sort of conclusions.

Am I to assume btw that you have been washing machine shopping in an endeavor to set up the bachelor pad?

B said...

I must read the last 3 parts! nice song playing on ur blog! which album/artist is it?

Stupidosaur said...

This is how I see a Fight Club here:

(Not the Hindi one. I dont know what Hindi Fight Club is about)

The little brother/big brother is like Edward Norton. Who imagines the big brother/little brother brad pitt.

//His clothes had been piling up and so were Ronnie’s.

(Well maybe they were his own clothes piling up, some which he considered his, and some his alter ego imaginary brother's)

//It would take Ronnie over a year to run out of clothes and he already had.

Well, an imaginary fellow will never run out of clothes huh?

//It seemed like washing clothes of your sibling came like a precondition when you were born after him.

Actually he hated doing the clothes. By some strange psychosis he started imagining that an 'older brother' was making him do it.

//“Get it”, he said and threw the credit card at him. This was a dream. He surely couldn’t have his brother’s card that easy.

Well it was so easy, cos it was his OWN card. psychosis continues.

//“ Don’t make a noise after you get it and yeah, you start with the dishes too then. Also there is the phone bill that you would need to submit. I hope you remember the maid is out for two weeks starting tomorrow, so yeah.”


His own mind knows that washing machine reduces just one chore. There is a huge list of other things he has to do anyways.
So now as per his colourful imagination, this is also what his 'evil big brother' makes him endure.

//Yeah, I so totally want to be treated as a complete knucklehead.

Sort of fight club masochistic sounding dialogue here.

//A dark black, it sat, waiting. As his hand made contact, a vision flashed though his head. A face, eyes almost popping out and mouth open, in an unending scream. And then it was gone. For a split second, he thought it was his brother and then the thought was gone.

Well, he is schizoid, that we all know. And the black eerie looking machine had a bit of an effect on him. His two personalities played russian roulette in his mind for a while.

And since he became the elder brother for a while (one of his own personalities, the dominant one (Brad Pitt)), the positive rewarding feeling he got (Dopamine release) made him decide in favour of the machine. He bought it.//This machine was his. It was meant to be.

//Ronnie just cast it a glance and that was that. It did not exist for him. For him, only clean clothes existed and his brother, who cleaned them, existed.

Whenever he was Ronnie, the boss person, he could never accept that it was he himself who did all the dirty work.

//The machine looked despicable to him, to say the least, what with a black hose and black knobs.

Everything connected to his own 'loser' clothes washing personality was despicable to him in his other state.

//And in the second he made contact, he seemed to feel the machine inside his head. Looking. Groping. Like it could think.

Well that weird looking machine always played with his mind didn't it?


Well GTG . Maybe will complete the explanation later when I get time.
But you already got the idea now. With this perspective, read the rest of the story.

There was only Ronnie, to whom washing clothes was such a disgusting activity that his subconcious invented a younger brother to do it for him. And with the washing machine, he no longer had to do the dirty job again. So what happened was that hi alter ego disappeared. Fight Club broke up

Scribblers Inc said...

tara: Thanks a lot! Do keep coming! :D

sach: Long time!! Kahan the bhai! :D

sarath: :D

umang: glad you are liking the stuff here! Do keep comin in with your feedbacks! :D

go-phish: you made my day!! I never thought anyone would notice that line! :)

Scribblers Inc said...

raj:Be right there! :D

Nomad: Errm...I bought a washing machine a while back; funny of you to notice... :|

red sould: its mere yaar by advaita...delhi's local ass kicking act! :D

stupido: OKAY OKAY! gussa kyon ho raha hai bhai! there was no intention of it being that way...when I wrote the story, the idea was to keep two "real" characters, and then one ending up winning and replacing the other; while the machine totally removes the existence of the other guy. Ideally, both guys are TOTALLY real characters in the story that I penned; and there lies my basic argument in this NOT being another fight club, figment of imagination...ab aapko laga to sorry na! :|

Stupidosaur said...

Angry? Me? What part about my comment made you think so? :-S

Its just another interpretation of your story. And I was explaining it.

So that means your story is like a painting. Different people interpret it differently :)

Anyways One person's total identity being removed by a machine seems a little to incredulous. So I thought if ppl thought he (younger bro) did not exist, maybe he did not. Everything fell in place in the rest of the story by Fight Club Syndrome.

Meira said...

Simply Superb!
And one reason I like writers is how In-control they are...they can continue/end the story as they please. Awesome:)

Anonymous said...

Amazing :)

Chronicler said...

great stuff man.. keep it flowing.... there's this spic macay concert at nehru Park on the 6th with Ustad amjad ali khan performing... thought of letting u know :)

Vaudevillian said...

I still haven't gotten around to read your grand mechanical piece, but judging by all the excitement as a result of, I can't wait to.

keep up the good work!

Cяystal said...

The Epilogue was GRAAAAAAAAND!
Loved it,man!!
Too goood..
"I..I0i-i-i-i-i..Cant remeber!" :P

Aanchal said...

liked it...

Heart'n'Soul said...

Ok i have loads to catch up here... sorry to have missed so much man... just not been aorund... catch ya soon :)

Meghna said...

I read all parts....its some fab work :)

Hats off bro :)

HP said...

whoa !! totally worth the (extremely long) wait!

HP said...

hehehahahahah !!! awesome man!!

"The wind had stopped blowing now. Everything seemed to be stuck for a moment. And then it began to blow again." -- brrrr !!

when's the next story coming up?

HP said...

again ... I LOVE THIS !! :D :D

Kriti said...

time and again i read something and exclaim "this is the epitome (of whatever..)"..

when i read this piece....
i said-

THIS is the epitome of all epitomes!!

dsnt make sense. i know.. :P
it wudve.. if u were me.. but that ur not..
:)

My Voice said...

hi, in lieu of ur comment on d post- there is a certain feel and warmth in an expression that is communicated/captured d best thru a certain language...thats why hindi n urdu..will try to pen doen sumthing in english too...thanks fr d suugestion...
cheerio:)

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