Pages...

There is no plan B. You Have to believe me.

There is no "good" way of saying that you are dying.

So, I wont pretend.I will not try to tell you that I have lived a fulfilling life, and its time to put a period to the story of my existence. I wont tell you about glorified walks in illuminated gardens, the ones which I should have taken in my youth. I wont tell you of the soft gurgling rivulets that flowed through fields of gold while I sat next to it, hand in hand, a pretty damsel for company. Its not that I don't want to tell you this.

I cant tell you this.

Here I am, grovelling in muck, on all fours, like a lowly creature, fit to be forgotten and neglected. Whats worse is, the muck is actually not mud, or anything "muddy" that you would make it out to be. This muck, its a lot worse. Its made up of the worst things that you would imagine;you can imagine.I sit down, right in the middle of this desolate stretch of Your mind, where you generally don't want to step in.

Why cant I talk about all those beautiful things that I told you a while back?It is very simple; I am not assigned to do that. You see, each one of us here,we are given certain...objectives, if I may put it that way. Each one of us is supposed to handle a certain bunch of thoughts. you would have to be very unlucky to be me.I have the most painful bunch of thoughts; the fights, the crying, the stomping off, the break up.

Whats worse, I am dying.

What is "passing on"? What is to "expire"? Do you have to actually make an effort to be politically correct? Don't you think that actually defeats the purpose of death;of dying itself? The problem with you mortals is, you think death is a bad thing,just because you can afford to die.You think its a curse to die, to be removed;to be deleted. Its all a matter of perspective. You would have a totally different outlook had you been grovelling in the muck that I am in.

For the sake of an example, look at me. I have been trying to die for a while now. Existence to me is now just about a pittance. Every single time I think, the end is finally here, and I close my eyes, you bring me back.

Yes, you.

There are so many like me, grovelling in this muck, hoping to die out soon. Some have been lucky. The irony remains, that once we die, we don't turn into angels and fly off. That's the happier guys that I talked about a while back. When we die, we just cease to exist, and stay where we died. We Add to the muck. We ARE the muck.

Now do you see what I was talking about?

As a final word, all I would say is this; Please let me go. Move on. There are so many of my ilk; harbor them, cultivate them. I am too old and burnt out, I need to go now. You shall not be forgiven for what you are doing to me. Everyone has a right to die.

Please let me die...I beg you...Let...me...die...

Please...forget...
***********

Tears rolled down her eyes as she sat sipping coffee with her best friend.It had been two months, and she hoped that one day, he would be gone.Her friend held her hand.

"You have to let him go".

She sighed as she stared into her coffee. She whispered out the words, like steam dancing over the cup

"I cant forget him..."

[ What if memories felt pain,

What if the past died in vain,

What if it washed off like rain...

What if...you could be born again...]

Desktop thoughts...

Look at you.
Sitting there staring at the screen.
Wondering.
Imagining dreams, sunsets wild, thoughts red.
The stationary has been stagnating;
For you dont write with them anymore.
The pencil turns into a mourning body of wooden thoughts,
hoping to be revealed before a dying day.
The rest have retired to their litererary hibernations...

I sit here, staring, sharing, always caring.
Pretending to pull out rabbits from the throats of imaginary ravens...
Passing off dogs for dinosaurs...
But its a high...
Its Still a high....

[written for a very dear friend, whom I finally had the privelage to meet for the first time after knowing her for over a year. Sometimes, all a writer(pseudo or otherwise) needs is just one reader like her; thanks for being there! :) ]

The wait...

Its still raining.

Three days. Time feels like a bubble gum stuck to the sole of your shoe.
I don’t know how long this will go on. Water runs around in little transparent
veins, sniffing out dry places and vanquishing them. They told me to wait and I waited.
I waited with all the patience that a defeated man ought to have. Waited in remorse, waited in guilt, waited in a drenched bunch of emotions.

The sky never breaks into a morning.

It goes from black to grey to black again. No sun. All that is there, is the rain. Plummeting with all its might, running amok, making a fool out of all that is living or pretending to survive.

“Soak in my might; don’t fight.
Don’t even think about it;
Its not gonna be all right…”

They told me that they would send across someone to get me out of here, get me to some
place dry. I lapped up their promises, a mongrel, and hungry since eternity. I knew they would lie. Making hollow promises comes second to betrayal in the human palette of psychological actions. But this time, they did a bend.

He came.

Carrying some clothing and some food supplies, he told me that he had been air dropped some two kilometers away. They were going to come pick us up within hours. There were other distress calls that had been detected from all across the terrain, and they were trying to get to as many as they could. He was talking too much. And he could use some respect for me.

War? What war?

I knew that I had been a commander in some forgotten part of my memory. I did not remember when the war got over; all I remember is that the gunfire and the bombs exploding in the vicinity slowly faded away. Then every sound was overshadowed by
the loud patter of rain. It did not allow you to talk or think.

Think about the rain. Think about me. Am I not enough?

He was still speaking. I stared at him, not really looking. He was getting louder, trying to cut through my defenses. I could see his lips moving, flinching like a maniac, his face streaked with water, mud and a lot more that I could not make out. I don’t like his way of talking. I am a Commander. I was one at least. Respect, please. Just a little.

He should not have slapped me.

Now there are two of us. I am still holding on to the knife. He lies there, his throat opened up like a fluffy pillow. His eyes carry the look of disbelief. Don’t tell me he did not see that coming. People with such low manners, ought to expect it sooner or later. There was a loud explosion a while back and I saw a flaming bird come crashing down into the forest. Seems like someone banged my fire exit . I have food now. And company. Not very lively, but surely well mannered.

I am still waiting…

THE WATCHMAN

Rusty lament through a weathered whistle.

A dark silhouette covers the waking hours
of the watchman.

Fathers make sons count stars on it,
sitting atop terraces.

Faces.

Nameless, shameful.

Races, vengeful;
of being eaten within
by the monstrosity christened Fate.

These faces roam the street corners,
devoid of variety;
You wouldnt remember either if you
crossed one.

The watchman sees them totter,
watches them pile upon the gutters.

Vermin.

He now pauses and smiles,
for he has seen this down centuries.

Ageless, the Watchman made them walk;
right into the bowels of cursed fate
and Hoped.

Hoped that one day,
the faceless man would look up
and see the stars,
the ones his father showed him upon forgotten terraces.

But he doesnt.

The watchman shakes his head and walks back
into the first wisps of dawn.
For The New Day, has begun.

Hateful Past Midnight

Aghast.

Or rather, amazed.

We stared deep into the half mooned' eyes
counting stars, counting skies
counting raptures, laughs
and Lies.

A social exclamation declares
we are two souls
forged to be one.

The burning sun
beats upon desires
Passion's naked fire
chooses to play Shylock.

We held hands
played "the whisper".
Lovesick juveniles
out on a death spree.

Our eyes wounded,
stripped and strangled the soul.
The soul does not question.
It waits for the end.

Patient.

The love is done.
The mush now bleeds dry
through half hearted gashes
on the wrist.

Why do I bleed
when I try to cut You away?
Why does guilt over remorse hold sway?

Within a day
Within a say
Within cupid's rotting clay.

The moment captures it.
And whats left behind,
is The Moment...

Repeat Telecast

Hello, lost reader! Since you have wandered in here and wondering what to do, there is this writeup which is waiting for you! It had been published before and taken out, and is back now. This is the original unedited version. Incase you want to see the one which did not win any prizes and is a more refined version of this one, then click here. Since I am in a good mood, there is another fresh story right where this ends, and wonder of wonders, its been added today as well!
Double whammy yo!! :)



Eating Out

It was just another night.Maybe not quite.

Waiters shuffled around like exotic insects while dim lights created haloes around the heads of the people who sat, uncaring of the world which eroded around them like neglected birthday cakes.These people sat and cared for sins over sanity,for sex over salvation; a sea of ripe filth which was beyond redemption.No one noticed when two rather well-dressed people walked in and sat at a table in the corner which was empty. "Two glasses of Chardonnay please", one of them ordered. He was dressed in a white suit, complemented with a white tie, and his eyes exuded brilliance which was almost unearthly. His blond hair almost shone. "Not very angelic...", the other guy mused and passed a half hearted smile. He had long hair and was rather peacefully dressed. There was a calm on his face, something which seemed to echo the solitude of centuries. He looked weary. The waiter arrived and placed two flute glasses filled with a clear liquid which bubbled slightly with subdued brilliance.Both of them picked up the glasses and looked into each other's eyes. "To humanity", they chorused and moved the glasses towards their pressed lips. And then it happened. The glass in the hands of the long-haired guy started humming and vibrating softly. Bubbles rose from below and burst on the surface in a soft hiss of expensive wine spray. The color of the liquid started slowly dancing, almost psychaldelic, changing into a fine azure. The other guy stared with a look of resignation over his face. The liquid now started thickening and the bubbling abated.It finally rested, a glass full of crimson, peacefully settled on the white tablecloth. During all this commotion, the guy in the white suit had managed to get up and slowly move behind his partner. He nudged him and they both slowly slipped out of the restaurant. All that was left behind was a startled expression of a common waiter staring at a wine-glass filled with clear blood on an expensive white table cloth. Both of them walked on the road outside with dim street light streaming at their faces. Finally the guy in the white suit spoke,
"Dont you think it ought to be the other way round?"

An Open Conversation

He looked down, what looked like miles below, cars zooming past signals, ants running amok among scattered crumbs. The moon, of course had no business interfering, so it stared,nonchalantly and continued to shine upon a dismal world.He wiped away a tear that seemed almost on the verge of stepping out of the comfy confines of his eyelids."Only I am allowed to fall;from grace or from the top of a building",he thought and thats when the past came hurtling back, an unruly engine without a driver.His life was the way it was supposed to play out in the movies;his girl dumped him for someone richer, he lost his job to recession.The latest was his landlord finally asking him to vacate the house.So here he was, talking to himself, playing out the movie of His Life.This is how it was all supposed to end. He would jump off this building, stop traffic for sometime,till a few screams later, someone would finally scrape him off the sidewalk.Quite simple actually.Infact...

" I wouldn't do that if I were you", someone spoke from behind him.The shock almost knocked him off balance, into the screaming nothingness below, but he just managed to right himself.He couldnt let his death be an accident.It had to be a well thought of exit from this world to the next.No accidents please.

The man was standing in the shadows and was not clearly visible. He wore a shirt and pants, all shadow colored, not revealing anything about him. Besides, when he had come on the terrace to end his life, he clearly remembered himself being alone.Then this must be...

"Yes I am the Devil himself", the man said and moved forward. He was now standing in the dimmed neon glow of the single bulb that flickered on the terrace. The man was, no offence whatsoever, ordinary.He looked like he could use some maintenence but being in hell was far from it. So our very own "suicide man" asked the question that would probably be bubbling in some cornerof your brain now,

"You dont Look like the devil."

"If you had expected me to come with my tail and pitchfork, I am sorry to have broken your heart", he retorted, smartly fishing out a cigerette from his pocket and lighting it. The glow from the match revealed what the bleak bulb could not; two pointy little stubs sticking out of his head. That proved it then. This was the devil. The suicide man believed it and he did not need a certificate.

Smoke rose up, forming a little stinky cloud of cigrette smoke, as he continued," I decided to give you more time you know. A few setbacks and you want to come storming, right up my ass!Whatever happened to perseverance and 'things get better'?Couldnt we all use a little more time?"

This was starting to get a little weird for someone who had come up to put a period to his life's sentence.He stared at the man who claimed to be The Devil and wondered if this was all a dream. He looked down at the traffic which was still moving just as he had left it.He finally mustered the courage to ask him what had been troubling his mind,
"Wouldnt you be happy to have me as a part of your army? Or maybe in the league or whatever you call it?"

"Accomadation is a problem everywhere sonny",the Devil said slowly, rings of smoke drifting out of his mouth."Its this new thing that I have started.I try to reduce as much traffic up there as I can, and ask people like you to hang around here. A little bit of effort and things start getting chirpy. Trust me, its happened to people before you, and there is no reason why it wouldnt happen to you!All I am saying is stick around for a while and if you dont like it, then you anyways have a one-way ticket to my place!"

His things were all over the place when she had spoken her final words, " you could do better you know. Better than this atleast!"And then, with a swooping motion she had crashed the vase that had been standing like a dusty sentry at the corner of his roomfor years. The sound echoed in his head like a hollow drum. He shut his eyes tight and when he opened them, he was still standing in front of The Devil in overalls,smoking the common man's cigerette.

"Ok, how's this for a deal;you dont jump now, and I dont tell anyone up there that you were a sissy. Infact no one needs to know that you committed suicide.If you let it go for now, I would pass off your death as a heroic attempt to make an old lady cross the road, whenever you die. That way you get a double deal!"

Funny.Maybe that wouldnt be the right word, but really, who cared? He had come to end it all, and here was the Devil, trying to take him off the ledge like a cunning insurance agent.Had he not been there, his existence would have been a myth by now. Ash to ash, dust to dust.

But the last one finally struck home. Here was a chance of living off another week,maybe more, and then entering the next place in style.He would give it his best shot and hope things to work out.If it didnt, he already had, as they said "the devil on his side". So he spoke,

" All right Mr Devil. I like your proposal. I am not going to kill myself right now. Instead, as it happens in the good stories, I would try to be a better person or whatever they call it. But if that doesnt work out, you know you would have to stick."

"You have the devil's word my boy. Now go before I change my mind", he said and looked up to a sky where someone had left out a neglected bunch of stars. Withing seconds, our suicide man, was gone from the terrace, leaving the smoker to his own tending.

He stubbed out the cigerrete and reached out for his horns. "Almost real", he smiled to himself and took off the hairband carefully, so the horns would not be damaged.He stuffed it in his coat pocket and walked towards the door, mumbling to himself,

"I wish being the janitor of this building was a little easier..."

The Unknown Chronicles...

I won’t lie to you.

It does feel strange looking at your own grave.

You stand staring at a gravestone which bears your name and pronounces you to be "finally at peace with yourself". And that, when you stand and stare at it, loose, moist mud dribbling off your back, creating micro mountains for the lesser creatures that dwell in the inner recesses of the planet. A gaping void, like a blind eye, stares right back from under the gravestone. It held me till a while back, but not anymore.

No, I am not your friendly neighborhood ghost.

The wind carries the smell of the dead; I beg your pardon, the people who have Passed on. Here, Time seems to be a forgotten face on a crowded bus, the features of which blur with passing moment, never disappearing all together. I am still standing and staring at the arms of death which seemed to have held me long enough to make the society believe that I had finally left it. You would not ever have the opportunity of doing what I am doing, because you are not like me. That is better than saying " I am not like you", don’t you think?

No, I am not some mean, stinky spirit that you could exorcise, Hollywood style.

The people who buried me here were people like you; weak in spirit, withering in body. They belong to the School of Fireflies; born to die in the luminescence of a lighted bulb within a single sunset. They would call me a freak of nature; Au Naturale Frankenstein. I have witnessed this foolish burial act down the centuries,being tirelessly repeated like the waves of the sea. Ironically, they never find out what became of me after I get buried. In natural circumstances, you wouldn’t actually wonder; but this sure doesn’t sound that Natural anymore, does it?

And no, I am definitely not your dead grandmother who you call up at every séance and ask foolish questions.

I live upon the life stream, and believe you me, it is not found in the stars. I have been this way for a long time now. The friends I made, the bonds I forged, are gone; rusted canons in a crumbling castle. You might think that I have a fairy tale life, with "happily ever after" tattooed right into my fate, but that’s not it. Like the tombstone that does not belong to the buried in the afterlife; I can never "belong". I don’t live Forever. Forever is just a long, long time for me.

I look up just as the moon makes an appearance, my guardian angel during centuries of solitude. My body becomes cold and the blood in my body seems to be drying up. The moment of truth is almost upon us. I can feel my canines, sprouting like wings on a new born butterfly on a shiny spring morning. Only, it is night. My body craves for the life stream that runs so freely in you mortals. I will be gone and my memories would die with your mortal mounds that you so fondly cradle. The moon shines bright as I go out to take one of You to fill in the Void that I have left on the ground.

I am. I was. I will be. Forever.

[ The post below shall be added at the end of the day or by tommorow early morn. Thank you ever so much for leaving comments on a post which doesnt even exist! I am thankful to every single reader who steps in here.Comes from the heart.]

Eating Out...

Hello,

This post has been removed till the 15th of July for reasons
to be revealed on the same date. For the people who read
and commented, thank you. As for the rest, your patience
is requested and appreciated.

Scribblers Inc.

P.S.- The blog is back in action....Spread the word, start the fire!! :)

The Sum Of All Fear...

What is obsession? Or paranoia? Is it going back to your door repeatedly to check whether its locked? Is it thinking whether you left your gas turned on when you came to work this morning?Or is it believing that your boss or the man you met on the street for a split second to be the member of some secret cult order?

Or perhaps it is obsessing over something totally usual?

I am a movie buff;not the eat, sleep and drink variety, but I do have my share of cinematic bliss almost every other night. This thought provocation is the result of a movie which goes by the name of "The number 23". It has Jim Carrey as the protagonist who gets obsessed with the number 23. "What is so unique about the whole thing?", you might ask, except the fact that its a good plot for an out of the way movie. Incorrect. That is where the part about my obsession comes in.
I haven't written in a while now; Tons of ideas roaming around in my head, larks on a bright morning,but too lazy to perch and take root. What makes me write this piece is the strange series of personal similarities that I found between myself and the movie. Yes, I am a dark fiction writer and I would willingly buy it if you said that I was a little cuckoo in the head, but before jumping to any sort of conclusions, here is what I have to offer. The details that follow are personal and are totally true. They haven't been fabricated to add color to the bunch of words. Believe you me, I have different tools to perform tasks such as those.If you hate spoilers, then you would have to make an exception just this time. This is what came to light when I was halfway through the movie:
-Jim Carrey in the movie is born on the third of Feb, which means 2/3 as is written in the US format.My birth year is 1985. Add all the numbers. They equal 23. That's not all. if you took into consideration my total date of birth, it is 6.4.85 . Still adds up to 23 doesn't it?

Big coincidence, as I would want to believe too. But it does not stop here. My bike number plate reads 2529. Doesn't add up to 23 right? Even I heaved a sigh of relief. But I guess I was up for one helluva time. Incidentally, my bike number plate reads "XX05X 2529". Do I even need to ask you to add it up?

Still a play of my garbled mind. This is unreal. I added up all the digits of my cell phone. They add up to 41.I added them up.Which comes to 5. Which is 2+3. 23.

Mind Games eh? Indeed. I live at house number 592. Five added to nine times two.

While I am writing this, I fished out my office ID to check if my employee code has something to do with the befuddled number. Turns out it doesn't. But what does turn up is the permanent landline number which is there on the ID. Not only does it have a "23" appearing in the order,, but also the numbers,23567(not in that order though) turning up before a zero. Add them all up. If it still doesn't freak you out, I don't know what would.
I did not want to put in this last bit, but what the heck, this is my place, innit? I am an IDEA subscriber, so I get this entire bucketful of useless service messages. This is what the last screen of the message which came during the movie read:
ID-53131
NAME) to 53131.Eg- JOB ANKIT. Rs 3- SMS.
Add up the initial numbers and subtract the last "3" from it.If you were me,I bet you wouldn't be very happy.
Am I losing my mind? Is this all just a big coincidence?I sure wish it is. With that I rest my case.

Laters.

P.S.- Interestingly, there is an explanation which is offered in the movie about what makes the number so unique. It appears that if you divided 2 by 3, what you would get is .666 . Chilling, isnt it?

Scattered Thoughts...

Memories...
Everything that ever happened between us...was never real.

A falsehood always shrouding the truth.

An enigma waiting to be revealed...

a truth so real,a taste so tingling,a thought so revealing..

a Dream so Unnerving.

I wonder if I am real..and that’s when I see you...

Pain

What have you ruined ?

A shadow of betrayal as memories scream.

Once we were together in wonder,

wide-eyed and hand in hand,

but your thirst paled.

A vengeful pool of darkness .

Drops of blood follow night,

follow night.

Love bled dry.
In a rush of sorrow,

I hate you...

[The blog has been idle for a while so the apologies must happen. Better writing shall soon occur. Putting up poems which were written quite a while back but were never put up. Read, hate, whatever.]

Just Another Bad day...

Let the clock tick. Let the birds stop singing. Let everything get dark. Let the world go to hell. Let…

He dipped the biscuit in and took a bite. Not crunchy but not bad either. He liked it. The newspaper he had been reading was now open on pages four and five. He really did not care what the papers said anyways. What mattered to him was how crunchy the biscuit was. Ironic yes, but true.

The phone finally diverted his attention as it started ringing in its same monotonous ring. As he touched the receiver to pick it up, a cold hand gripped around the back of his palm and jerked it away. He turned around to see the familiar face of Peter.

“Hey man…what happened to your hands? They feel cold dude!”

Peter gave a cold smile and asked “Why are you home? Aren’t you supposed to be in college?”

The phone had stopped ringing now, apparently forgotten all about by the two people in the confusion. He looked at the packet of crackers and decided not to eat one. Let the damned crackers go to hell. He then looked at Peter and said, “I was supposed to be but then I thought I would sit at home and read the papers instead. Why you askin’?”

“ You should have picked up that phone. It was supposed to save your life”.

With those words Peter put his hand out and touched his shoulder with a finger. The room was changing now. The wallpaper smoked from the bottom, as clean red tongues of flame slowly licked them. The clock screen on the wall frosted over and hair-like cracks spread over it. Its ticking rose to a frenzied pace and its tick-tock seemed to drown out everything. Outside, large drops of some heavy, viscous liquid hit the windowpanes in a sick and dull rhythm. He turned to look and almost passed out. The liquid was a light blue with little portions of white thrown in. Drops of sky. His head was reeling. The sky was getting covered in a black puddle, thick and inky, as the color from it rained till the eye could see. White lightning tore across the skies, silent as a grave. A hissing sound came to him where the finger touched his shoulder and pain, white hot, filled his senses. He looked at his flesh bubbling like steam escaped from the nozzle of a pressure cooker at the point of contact . His feet buckled and he went down on his knees. The calendar behind Peter fluttered and he could see the date clearly: Friday the Thirteenth.
The phone rang again and he heard the recorder come on. It was Peter’s voice.

“Hey meet me in the college! We have this great plan where we will try and separate the evil self from the body. Sabby found this book you know! He…”

He woke up, bathed in sweat. The phone was ringing. He picked it up knowing whom it would be, but was disappointed. He looked at the calendar. The panda in the calendar gazed back at him nonchalantly and told him it was the Thirteenth of March. A Friday. The skies outside twinkled with a million microscopic pieces of ground glass. Safe.
It was Sabby.

“Hey dude! I know its too early in the morning to call and all but I had to tell someone. It’s Peter. You know, he said that he found this book. Then he said that he had a dream about me killing you. He is probably at your door as I speak. Don’t open the door…”

Let the stupid dream go down the drain. Let the skies go grey or pink or punk for that matter. Let the…

He slammed the phone back into its place and rushed for the door. It was still dark outside. He went and opened it.

Outside, it was still dark. He could see the neighbor’s car parked across the road, just as he had seen it while coming home yesterday. Not moving. It was not exactly supposed to move now, was it? He opened the door.
Darkness greeted him as a cold wind slapped his face softly.Nothing.

Let Sabby go to hell. Let Peter go to hell. Let Friday the Thirteenth take a hike. Let everyone mind their own business. Let…

He turned back when Sabby’s voice, cold and familiar, almost froze him,


“You were not exactly expecting me were you?”

[ The idea is taken from a conversation that I had over the phone with someone special last night and the night before. This post is dedicated to her. You are the best. You know you are.You are, Surbhi. To all my friends, foes and fanatics, a happy Friday the Thirteenth to you! Rot...err...enjoy!! :) ]

The Dawn...

He walks down the cobbled pavement. Staccato sounds of his patent leathers strike an uncanny rhythm, which echoes eerily into the night. Suddenly the nape of his neck tingles. Isn't it strange how the sixth sense works overtime in the presence of evil…? He turns back with a swift movement. The staccato rhythm has stopped. Silence has never seemed so screamingly loud…he doesn't see anything. The wind ruffles a piece of paper which pirouettes in the air seeking a partner to dance with. He shivers when he feels a cold finger trail a path of wetness down his spine. Is this how fear feels…? The lights on the street are making his shadow behave in strange ways. It seems to be moving disjointedly…at times in front of him at times behind him. Suddenly he stands paralyzed...with the realization that the shadow is not his.

Enter (stage right ) Realization.

"Dead! Aint I ??"
He tries to explain the other possibilities to his dearest friend alter ego. Not hallucination. Not drugs. Nothing else. Shadow stealer??? Pshaw!!

The finger again. His eyes are closed. He cannot follow the movements that are taking place around him, so he does a safety. Like a crane in sand.

"I am dead, aint I? Dead as the dead are? Dead and deader? Deadest?Oh cmon tell me! I am dead right?", he screams at the alley and opens his eyes to hear the last words he would ever hear; just before a blinding flash explodes his brain into a thousand crimson stars;

"You are. Now..."

[The purple part has been written by the noted writer Preeti, while the rest has been penned by me as a part of an exercise. The parts, each, have been penned in 10 minutes flat. Picture courtesy "That Yellow Bastard" by Frank Miller (Sin City Series).Do excuse creative injustice and other subtleties on my end. Period. Go. Read.]

Wishes...

Happy Friday the Thirteenth...may we all meet someday in hell...

Cheated...

Dead.

“To us!” He smiles and then frowns. His eyes reflect horror.

The waitress puts the glasses.

“…a mistake! Shouldn’t have died! Did what you wanted right?” The man smiles and orders Beer.

“Meet me at Thugs, I want to thank you”, the phone says. He believes it…

[Entry for a 55 word story writing competition. The topic was "cheating". And I quote the Forgotten Wise; GO FIGURE!! :D ]

cinema

The Sun decides to turn orange; so that he can match the color of the drink the girl has been holding on to in its fading streams of light.

The table has a tablecloth saying, “God is almighty”. ‘Pretty unusual advice’, the girl ponders as she traces the soft silk words etched on the cloth with her fingers. The tables around are empty; the waiters aren’t hovering around much either. She glances at her watch.

***

“Check out this watch!” Sandhya chortles like a school kid.
“C’mon! I already have three!” she replies, trying quite unsuccessfully to drag her away.
“You don’t have this one!” she retorts, eyes glinting like sequins, knowing quite well that
She has her this time.

They buy the watch and spot a “50% off” on the other side of the street. Sandhya pulls her and both of them try to run across the street. Neither of them notices the black car hurtling towards them at high speed, meters away.

***

Six thirty. There is an old man sitting on the table across. She waits patiently. He is never late. She looks towards the old man for a fleeting second, nothing unique. A mop of frizzled leftover hair sits on his scalp, having turned oblivious to its purpose of existence long ago. Baggy cotton pants, checkered cotton shirt, shoes which look like they have met his grandfather. He is looking towards the sea, through a splatter of palm trees that are blocking his view. She adjusts her hair, pushing back a wayward lock over her left ear. She crosses her left leg over her right and traces the writing on the table for the tenth time. Her mind wanders.

***

“You mean there are people who can disappear in front of your eyes?” a round eyed girl of seven questions her mom who is cooking in the kitchen, trying to fulfill her believed pre-occupation on the planet. She answers without looking.
‘But of course! Such people wear bright clothes and often have a ring on their finger. It is of a coiled serpent. If they get angry, they can make people around you disappear as well!’

***

She sees a man approaching. He has come. He brings along with him, her moment of glory; her Nirvana. He is wearing a bright yellow shirt and shades. His walk carries an air of nonchalance. In a different life, she might have been attracted to him. But not today. Not in this moment. She would do what she has come to do. She grips the handle and closes her finger around the trigger.

***

The world changes in a flash. There is commotion all around. Her vision is watery. Her head feels like a bag of sand. There are stabs of pain being reported by her brain from all over her body. People seem to be running all over the place. She can hear the faint siren of an ambulance. She tries to turn her head and sees a black car stalled at a little distance.
A man wearing a fiery orange shirt steps out. He is wearing shades. Her eyelids are heavy, almost closing. She sees the lifeless eyes of Sandhya before passing out.

***

The constable runs into the Inspector’s room with sweat on his brow. He has a letter clutched in his hand. “I will commit murder at seven at The Seaside”, it says. There is a little newspaper cutting attached with it. It is an article about a road accident. The inspector looks at it for a full minute before throwing it away in the bin. Looks like a bad prank. The fan above him goes on making the whirring sound that almost no one has noticed in ten years.

***

The man stands in front of her now. Her tears flow freely. He just stands and stares. Silence stares awkwardly at the spreading, never-ending sea and then concentrates on this scene. The waiters are inside the glass doors, unknowing of the scene unfolding outside. She decides to give him two more seconds of life. She fails to notice that the old man has almost reached her table. She takes a deep breath and pulls the trigger. The silence shattered, the gunshot echoes in the distance. When the smoke clears, she sees an old man with a bullet in his chest and a young man with dark shades holding him. She drops the Gun and breaks down.

***

The inspector nurses his glass of whisky. It’s been a long day for him. He shares his evening with an old gentleman wearing baggy pants and a checkered shirt. He takes a sip and speaks “I got a strange letter today. You remember the road accident where this girl was killed and her friend survived? Someone sent me a cutout of the same and a message saying that he would commit murder today at The Seaside. I tell you, these kids don’t have anything better to do. They read novels written by people like you and expect that they can create a menacing atmosphere. What they don’t know is the Police ain’t a shithouse!”

The old man smiles. He has found his Exit. His readers would not be disappointed. He would not die of some tupenny cancer. He would die, and in style. He takes a look at his watch and realizes he has about half an hour to complete the autobiography. He takes out his pen and writes the heading of the final Chapter,

Chapter 20: Curtain Call…

Aftermath

Ye shall reap as ye sow... and the harvest will be blacker than the heart of the devil... Blood shall flow free as the world is submerged in darkness
Darker than the darkest sins...
The lesser born shall inherit the earth... and everywhere there will be the spawns bearing the testimony of the misgivings committed by the human race in the days of yore.
It would be the beginning of the end; a legacy of the rise and rise of blackness…

He reflected over the words as the stale wind of centuries that had seen fresh air breathed down his back. His body ached of toil that he would not; he could not do. Sweat trickled down his temple and managed to find its way down his throat before he brushed it off casually. The sky looked as it had looked for the last two centuries, after the Great Fall had erased the last traces. Nothing had survived. Nothing higher.

Black was the new blue. Or the red. Or the green. No other color; shades of darkness swirled like ominous vultures closing in on a dying prey in a desert dream. The ground crackled beneath his feet, as he scrunched through matter he would rather not want to know. Twigs? Bones? Boney twigs? He shuddered and let the thought pass.

The blackness shall rule over thee, as it swarms over kingdoms that were and washes over your defeated Sun. It shall not melt, nor shall it be washed away. It shall remain, a presence that would surpass all that has been. It would rule on for all eternity and there would be no respite this time; no army, no hero to salvage the planet. There would be no society or the world that you have known and destroyed down the ages. There would be darkness….

He stopped dead in his tracks. Something rustled in front of him. No wind induced stimulus, no cause and effect action. Voluntary action. The winds howled like a banshee, as he drew closer to the pile of rubble that seemed to have acquired a life of its own. There was destruction all around him, clouding up everything that formed a part of the lost past. It moved again…

No being shall age, no flower shall bloom…
Forever ringing the knell of doom…
No telling of time, in remorse shall ye dwell
No heaven shall absolve thee, your salvation; hell…

It was another survivor; a lesser being. The higher beings had immersed into the great fall with all their might and valor, leaving the lesser beings to fend for themselves. They were all that were left now, something that reflected a dim silhouette of what had been. Rare, but not extinct.

He reached out to the rather sorry remnant of a race that they called human. “And what would your name be?, he asked. Recognition, like lightning, rippling across dark skies filled his senses before he heard the answer.

“Hope”…

[the story started off as a dialogue between a great writer and poet, Preeti and me, and took this form. The opening lines are actually a chat session, later moulded into fiction that does not seem too fictitious. Today's experience with fuel only strengthens my belief in this rather bleak prophecy. But, as they say, "hope" remains. I guess I am back. :D ]