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 ]

Balance...

No thought. Absolutely none.



Everything around you warps into bullet time. No voices, no wind on your face, nothing.Everything around you turns into a picture that you probably got in some old album in the drawer. Colours; they, for once get brighter. You see everything around you in a sort of seeming psychedelic reality. There is this buzz in your ears like you have at the end of a loud pop. Oh, almost forgot. There is this breathing sound, loud and clear. Like that bustling stream that you sometimes come across on channels like National Geograpic or something.



With a gun pointing right between his eyes, he felt exactly like this.

You go to a movie, watch it, eat popcorn and come out wishing you were like that great bod guy on the screen who beats the hell out of those nasties, or you were that swell looking girl who walks down costly carpets pretending money was being made in some free cola plant; but no! This guy upstairs, he got plans. And they dont stick to this script you thought of in your tupenny brain.

"Dont shoot me", he managed to utter after the longest two seconds of his life.

Or you have this day when the signals are all green. Or you find that fifty buck lying under the creaking bench at the park near your house. Or some guy says he is gonna take you for dinner and you know in your head that you saved a neat buck, addin' it up for your rent that you can hardly pay anymore. Hell, your company pays you after two months.

The guy with the gun felt like he was in power. Like all real and everything. Like this was the stuff he had been waiting for all his life. The final destination. Zenith. Stars and Earth.

Say. Say something!

"No last words", he said, and pulled the trigger.

"CUT!!" , the Director's voice cut through the air. " That guy is supposed to die! He is supposed to look scared! Why does he look like he does not give a shit! You think I am rich? Get these guys out of here! Pack up people! We are done for today!"

The man on his knees got up and dusted himself. He glanced at the director and walked away slowly towards the empty tent. The guy with the gun threw it on the ground, and walked away almost tearfully. No pal of his was saving him a buck tonight.

He reached the tent and lighted a cigerette."There's gotta be a better way to earn a buck than this!", he thought and kicked a stone. His phone, as if on a cue, started jangling. It was his boss. After two months.

The voice sounded cold."You have a new assignment. American guy, name is William Mason. He is up at room 15 at The Orient. Do it tonight. Money tommorow."There was a chuckle and he added, "Hope your gun's not rusted".

"Not yet", he said and hung up. He threw the cigerette and walked towards the highway, his beloved bag by his side. He was smiling now. As he looked up, the moon sniggered back, symbolising perfect natural harmony in his private universe. A final thought escaped him, as he walked back in to his life,

"I wish I could act..."

Talk 'bout it!

There are times in your life when you are it. This it, mostly believed to be a phase, often tends to stick along longer than a normal phase would; like maybe a moon cycle or a temporary phase of pseudo-depression. Trust me, this goes a lot farther. A real lot.

Before you come to the conclusion that I have flipped my lid or gone cuckoo in the head, let me tell you a bit more, a bit more about it. The feeling probably comes closest to a feeling that was described around the 15th century as melancholy, but not quite . When you are overpowered by melancholy, you are sad, you are slumped; you are right off the rack. Not when you are inflicted with it. Stephen King immortalized the word by creating the perfect piece of fear in the form of one’s darkest nightmare, in a novel of the same name. You use it when you don’t have a gender for the object, or want to give a more objective view of the given situation. How do you find out that you are being bothered by it? Let me give you some indicators.

I am being bothered by it for a while now. I can comfortably blame my ‘not writing’ on this simple comprehensible two-letter piece of English Language symphony. The strangest and probably the scariest part is that it doesn’t make you realize that you are inflicted in any way. It just draws you away, from work, from pastimes, from anything that previously occupied your current train of thought. What it puts in place is, something, which you would not have possibly expected to be there. Take me for example (considering that we don’t have any volunteers here). I have always loved writing and was almost on the verge of shutting off this blog. Not because I got bored. Not because I have a block. Not because I wanted to give up writing. Not because I hate hip-hop. Not because of any reason that I could think up of in my rather infertile imagination.

Rather because, it struck.

I have switched to watching movies. I have seen close to ten flicks in the past week alone. I watch a movie everyday. I have been seeing movies ranging from Trainspotting to Madagascar 2 to Wall E to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I saw trash when I saw Burn After Reading. I watched three plays, one of them presented by a company called the Mad Cow Company. I don’t know what I am upto.
Maybe I should get back to horror. Maybe I should pick up something different. Maybe I shouldn’t pick my teeth. Pick up the broken China pieces of my strange life and glue them back. Maybe…
Maybe ask it…

[P.S.- a little cuckoo I know; but I shall return in all splendor...shortly.]

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..."

***

The Machine- Part 4

When Ronnie came home, his brother had already left. The washed clothes were kept in a neat stack. He went and pulled out the shirt, the one that had a mark of his midnight ramblings. The mark was there. Either the machine was a flop or his brother needed a shot of the “elder brother ” vaccine. He walked over and flipped through his set of clothes. Spotless. This was not going the way it was supposed to. This was not according to plan. This had to be corrected. The way he had corrected him when he had caught him stealing money. When he had refused to go down on his knees. When he had tried to rebel. This was going right over the fence. Gone.

His brother was almost home.

***

Ronnie had not gone towards the washing machine when he had come home. He did not remember why he was not supposed to, but he knew he had to stay away. Then his younger brother walked in. There was plenty of violence where Ronnie only laughed. Some moments later, it was done. Ronnie walked out of the room, knowing that his end had been achieved. He had taken revenge off his younger brother. He had taken revenge off the machine too, but he still failed to remember why that was required. It was a washing machine. Nothing but a dumb piece of electrical hogwash. What was wrong with this idea then? He was glad to have left the house. That he surely was glad of.

***

He lay bleeding. There were bruises everywhere. He had been done in pretty well. He sat there, against the wall, laying curses in his mind. He did not deserve this. But, for the first time in his life, remorse had come horse riding with revenge. His body burned with hurt and hatred. He would do something this time. He knew that the machine did not clean anyone else’s clothes. He knew that the machine was on his own side. But now, he wanted the machine to do him a favor.

A very important one.

[final part coming up tomorrow! Stay put! :) ]

The Machine- Part 3

At the same moment, his brother was sweating it out at the McDonald’s. A surge of energy seemed to hit him, like a secret bolt of lightning, customized to fit into his head. He saw his brother touching the machine. He saw him placing his hand on the top of the machine in high definition in his head.

This was not right.

It was his machine. No one could touch it. His thoughts almost had a dreamlike quality. His brother was mean to him and that was okay. He worked around the house and his brother seemed to lie around and that was okay. It was His machine and he had touched it. Now that was not ok.
It was evil.

He left without saying anything.

***

Ronnie stood there for a while, trying to comprehend. His brain felt like spaghetti. The machine did not feel like one. He hated it. He could feel hate, dripping out of his system, like a leaking tap. He did not want to be around it, especially when it tried to pull one of its stunts again.

(Are you insane? You sure are getting old Ronnie!)

He did not want to be around anymore. He wanted to be out of this place. He moved away with slow steps, facing the machine as he did it. He had a feeling that the machine would jump him if he turned. He slowly found the door. The machine seemed to be eyeing him, completely realizing that this was no friend. And Ronnie resented that thought building up inside his head. So he just tried to find the latch and shut that thought out. He finally found the latch and turned his back to the machine.

He felt eyes on his back. Staring and hot.

***
The door was open when he came, and Ronnie was gone.
He moved swiftly towards the machine, almost dashed. He went and touched the machine, almost caressing it. The machine was special to him. It was the one thing that was his and did not belong to his brother. He knew the machine was on his side. The machine would do right. The machine would only do his chores. Now that was a childish thought.


(Only your chores? You are going insane! Next is flying turtles!)

He thought of trying it out. But, he would begin with his brothers’ clothes. His could come later. With all these thoughts gurgling in his head like a stuck up drain, he put in the clothes. The knobs seemed to stare back at him with a cold gleam. He turned the knob and waited.

First there was nothing.

The machine then started. It began with a slow hum and was picking up sound in a steady crescendo. Soon the whole room was filled with its drone. Nothing unusual. It still did not sound like a ghost story. Nothing out of place was happening.

Not here at least.

***

Ronnie ambled through the streets still trying to get a hang of the situation. What had happened in the room was already fading. Fading. Fading?
He felt the memory slowly seeping out, a blob of paint trickling out from an upturned can.
He tried to hold it back. Soon he could remember that something had happened in the room that had made him freak out, but he could not remember what. Then he remembered that he was out here because the room was not the place he had wanted to be in.
Soon he realized that he was not supposed to be in the streets in the first place. He suddenly turned and started walking back. And he almost hit a car too.

Almost.

[to be continued]