Propositions

Man is a dreary proposition. He's a lost form searching for function in a world that does not and never will know him. He wanders the streets of cities looking for something or the other but he will never find it—he never has.

On a wet Sunday night, I was driving home after my customary dinner at The Thatched Hut. Stuck in a traffic jam and the rain coming down harder than ever, I had nothing better to do than look out my window at a world that couldn't not be wet on a stormy night. A bus pulled over at its stop and a few people alighted. An old woman firmly gripping a knitting kit, her husband trying to keep up with her while trying to unfurl an umbrella, a prostitute whose make-up was already streaming down her cheeks—she could've been crying, and a middle-aged man carrying a bag of groceries and walking while typing something into his phone.

A bright red light caught my attention; the traffic was clearing and I began to move. Why was the prostitute crying? An affair of love? Interesting as that thought was, I realized it held no potential whatsoever beyond its curious context. Why did the crying prostitute have to be an odd proposition? That she fell in love wasn't so simple anymore—and I strongly suspected those of us who cried "Love is for everyone".

These were the men who were looking for love when it was already everywhere, and that they were looking for it meant they were looking for something specific. The man who'd made her cry could easily have been such a man, hurting from the love of a woman who had bedded other men simply because it was the matter of trades and a hungry stomach. He couldn't stand the severely non-physical love of a woman. It was strange to him, scared him, and he pushed her away.

Would she know love again? I was and am in no position to tell. Why couldn't the old woman care about the rain? I was sure her old husband was still trying to get the lever to unlock so he could open the damned umbrella. I was sure for some reason that he was only trying to look busy; men usually had a penchant for mechanisms capable of confusing most women. The umbrella would've been open much earlier if not for his avoidance of some conversation.

What could've happened? An affair, again? With the prostitute?! Unlikely. There was nothing loveable about him, for one. An inexplicable expenditure? Perhaps. As a man moves on from one era and into another, his first attempt at reorienting his senses is to coax something into obedience—he must possess something tractable. Growing up, it's a bike, a girl, a car, a job, an office, tenure, companionship, recognition, fame, pension, vacation and a death that kills him in his sleep.

The old man must have just found something he liked, something he could grip while his marriage slipped through his fingers. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the umbrella he'd invested in.

That was the lot. I wasn't much better off myself: an out-of-work writer is a nobody. I turned away from the window and just stared at the road the rest of my way home. The rain was whittling down already and the ripples were barely visible outside the umbra of hundreds of headlights.

I recalled then something I did when it rained when I was much younger, perhaps a boy of 20. I used to look at the sky and try to focus on one droplet as it came down, and I used to follow it with a keen gaze all the way to its demise on the road below my balcony. And then, I used to look up again, trying to spot my next target. I can't remember anymore why I enjoyed doing that boring exercise again and again, but I still did try to look up through the windscreen for a raindrop. I couldn't find many, and even when I did, I couldn't track it all the way. It was just the knowledge of tremendous rainclouds above my head and the firm ground on which I drove. Everything in between I took for granted, and that was something I knew I wouldn't like to be told ever.

The road was now empty—not a vehicle in sight. Driving slowly, I turned my eyes to the other side of the road. Outside a butcher's stall, a crowd waited in silence for their portions. On a piece of slate hung from the wall, "Fresh meat" was inscribed in chalk, sheltered from the past downpour by a shallow parapet that leaned over it.

Further ahead, another bus was pulling away from its stop, getting back on the road, and two boys were doggedly chasing it. They had backpacks strapped to their backs—students, getting back from classes, going by the rest of their attire. For a moment, I considered pulling over and offering them a lift, but decided against it when all those rainy nights that I'd spent waiting for the next bus to arrive came to mind. I hadn't enjoyed those nights one bit but they did teach me the value of punctuality... and how nasty colds could get.

I continued driving. A couple was walking on the sidewalk, outside a mall, holding hands while she pulled her scarf tighter around her face. Anonymity was hard to come by in cities such as this: all I had to do was walk up to them and ask for a light, and they'd already have a pretty good impression of me, my habits, my life. It was simple, really. I was and am a man in this city.

When we are drowned.

The rain poured—not in sporadic busts of the clouds but ceaselessly, day and night, and by the time he'd reached the shack, the mud path he'd been tracking for days was dissolved, drowned under four feet of water. Water was everywhere, coursing rivulets down abandoned sheets of asbestos piled against a fence, dripping from rafters and rain-slicked girders with an unmistakeable splash that stood out resiliently, even flowing over gutters and puddles and ponds with a noiseless turbulence that rekindled memories of the sea.

But he knew his place well enough because the seagulls weren't there, because the sand wasn't there, because the wind wasn't there to bring respite from the humid evening. Vapours condensed on his spectacles, and they wouldn't be wiped off despite however hard he rubbed them on his shirt. That the shack hadn't been whipped away by the storm surprised him; he would have enjoyed the sight of planks and splinters of wood coursing through the guts of an airborne whirlpool of dust and grime, his arms and legs flapping around like... well, a duck caught in the guts of an airborne whirlpool of dust and grime.

No. It stood there, as irascible as ever, little waves lashing against the platform, lolling and roiling around aimlessly with a moronic obedience to the laws of nature. Adjusting his knee-high boots, he stepped out of the car and carefully planted his feet on the ground, cautious not to slip or slide against the slush.

For a moment right then, the sun shone out through a patch of flimsy cloud cover, the single shaft of light reflected on millions of raindrops in its path, scattered eventually into nothingness, or perhaps into rodents that scrambled into the shadows. And as quickly as it came, the light vanished from the faces of the raindrops, the residual warmth fading from the skin of his arms, his face... he could remember her pulling away, backing away, walking into the clouds, into another man's scar-kissed arms, into another man's booze-drenched world of free-trades and unabashed bargains. If only she'd asked, he'd have given it to her, but even though she knew that, she'd left him.

It made him feel cold for the first time, his body naked, stripped off all the man he'd adorned through years of a tragic marriage, left to stand with an ageing soul right from under which a cushion of a thousand happy memories had been stolen. A bloody ritual would set it right, he knew, and he held the hand of a colder steel in his pocket, and started to walk. He could feel the water fighting his advance, pushing him back away from the door; the impudence!

Quicker steps that he thought would slide through the water found them retarded by small vortices that curled around his thighs. Could he swim? No, that would be foolish. Only a few tens of metres more, a short distance to whit; he could and would make it.

Where men hide

Here, men walked, under the concrete and metal girders spanning the roof, in their ancient wombs. It'd never been calculated that they would get here, nor was it foreseen as a circumstance substantiated purely by accident. It was the way it was. They waited for the train to arrive in silence, neither each standing alone nor in a few throngs, but they stood speckled on the banks of the tracks. It was the picture of nonchalance. The ocean might as well have been a few meters from their feet, and the water might as well have easily been lashing at their feet with poetic gusto, but they wouldn't care. They just stood there waiting for the train to arrive.

One man looked at his watch; I remember, I was standing right next to him. He pushed the sleeve of his very-old jacket back and looked at the dial of his watch, and when he was satisfied, he pushed the sleeve back down with a jerk of his arm and leaned on his other leg. Not a sigh had been heaved in the hall all this time, not one expression of mild consternation, not even of frustration. Some of them carried grocery bags: the orange bags were unmistakeable under the halogen lamps, the customary thumbnail of a butterfly sewn onto each face that meant they were made of downcycled plastic.

Others were getting back from the football game. The sweat glistened on their skin like the sweat on the foreheads of anxious and drooling devotees come to meet the sage, and He would walk in their midst seeking out the one He could at least trust. They would chant His name and they would pack His purse with coins in return for blessing, and when He taught them, they wouldn't listen. After all, they had purchased a lesson, and he had better give it to them. And I did, and I did. Say what you will, it was a glorious world filled with men, each the nucleus of my fantasies. And that one trustworthy disciple? He would end up in the sewers, curiously.

Finally, in the distance, there was a bright light visible, circular and white, and approaching with intent and steadily toward our platform, the low rumble of the perfunctory horn accompanying its enlarging. The men looked up from their News Todays and the concrete floor, slowly moving forward as if they going to grapple with it like it was a woman they had sighted and now yearned for.

They all yearned for a woman and I knew they no longer cared if she was fat or thin, if she was beautiful or grotesque, or even if she was healthy or carried in her loins a disfiguring fever. By the time the locomotive was a hundred metres away, they were in two barely distinguishable groups, one each for the two doors each compartment would have, and they would hurry to enter it like they did on every night, hurry to enter it, finish first, and discard the weight of loneliness. They would push the woman away and go home to be absolutely lonely. And in the dark confines of that room, their solipsistic hopes would be realized.

The train came closer, and as it did, they huddled closer, their shoulders so close that they almost touched. Nobody wanted to get too far away from the light descending from the office upstairs, its window the only window discernible in this cavern we stood in, the cold and mechanical glow quickly disintegrating within the spaces coveted by corners infested with rodents and disaster-blown fissures.

At the same time, nobody wanted to touch each other because nobody knew what would happen then, because someone might feel something, a strange sensation, and something might happen. They were so scared. So scared! I could laugh with pity.

I jumped in with them, deliberately pushing my shoulders against the brawniest men in the crowd, and they would grimace at the silken touch of my wonderful hands, and they would move away, and I would follow them. Some of the men gave me stern looks, attempting in vain to push me away with their eyes, while some others would look downcast, grunt something under their noses and walk away.

I liked the ones who used their eyes. The men who walked away were men, too, but they were a different kind of men. They were men with fathers who had worked in cities and had owned a small house in the suburbs with a wicket gate, and they were men with mothers who had doted over them when they had been young, and they were men who had never lost a sibling to a stalking paedophile or a psychotic serial killer or a maniac hopped up on acid and convinced he was carving the cross on a piece of bark and not on a baby’s head.

No, these were good men, men who understood decency and so had been cheated on by their former wives and girlfriends, men who believed in the goodness of other men, men who believed in such things as leading by example. I wanted the men who had been emotionally raped by their abusive fathers, who had awakened quickly enough to hit their wives and girlfriends, men who wouldn’t be afraid to be men.

Looking around within the packed compartment, my pity evaporated and into its wake condensed a fatigue that I had hoped would set in much later, a terrible world-weariness that removed from my indulgence, a reminder that I did have other things to do. It was already three years since the Emasculation and these men had no idea they were absolutely lonely in this world in their turmoil.

Should I have told them then? I don’t know. I didn’t know, I wasn’t sure. Anyway, as the train snaked its way through the city, I seemed no longer capable of enjoying the drove of jostling men, as if the night had become more colder – Had it? Someone must have opened the windows – and the airs drier, as if all the moisture had been expunged out of my brain and I seemed to stand in the middle of a large and empty field, the stalks of tall grass dark-blue in the darkness disappearing beneath my feet.

A foreboding beat of realization began to thump in the distance. I could remember my father, the railway engineer, sounding the three-step foghorn to signal danger for inbound trains at the station, I could remember him changing signal lights frantically before anything untoward happened, I could remember no train arriving at all as I looked to the east, and I could remember him collapsing on the bench in tears. I was almost 20 when I realized I was the child of a madman. I wished then that he was standing next to me so I could hold him upright and that we could enjoy this train ride together.

He was a man in his own right, a third kind, an invincible one.

As this and other odd images passed through my head, I stood standing in the train even though more and more seats became empty as we journeyed on, and at one point, I was offered a seat by a man who was getting off – how polite! After another hour, my stop was come, the last on the line, and I alighted, mentally drained from yet another evening of loafing around the city soliciting men who were the same universally but never seemed good enough for me, for my vainglorious body, a ritual that I called an ordeal.

Why did I play it out, then? Because I was hopeful, but don’t ask me what I was hopeful for or hopeful about because I have no idea. As the doors shut behind me with a plastic secularism, I paused for a moment’s wonderment as I always did, looking down at the street in which all the houses were mine, whose windows were all open and through all of which flowed a dull, orange glow of a mob of halogen bulbs, the abundance reeking of decay and death.

I decided I would sleep in the third house on the left tonight, the one I called Jacopo after Jacopo Belbo, poor conflicted Belbo. Then again, it didn’t matter: after the women had died, the men had moved to other parts of the city, slowly but with a steadiness that was both geographic and consistent. When I came across this street, I found all the rooms empty behind all the doors, and decided to stay on here, in these tombs, secretly wishing my increasing fatigue would push me to do something about my plight, an undead man-woman.

Mostly, I wondered what it meant to be anything less than a man in a world without any women. Beyond the walls, womanhood meant conflict simply because it meant a lot of things, and each choice therein was mired in conflicts both social and political. Within the ambit of these walls, on the other hand, it meant some kind of loss to not be a whole, and that oneness of being was lost to me because I was both and neither: I was trapped in the middle of a fight, and the fight was flaking, like a magical fog that was slowly disappearing and my sword was gnashing nothing, my shield blocking nothing, and soon, the enemy had deserted me. I was an unworthy opponent.

All the men were at a loss to understand what was really going on while some of them sincerely believed the aliens were finally here; none of them know that they were completely isolated and destined only to die, not unto any greatness or martyrdom but just death, myself included. They surrendered their will to the city itself, no longer incentivized to initiate anything, their hearts parched of any kind of freedom, and they walked the roads like zombies, as if simply to get from one point to another.

The shops were all shut for business and opened for rationing and all the supplies were tallied and stocked in a warehouse, away from fire and water, guarded by a small group of police officers. At the beginning of each week, queues would form outside the building for the next seven days’ supply of food, beer and chocolate; there were other small establishments that still sold anything, but when money wasn’t going anywhere or coming from anywhere, it ceased to mean anything.

Death, of course, was the greatest nullifier.

Fin de siècle

The sky was on fire. In the west, a violent orange glow blossomed out from a point that seemed just beyond the horizon. Black clouds were climbing out, erupting into petals of grey that gently floated to the zenith before disappearing into insignificant wisps of rain.

A giant fetus was descending down from the sky. From beneath the bridge of steel, I could see only its body; its head and legs were out of sight behind the buildings to my left and my right. The hue of its skin was a golden yellow, but it was an unpleasant sight, the skin of its form draped with dripping eidolons and an unspeakable horror exploded to life behind my eyes.

Men ran screaming in all directions. Some of the women fainted; they were forgotten, left behind by a madness ripe with sourceless fear, a disbelief that stretched their consciences toward puerile humor, to laughter. A rejection of this real and unborn child into a pus-filled boil, and a "pop!" later, it would be gone with it, too. And they would all be left standing, laughing, and then they would pick up their wives and go home to television sets.

The children themselves stood and gazed, but it was a silent and voiceless agony that rooted them to their spots, the picture of the prophet reflected brightly in the tears in their eyes, a form moving slowly but steadily to meet them. It was an encounter and they were meeting their creator.

I shuddered to think what might happen if the child landed. There was no way to know, of course: never before had such a thing happened. There was also the chance that other such fetuses were descending from the empyrean around the world, over large cities, overs people, over running men and swooning women, over praying children, over me.

I ran. I didn't run away from the monster but I ran to get under it. In a moment of brilliance, I positioned myself right under the approaching form and waited with a knife held up towards it. I waited. It seemed to come closer and closer. After an hour, I was sure it would fall upon the knife and bleed to death. But no, it covered the entire sky, blanketing all humanity beneath a shroud of half-alive and surely malformed skin, the stench of it disgusting, filling my nose with the pungent indulgence of sulfurous and sulfidic gases.

The world was dark. Humankind was tottering on the brink of extinction. I had given up all hope when the fetus awakened from its strange sleep. It woke up and began to cry, to bawl. It was the last mourning.

Arrival of the unpunctual

Even his outstretched fingers couldn’t reach the first vestiges of the bleak winter sunlight falling from the window. The floor was cold and hard, and the insides of his palms and knees singed with pain. How long he’d lain that way, he’d forgotten. A crushing weight pressed down upon his mind and all he could think of was the infinite and eternal loneliness, the closing in of a vast emptiness that pushed out both friends and enemies. He was not cared for. Pushing himself toward that final effort, at long last his fingers found the beam of light on the floor, a gentle warmth flowing through them as he embraced it. The cold was still not gone, though, but when or whence the cold had come, no one knew. Waiting for a knock on the door had proved terribly futile. The timber-legged chair had crumpled down with him when the clock struck six. He wished that the finality of death had befallen them all, that were they not here upon his doorstep and awaiting his welcome, much rather the truth be forgotten forever than hang between fact and fantasy!

When brothers are born murdered: An experiment with stream of consciousness narration

He takes the gun firmly into his hands and peers down the barrel. Satisfaction. Clicks it back into place-

One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

He stands there, smoking out of his head, the gun still pointed at his temple. The evening is just as startled, it kicks up the dust and swirls orphaned leaves around with the wind. The town is fortunately empty this evening, families making the monthly shopping trip to the city and the noblemen housed in their castles hosting tea parties. In the town square, we stand in silence: it is both disbelief and terse finality in the air, the smog-tainted drizzle pattering down on terracotta rooftops bringing relief and detestation and peace at the same time.

He starts to cry, the dry sobs haunt me, a reek of guilt. The gun clatters upon the pavement, it seems it will stay there until I decide to move my feet and close the distance between us, the least I can do for a start. The hollow tinnitus of empty tin cans suspended from my father's crucifix on silken ribbons clatter and clamour with greater vigour when the feeble wind rises from beneath the valley, but tin cans don't have to feel guilty. I do. The mercy of the Lord be with me, this man is my brother, but I have sinned. He moves quickly, sensing my hesitation and he hugs me. I hug him back, the war is over. The sounds of bombs going off in my head is dying out, one baleful ring of thunder at a time, until they're hanging suspended in mid-air beyond the valley of shell-charred tree stumps and dandelions. But the bombs will fall once more, after this evening.

He asks after father, whose life he saved almost a year before. Father is keeping well. And- So is mother. I'm curious. How did you survive the war? They couldn't kill me, but I didn't let them know. So I joined them. That was when he left us. Mother was weeping, a traitor had prayed with her in the town church, a traitor had enjoyed her blanquette de veau on the rare Saturday when she made them. Father was livid. Join after the murderers of your brother. The fury was alive in the air, we felt it in our skins returning from the fields that day. I wish father was alive now. I wish he hadn't died with one son and two daughters. I wish and I hope that beyond the joys of this renewed brotherhood was the joy of a father seeing his son return victorious from battle.

The spontaneously combustible love of her children

If you drove down one of the semi-prominent streets in the city's largest shopping area tonight, you'd come across a restaurant of some fame bedecked with vines of wires with red and yellow bulbs glowing on them. Aquaria is its name, but larger than the board that declares that is one that declares "50th Wedding Anniversary!", and yes, with a real and provocatively slanted exclamation mark.

Of course, three hours still remain for the dinner party to commence but the womenfolk are already busy getting the proportions of mascara and ugliness right on their faces. I must be careful, I tell myself, as I wait patiently before everyone has departed to the venue so I can ready myself in peace and silence. With one hand reaching out for coffee and the other fending off a cousin's head curiously close to my laptop to see what's keeping her brother busy, I spend my evening all the while dully astonished by how the plasticity had slipped everyone's mind... or perhaps their determination in keeping it from conquering the festive mood.

A few weeks ago, my mother and my sister returned from somewhere in South America after my father had finally been transferred to a city in India with the company he worked for. Since I was temporarily lodged with my maternal grandparents before I went off to college, they joined us, and suddenly, we were nine people in a 2 BHK: grandpa, grandma, an uncle, an aunt, their two kids, and me and my mum and my sister. Not a day had passed when summer decided to join us as well.

Barely 10 days before the occasion, my grandma received a phone call from one of her cousins, a cousin who'd been thrown a surprise party by her son for her 40th wedding anniversary. As soon as the call ended, there was an awkward silence in the house. Everyone knew paati was a bit of a tempestuous gossip-monger, and as soon as her sour joy would turn into envy, a rant would follow. And it did, and it did. In fact, on second thought, it wasn't a rant as much as it was a lecture on the duties of children towards their gossiping parents, it was a lecture on how siblings existed only so the traditional rat race could be inherited from one generation to another. Thatha (grandpa), a silent man as ever, only grunted. For the much more important occasion of his turning 80, he'd called us fools to try and celebrate anything.

As afternoon turned to evening, and evening turned to night, the presence of paati's voice faded but her eyes seemed to bore into us the expectations that burned in her soul. My uncle did the smarter thing and decided to meet her halfway: he bought dinner instead of having her cook and, as we expected, she wasn't one to be cowed down this time. Grudgingly enough, my mum and my aunt decided to throw a dinner party in her honour and invite her closest relatives, about 20 of them.

Soon, phone numbers were being looked up, the family tree was being drawn up, the menu was being pieced together, and family politics were being called into question. The cousin who'd started it all, of course, was invited first. As commitment to the initiative mounted day after day, so also did the scale and scope of the investiture: everyday paati called up a distant brother or a sister, the list of invitees was modified; everyday paati expressed discontentment with an arrangement, the restaurant was duly notified; everyday paati seemed intriguingly contented, we trod more carefully around the house.

Soon, all that had happened lost every mark of the grudge we bore against the matriarch for "forcing" us to spend Rs. 20,000 on nothings because the tables had turned enough: the guilt, now, was oozing out of our every action and inaction. We were now all condemnable proselytes of a righteous cause, and this was our chance to erase clean the chargesheet.

Behold! The day was come. It rained cats and dogs outside as I readied myself. My diminutive shadow of an uncle - albeit being a celebrated social worker - waited outside on his bike: may be that the rain was expected to cleanse his lack of affection, in paati's eyes he would now be the knight who rode in the rain.

I joined him a few minutes later and by the time we made it to Aquaria, the umbrella hadn't done anything against the wind-blown rain soaking our pricey garbs. More than 50 people had shown up and the street was lined with cars; the police was there, perhaps suspecting the presence of mafioso; the word had spread enough to have relatives call in to congratulate from exotic places like Vijayawada and Bangalore. Finally, the piece de resistance: paati booming on the mike about what such a happy occasion this was, the spontaneous love of her children and grandchildren embracing her like a warm hug after all these wonderful years.

A story

11.26

Dialing...

"Hello?"

Hey!

"Hey!"

What're you doing?

"I'm outside with-"

Oh, OK! We'll talk later!

"Yeah, sure!"

Bye!

"Bye!"

12.24

Dialing...

"You don't have enough credit-"

12.31

Dialing...

"The person you are calling has not responded. Please try-"

14.10

Picking...

Hello?

"Hey buddy! What's up!"

Hey man... how's it going?

"Awesome! Listen, me and C planning a trek. You wanna come?"

When's it?

"Tonight. We're thinking of catching the 8 o'clock bus and-"

Not tonight, sorry. Have some work.

"Saturday night?"

Dad's coming online, some work to do with the bank, something.

"Oh, OK! Next time then!"

Yeah man, sorry. Call-

"Bye!"

14.33

Dialing...

"The person you are calling has-"

15.04

Signing in...

"L. is online."

Laptop?

L: "Nt yet happened."

Damn. :(

L: "Yeah. I'm fucked."

Sleepover at S.'s place and finish the assignment?

And then tell me about the pillowfight?

L: "Heh. She lives all the way across town!"

Fine. P.?

L: "Uh. No."

K.?

L: "Oh wow."

"Hahhahahahhaha its K.!"

:D

What doing?

L: "Painting."

"Ur sheldon from big bang theory."

I'm Sheldon?!

That guy's stiff, a creature of habit and annoying!

I'm not annoying!

L: "You're stiff. Creature of habit. A know it all. ALL."

Sheldon Cooper is annoying and unforgiving. I am neither!

And he's not interested in sex. He's NOT interested- THAT'S ANTI-ME!

L: "Okay :P"

":P"

"Okay. And that."

The place here's a huge bungalow with no curfew and careless watchman.

L: "Fancy :P"

"Ur outside? Not with family?"

No, any studying requires the hostel experience.

Can't study for nuts from home - even this.

It's going to be crazy!

L: ":)"

"Did you make friends?"

This chick

L: "Really??"

Yeah!

But she's off FB for a while.

L: "Ahaan"

You are no longer signed in to send or receive messages.

15.55

"Hello?"

Sir, I'm calling from the south-

"Yes, sir, we're sorry sir. It's an area-wide cut, sir, there's a fire in the grid."

When will-

"In about 4 hours, sir."

16.16

Opening...

Yes?

"Sir, delivery from Amazon?"

Oh, yes!

"Sign here... and here."

Thanks!

"Thank you, sir!"

18.01

Dialing...

"The person you are-"

19.29

Wireless network... connected.

19.31

Signing in...

"L. is offline"

Hey! You there? Sorry, there was a power cut. I'll catchya soon, have a nice evening!

19.44

Coming.

"Good evening, sir! Delivery from Dumpling Queen!"

Oh yeah, how much is it?

"A round... 60, sir."

Keep the change.

"Thank you, sir! Enjoy your dinner!"

Yeah.

20.34

Dialing...

"Hello?"

Hey!

"Hey!"

What're you doing?

"I'm on my way!"

Oh, when'll you be here?

"In a coupla minutes, max. How's it going there... you OK?"

Yeah... I'm fine. Just missing you.

"I miss you, too."

Couldn't you blow off the late night shift?

"Aww! Look at you!"

I'm serious!

"You know I can't do that! Plus, it's Saturday... you know how busy the streets get!"

Yeah, yeah, OK. Get here faster.

"Yeah, I'm almost there."

OK.

23.15

"It's getting late."

Hmm...

"I'll talk to you tomorrow!"

I hate you.

"Me too! G'night!"

Yeah, whatever.

07.14

Picking...

Hmm... who's this?

"Hey!"

Yeah?

"It's me! You just woke up?!"

Yeah...

"Please tell me you've the script ready!"

Yeah... almost-

"Almost?! What's almost?!"

Gimme an hour.

"Are you sure? Because if you haven't finished it, you should tell me now."

No, no, one hour. You'll have it.

"OK, I trust you. Don't lemme down, man."

Hmm.

07.19

Somewhere in the south of the great City, curled up within layers of poverty, rebellion, filth and convivial skulduggery, in a building dotting the ramshackle landscape of the miserable shores, a young man strode up and down upon an old carpet, one of the few things of value in his otherwise poor excuse of a residence. At this juncture, the reader may not be surprised to discover upon my utterance that he was a writer - he still is - and took away from the denial of luxury the luxury of denial, a self-imposed lesson on the art of inspiration, coveting lovers and dodging them, befriending strangers and salvaging himself from the hubris of his own madness. Right then, as the first droplets of rain struck the glass in the windows, he called a young woman he was attempting now to love, and she spoke: "I'm outside with-" Goodbye, he screamed! Despair! On the philanthropy of despair it seemed he would feed first...

08.03

Picking...

"You done?"

What if I'm not?

"Man! I trusted-"

Relax! I'm done.

"Hmm... what's it called?"

The Art... of Inspiration! You like it?

"I think I do... I do, I do."

When Kap Fynncraft woke up on Tuesday morning.

When Kap Fynncraft woke up on Tuesday morning, neither he nor anyone else knew that it would be different from any of the previous days. He walked to the bathroom, washed his face, brushed his teeth, had a bath, brewed some coffee, toasted some bread, boiled an egg, breakfasted, dressed up and locked the front door behind him. When he reached the last rung of the ladder he had to climb down, he seemed as if he forgot something, and climbed all the way back up. Wedged in the window grill above the first rung was a folded-up white sheet: the newspaper. He stuck it in his mouth and climbed back down. Adjusting his cap, he stood at the bus stop. It was 07.40.

As always, Chip Ramirez stood to his left, and as always, Ark Eiwen stood to Chip's left. They had nothing in particular to speak about, but a decade-old habit of waiting at the bus stop for 10 minutes in each other's presence made the silence anything but discomfiting. At 07.42 precisely, The Man In The Green Helmet would ride by on his scooter. A minute later, The Two Men With Their Briefcases would open the store on the other side of the street. Just as they reordered everything inside the shop and turned the sign to "Open", a red bus could be seen driving up and down the mounding road on the horizon. At 07.50, Kap, Chip and Ark boarded it.

The bus ride to the factory took precisely four minutes everyday because the amount of traffic between 07.50 and 07.54 was the same on any given day. In fact, the amount of traffic at any point of time was the same on any given day. In fact, nothing else about the city had changed in the last 10 years. As he rode the bus to the factory, he also knew nothing would ever change either because the smoke rising from the smelting factory a few miles in the northeast was always of the same hue, density and emotion. Sometimes, he'd look at it and wonder. Sometimes, he wouldn't look any way at all but the paper. Sometimes, he thought what it would be like to jump out of the bus onto the pavement and shatter his head. The telltale jerk brought him out of his reverie on that Tuesday morning, and a minute later, he alighted.

It was winter. The westward wind was strong and cold, unrelenting against his thin woollen shawl. He drew it tighter around himself, although it had never been of any help. But he'd had nothing else to complain about all year, and something like this was all that he had to keep himself from thinking of different ways to kill himself. He signed elaborately in the register, and as always the clerk looked up at him queerly. Before he went to his seat near the drill, he looked at the calendar. It was March 17, 2144. The celebrations were exactly a week away. Exactly 10 years ago, on March 24, 2134, the country officially declared it had nothing significant left to achieve. The standard of living was appreciable, nobody was poor, no wars seemed possible, diplomatic relations presented no challenges, research output had been steadied, diseases had been eradicated, consumption was regulated, the surplus was sold at fixed rates, the weather was shielded against, and state-sponsored festivals provided distraction from the melancholy.

Kap Fynncraft had been a journalist. When The Threshold was breached, he was reporting a story on a woman giving birth to quadruplets at the capital's government hospital. A few days later, he had been promoted to sub-editorship with the newspaper. A week later, there was nothing to go by except a repeated declaration of the government's accomplishments. A month later, the paper had shut down and he was forced to find work in one of the factories. A year later, in 2135, his wife died when she slipped on the ladder outside his door. He had tried to instigate a revolt in the factory: when they asked him what the problem was, he had said something about wages. The next day, he was arrested by the police. A few days later, he was forced to admit there was nothing he could do about it, and when he did admit it, he was released. When he went back to work,  he found they'd also increased his wages. When he tried to look intimidating, they reminded him of his wife. "This is for you to spend as you wish, Mr. Fynncraft. We've a feeling you loved your wife very much."

At 16.00, he lined up near Gate 2. The queue for the bus was two labourers long, and he joined it as he always did as the third man. At 16.06, the bus started on its six-minute journey. On that Tuesday, it took more than an hour: just as they passed the Presidential Boulevard, they were stopped behind a few other buses, some cars, many cyclists, and what looked like an upside-down truck, its underside charred and smoking. Kap Fynncraft, somehow, had sunk back into a reverie. He would be home late today, dinner would be late, he'd have to eat as he watched the game tonight. He smiled. Maybe he'd annoy that old woman downstairs by walking around at 22.00. Maybe he'd miss the bus in the morning and hitch a ride. Maybe-

Before he knew it, the bus was on its way again. He could no longer see the plumes of smoke on the southwest, the inky blue of the late-evening sky had swallowed it in its entirety. The streetlamps were lighting themselves one by one, as if they knew Kap Fynncraft was coming, as if they knew he'd want to alight and, somehow, not want to break his head on the pavement on a night that involved a postponed dinner and an angry old woman. A moist film of water had condensed on the windows of the bus, and he waited by the door lest he missed his stop. Under the bright white glare of the streetlights, he could see the patterned tiling on the pavement whip by in the oblong shadow of the vehicle. He knew they were somewhere near his house, he remembered the hexagonal patterns from a terrible day when he had reached the bus stop early one morning and had decided to look down.

Black, white, black, white, black, white, black... the lines between the colours trapped his eyes, and he could feel himself moving through the Universe one coloured tile at a time.

An exploration of Tormont: Episode I

When I finally awakened from my drug-induced stupor, the first things I noticed were the Adenacra Globules, the nearest a mere mile from the high balcony we were all lined up in. The massive sphere, almost a mile in diameter, was already being caressed by two, three probing tentacles, each long and spindly arm culminating with what I could only say was a powerful spark plug. Having been a matter of legend for all these years, witnessing the gawdy monstrosity from close quarters was a disillusional experience—for one, it meant that divinity was no longer just the content of contentious debates; for another, it meant that we were looking at history with irreversibly wrong perspectives. One way or another, on that day, I became the prisoner I am still, and over the course of these months, it has become an uncharacteristically easy choice between asserting my existence as a Senator of Sepulchra, where I am from, against asserting my liberation from its ideological throes by "getting distilled into a higher plane", as it were. I now serve in Heaven, and I do not lament the loss of kingship.

The Adenacra Globule C-3144K—named for its size (C), cardinality (3144) and function (K)—was responsible for a small star-system in the Japonica Drift, and even as we watched, a fourth tentacle unattached itself from the spine-mounted quiver and extended itself to the shimmering blue surface. A Tormontell—a race of people we had known earlier by the more ubiquitous name of "Gods"—archiver stood before us, a little under 12-feet tall, surveying the array before his/her eyes (we had no way to tell the men from the women), his/her coal-black eyes hidden behind taut epicanthal folds, dull grey hair cascading down his/her shoulders. I could tell he/she was an archiver by the flowing mud-brown ropes he/she was garbed in, trapped gently around the waist by a broad probably-wooden belt-band.

It was raining on Tormont.

Crest of a knave: A short story

Listen to my story, all ye assembled here in this hall of gold, listen to my story before I set forth with the lust for glory and decay in my blood boils over, its wrath absterging all shreds of loyalty and honour in me. Listen to my story, all ye assembled in this hall of light, for you would hold me devious culprit in this dark affair of travesty and injustice whereas I would hold myself, sans lea or passage, owed the duty of the last word before your judgment scars my destiny forever.

A thousand years ago, while I was still a young man of speed and spirit, I loved a woman of Troban beyond the wishes of my father or hers, and we were discoverers of joy unbounded in the arms of the other and wished, fools that we were, that it would remain so, impenetrable by the poisoned spears of our warrior-brothers or reigned back by the ties we still cherished with our mothers or by the religion that sought to punish us all for the evils of our forefathers; you remember the times, lords and ladies, you do, I know! Those were horrible days of great loss and much deplorable grief, days when freedom faded quickly from memory to return with the intoxicating fumes of khalam only at night.

Our companionship, as has always been, was soon sighted, slighted, condemned for no other reason than the rifts within our peoples, and me and she were soon flung apart, reprimanded and whipped until our flesh burned red with the fire of agony, disappointment and the promise we made unto ourselves repeatedly that there would come a day when our spirits would be reawakened by another foe, a promise that we would succumb to the threat of mortality that always spurs us on against another man, a promise that we would take up spear and shield, sword and gauntlet, and fight to the death all the men who stood between me and her, who stood between her and me.

However, that was not to be so, for soon, she was in love with another man. Oh, the sacrilege rent my heart in two and its tears flooded, I was stricken with not the monstrous affront to my being but quite something else, a curious mixture of acceptance and depravity, as if I had been rewarded with the admonishment of a great father who, with one hand, struck me down and taught me a lesson and, with another, picked me up and dared to walk; I knew not what to do, for she was no longer mine and the saddening truth of that alone lingered in all its palatable cruelty. That he was a great warrior of Troban meant nothing to me for I knew already that he would be the last to be slain as she must and will watch on, the death of a lover, a commemoration of the execution of love itself.

Soon, circumstance bore down upon me, carrying upon their broad shoulders much fortune, and I was swept like a broken vessel upon a strong tide to different shores, vast shores, peopled not with memories nor judgments but with purpose and direction, led by a great king in whose services I found employ and my faith once more in the need for allegiance and friendship in our bloodied lands. Here I stand before you, a great minister of the King of all Troban, and I, his aide, his confidante, his friend, his advisor, his hand that throws down only so it may pick up once more the young man it sought to make an example of all those years ago, and the woman you now see standing before you, pleading unto you that I be imprisoned for all that I have brought upon her... that woman... that woman...

Her husband, that man, that veteran, or thus she would hold, of many, many wars, hundreds of battles, he is now captured by the Lords of the Cult, and now she pleads unto you to imprison me, to sacrifice me unto your foes so she may remit what she herself broke. What would you do? What would you do?! Would you lock me behind bars and set me forth in a vessel so I may be received by my torturers and executioners or would you have me stand guard into the night? Would you handicap I, only a man, for the sake of his youthful follies and now besmirch all his sacrifices or would you give me my freedom only once more as I ask her... as I ask her...

Do you want me to save your lover? Do you want me to be the man you hated, the man you despised, because he valued justice more than concern so you could betray his love and seek consolation in the arms of another? Or would you rather that I was the man you were with once, and have me be the saviour you so direly seek?

*

Simpler version

Listen to me, all you folks assembled here, before you go about besmirching my name! I've a story to tell before you listen to the words of the woman before you and pass a judgment that'd only be made with incomplete information. After all, I am owed a word before I am punished.

Long ago, I loved a woman of Troban, and neither of our fathers were supportive of it. It was a terrible time, what with all the civil wars and other such needless battles causing more rifts than we needed. In each other's arms, we found the relief we really needed at the time, and not only did we find it, but we were entranced by it.

Needless to say, our fathers found out about it and tore us apart, calling upon all sorts of religious rites and says to condemn us further; they used us to vent the anger they bore for the world around. We might've understood their wrath, but what I knew I'd always hate and avenge was the wrath of the people who stood by my father on the day he passed judgment on us. That day, I swore I'd slay them all even if at the price of my honour.

Soon, however, something happed that left me like a shattered mirror: seeing with a thousand eyes the horror of her walking hand-in-hand with another man, another lover, so soon after we were forced to leave each other's side. I didn't what to do then, I didn't understand it, but I only told myself that this man would also die by my blade. He'd die while she watches him bleed.

After that, my fortunes in trade and other things began to pick up and I set off on a journey to a new city. All the people there were new to me. I knew then that they didn't deserve my blighted past, they didn't deserve to be at the brunt of my voiceless rage. I changed my lifestyle, I changed the way I was; I became more responsible and soon was employed by the King.

Now, I'm your minister, and your King's right-hand man. I've stood by you all, protecting you, saving you, nourishing you, pushing you to seek your dreams without fearing any foe. Now, this woman here is that lover I spoke of, and now, she tells you all to sacrifice me as ransom so she can get back her lover from those who've captured him.

He was a man of courage she said, and now, as fate would have it, the blade at his throat pierces at my will. Now, I ask you to tell me if I still will have your mercy and be allowed to decide for myself... whether I choose to mend my heart and leave it broken for your sake. Having known you good men and women for so long, I will take the liberty to assume a just answer.

Now, woman, I ask you: I was once a man who cared for justice, and that was the man you hated; I was once a man who cared for love, and that was the man you loved. Who do you want me to be now? Do you want me to be the one you hated so you can feel fine about leaving me? Or do you want me to be the man you loved so he can save your lover?

Damage Assessment (EWP)

Note: This article is part of the EWP

--

Creative spark

The escalation of commitment can be quite a dreadful thing. Just a little more than a week ago, I set out to write a short story simply because I felt like writing fiction. Drawing inspiration from Thomas Pynchon’s ‘Against The Day’ and the names of particles in the Standard Model of particle physics (along with a working knowledge of the LHC at CERN), I first set out a simple header-plot (which is what I call the template from which I work upward). Once that was done, I checked it to see if it read well. It did.

Great! The next step was to define the characters’ personas, which, for me, doesn’t take much time because I ‘wing’ it (yes, you read that right), as I do the plot itself. The only things I decide beforehand are the only things I really enjoy deciding in the short-run: the names of the characters and the locales. Anyway, on the 7th of March, I began to write my story. (Download: session I)

Incomplete inspiration – hallucinating an abundance of opportunities – willingness to experiment – hesitation to lay out full plot

Reality hits

After two days or so, I realized to my horror that my narrative was going full speed ahead while the dialogue and character and plot developments were going nowhere. Back then, I had recently been criticized for indulging myself with too much prose at the risk of turning the whole endeavour pedantic and droll-like. In order to set it right, I scrolled back to the top of the page and began to edit what I’d written.

You see, I don’t edit my works much. I understand how an article or a story can be polished again and again and how there are so many techniques for that, but I’m a hesitating pacifist – and that means I get angry first and then calm down. So, if I gave myself time to calm down, I’d probably come up with something extremely blunt and literarily non-penetrating. Now, since I was editing this story, I began to have a bad feeling about it. My ideas and my intentions change so much within the same ideological bounds that there was a chance for a paragraph to turn out like a semantic singsong. (Download: session II)

Celebratory indulgence – brakes applied suddenly – improper attitude towards editing – thinking faster than writing

Battle for revival

The third challenge, and also the last one, I was left to confront now was the scripture of dialogues. I’d sucked at it in the past and had always strived to keep it at a minimum. Now, however, since the story seemed to be going good even though an indication of sunk costs was beginning to present itself, I decided to go for it.

Now, there are two kinds of dialogues that I’ve observed in stories. The first is between two people who are both active participators in the contents of the talk. This is the easiest to write because all you have to do is a conversation with yourself (which writers and philosophers do a lot) and then break it into two halves, one for each interlocutor. The second type is when two people are talking but only one of them is actually paying any heed to what’s being discussed, a type that is very important in most books written because if everyone listened to what was being spoken, there wouldn’t be a plot worth expounding for reams on. If you read the draft, you’ll be able to easily deduce that I struggled at writing the lines. (Download: session III)

Over-analysis – struggling to generate "flow" – very systematic approach

Desperate experimentation

The two ensuing sections of the story were actually written in the neighbourhood of 00:00, March 13, and opened up my eyes to the mistake I was doing: it seemed that if I started to script the dialogues, I was reluctant to take up the narrative, and if I started to script the narrative, I was reluctant to take up the dialogues. This resulted in conspicuous fault lines appearing all over the text – discernible easily to the reader to the point of him being able to read my mind, to the point of my work of “fiction” becoming transparent to his eyes. Also, in order to mask my own logical proclivities – which are strong enough as it is – I took the trouble to NOT be aware of the whole plot myself. This, in turn, awarded me with the liberty to experiment with what the two characters were saying to each other. This is a risky way to go about writing anything since, with the sunk cost fallacy being a real possibility, it could drain you of your creative faculties. (Download: session IV)

Retaining the option of "killing" a project as need be – consumed by occasionally trivial fears

Surrender

The last few paragraphs are what speak truly and openly of my defeat: the sentences are too long, the choice of words defer to a subconscious lack of precision, the uneven amount of attention paid to different parts of the same setting hint at the absence of decisiveness. Game over. (Download: session V)

Sunk costs – fractional kill – diminishing returns

--

Fog index: 16.72

The Lonely Perfectionist

A few months before, I had a plot simmering in my head about a lonely perfectionist. I let it go over time for lack of interest – the way I naturally developed the storyline didn’t go well with the other half of me, the “me” that wanted to concentrate more on the reaches of insanity and what insanity itself desired.

The Lonely Perfectionist

He was a lonely man, sitting alone in his dark room for hours on end, and when he emerged, rarely though that was, he would conjure great stories about himself, his brave conquests. The lonely perfectionist was an intelligent man, and into these stories he would throw in specks of his humiliations, his defeats, just to provide the tale with a sense of balance and some plausibility, as such. One fine day, when his only son comes visiting, the lonely perfectionist wishes not to open his long shut door. When the incessant knocks becomes unbearable, he leaves his chair and pulls the door open with an inexorable irascibility.

As the hinges creak against the damp mass of wood, so also does his past. A multitude of memories flash past his eyes, each more vague than its predecessor, and the lonely perfectionist only ignores them. He deigns them as the foolish who chase after what was done. He left his wife to fend for herself on the lonely and cold streets of Kzar (a fictitious town), he left his toddler son to beg; he thought, more so than wished, that he was leaving his past to die. And now, it had raised its serpentine head once more, rearing up against his bosom. He looks up at his son, for he is tall, handsome, and rich by the merit of his garb. As the old man opens his mouth to shoo the stranger back into the darkness whence he seemed to have emerged, the son silences him with a casual wave. They only exchange a stern stare, each delving into the other’s eyes with an immense hatred.

The rich, finally, hands the poor a purse of leather, albeit leaving him to claim it from near his feet, and departs. The old man is intrigued. “What scourge from the dead is this?”, he wonders; he picks it up, pushes the door back into its termite-ridden nightmare, and gets back to his study.

The room of the lonely perfectionist is small, housing only a chair, a table and no bed. Clothes lay strewn on the floor. When he moved into Alam, he had purchased this small room and the house on the other side of the wall. He had further permitted a group of young boys to move in, and he only asked of them to feed him night and day by pushing a small plate of rice and chicken through a crack at the bottom of the wall, and some oil and wick whenever he tapped his stick thrice. He cared not for the rent, he cared not for the tantrums they seemed to throw. He was a lonely old man, and he only wished to stay that way.

Years passed, and the arrangement saw itself fit to continue unperturbed. None had seen the old man come out into the daylight. He always was inside, poring over great volumes that he had carried with him from Kzar. What evil or demise these tomes spoke of, no living soul would ever know. The truth was, they were empty with not a single sentence or line or word, not a single tale or fable or moral, not a single hero or king or kingdom. The lonely perfectionist was a creator and needed for himself only a canvas; unto a world of madness he may have been consigned, but he created legends every day.

What he always did and would continue to do for quite some time to come, however, was keep the pages of these books to his ears, and they would speak to him the epics of the past. They don’t, nor do I, know whence these books come from. In fact, they, nor I, knew not whether they were such magical books, ones written by sorcerers and necromancers past. All he would do is sit and listen to them, and whenever he completed a book, he would stand up and dance for days together, stomping and pounding his careworn feet on the floorboards. He would sing, screeching and howling into the night. None knew which memory he was reliving, whose birth he was proclaiming. And then, all of a sudden, even as immediately as God’s wrath descended upon Sodom and Gomorrah, he would quieten. Not a sound would emerge until the lonely perfectionist had completed another tome, another past.

When he finally opened the purse, he discovered within it a hundred glittering coins of pure gold! Not a penny more, not a penny less, but a hundred! The old man knew not what to do with them. What a sensible man does with such treasure – thus was his thought. As he pondered, the few fragments of the past that had managed to survive, the love he was bestowed with by his wife and son from the days older than his discovery, return like the horsemen of the Apocalypse: perhaps his only son had come all this way to gift him another story!

And so, pushing away the faithful books into a pile, and the pile into a darker corner, the old man doused the lights. And then, he slowly leaned his head in toward the coins now laid strewn on the table. One by one, he pushes them to the centre, and yearns for them to begin to speak! Days pass, the morsels are neglected. The tenants are concerned, their plates have not been returned. The neighbours are angry, there is a stench emanating from the room. But the old man ignores them all, until finally, he begins to believe the coins are mute. The coins are mute! Thumping his fist angrily on the table, he begins to shout. “Speak, ye worthless!” and receives only silent humility in return.

“How can you not speak?! You even have the face some other man embossed on yours, are you not ashamed?! You have lost your identity, you have been unmasked, and you have no sorrow to put forth, no regret?! What are you?! Who beat you into this torment?! I have been magnanimous before, and I will be once more now, all for you! - so forth.

He can't stand the silence of the coins, bangs his head against the table. Finally, he is dead.

Thus passed the lonely perfectionist.

~

I know I've been working towards writing simpler over the last few months, but the story just seemed to warrant it. Like I was venerating von Goethe.

So, that’s how my story went. It was inspired by a dream I had: I was sitting in a dark room, banging my head (don’t ask me why) against a wooden table upon which was a lonely gold coin. Now, this was the problem: I knew I wanted to base the story on insanity – insanity would be my protagonist – and the old man, the antagonist. However, I kept walking into a cul de sac when I attempted to depict such madness, which also served as a clear reminder that I’m quite far from being a good writer. IMO, the good writer differs from the not-so-good writer not because he has a better imagination but because he has better ways of putting it down.

The Miracle Worker

A car zipped past a few inches from his head, the quickly vanishing blue metal having all his attention. Bradley Johansson couldn’t believe his eyes.

Someone jolted him out of his reverie, and he came back to his senses, the subdued clamour of his environs rising up around him once again. The whores of the night mistook his incredulity for awe, feeling him up as he dodged one after another as he spanned the alley. Once on the other side, the walls fell off on either side to a long road, the sea frothing and foaming on the other side, beyond the low grille. He turned to his right and maintained his pace, not letting the wondrous decadence of New City turn him from his path.

The cars continued to shoot past him with their screaming blue and red lights, the buildings were also unfortunately aglow with similar hues. Stars were no longer a sight to behold, perhaps to even have romantic walks under, and the enchantingly platinum light of Anarion was nowhere to be found in the hearts of blacksmiths and poets alike. This was the misbegotten anarchy of an ill-advised nuclear holocaust, but nothing could be done now.

Or so they had thought, the gypsies and nomads of the world, agglutinating like sticky oil stains simply because nobody was an urchin if everybody were urchins. A smile lit up on Bradley Johansson’s smooth peachy face. He kept walking, but the more and more he thought about his task tonight, the less and less became the pain in his calves, the greater the eagerness to keep moving.

A cold but salty draft wafted his way and he breathed deeply, the saline pungency cloying at his lungs. Without missing a beat, his nose wrinkled as he reached within his coat, looking for the pack of Lucky Strikes he’d remembered at the last minute to bring along. When the cigarette was found, the lighter was not; frantic, he stopped and looked around, and just then, his gaze locked with a young girl’s, standing a few feet behind him.

She couldn’t have been more than 16 even though her height said otherwise, the depthlessness of her eyes being a giveaway. Or, he thought, she’s psychotic – they were quite common these days, what with crime being a pleasurable pastime for a small fee. Before he could ask, she reached a flickering Zippo to his lips, and he partook of the flame. Not a word spoken, not a word offered. He drew a deep breath, the fumes billowing in translucent clouds as he held himself from blowing into her face. Not that she would have minded, though.

She was wearing a tight T, the sleeves rolled back to her shoulders, slender bony arms tucked into the waistband of her beige hotpants. Muttering a word of thanks at someone who looked eager to begin a life of being a spoor, Bradley Johansson turned and began to walk again, toying with the damp cigarette while his mind began to whir again with a hairtrigger expediency that only came with indifference to one’s health.

Reflected in the mercurial faces of a hundred mirrors draped over the shoulders of a prostitute, he caught a movement of gold just behind him. Turning around suddenly, he saw it was the Zippo girl. Had he looked at her for longer than was necessary?

“What do you want?” She didn’t flinch at his sudden volte-face.

She said nothing as her hand slowly uprooted itself from some diamond mine at the meeting of her thighs and rubbed over her crotch, the grease from her fingers leaving a slippery track of peevish nights behind, like she didn’t care much for what happened there if only it brought a strange smile to her face.

“Not tonight.”

His eyes quickly sharpened into slits of anger, not quite appreciating the touch of milky white skin against his own, and the backhanded slap caught her squarely on a breast. She only smiled more, the mischievous glint of some bygone pain visible all too clearly. Bradley Johansson had an idea.

“It’s not just me tonight.”

She nodded. He continued to walk as if he didn’t give a damn – he didn’t – and was not surprised to notice the now-conspicuous tapping of her porcelain heels behind him. She could be a fitting gift to the man who was waiting for him at the end of this road; after all, there was some gratitude due him. A spar of doubt that had been spinning across his mind now came to the fore, but he dismissed it: none but he knew what he carried in his pocket. A minute more, the trees were already thickening on the seaward side to adorn a lush facade of blue-green tassels.

He sashayed mindlessly across the road, drunk drivers yelling after him and his consort. There was a subtle cleft in the sidewalk that pointed into the woods, and he turned into it. He should have known when she didn’t hesitate that she’d been here before, but it slipped past him as the tension in his guts tautened perceptibly when the shack became visible. Well, it was not so much of a shack as it was an old man sitting under a tarpaulin sheet that was strutted skywards by four wooden planks nailed into the ground.

“You have something for me.” It wasn’t a question.

“Plural.” She stepped out of his shadow, still as callous as she had been under the neon beams, the grease visible even under the dull glow of a bulb that hung from a wire that seemed to emerge from Hell. The old man smiled toothlessly, impetuous strands of spittle dribbling past his jowly chin. Voiceless in her obeisance, she stepped past her procurer and towards the “residence”.

In a second followed the stack of micrometre-thick mirabilium crystals, glowing with an electric blue shade of iconoclasm in the night’s grey tones, turning the skin on his fingers purple and the old man annoyed.

“What’re you doing?!”

Smiling, Bradley Johansson dropped them back into the bag that had held them and handed them over to the “party”, known only as Nigel in the trade. The mirabilium would be ground and recrystallized to erase the quarry-signature that would be etched into it by nature’s machinations, and then packed into the core of plastic explosives. Then, they would be redistributed to terrorists across the globe to be used as biological weapons going by the name of “blue bombs” – one blast and all things living would collapse dead in a quarter-mile radius.

With one last nod at the girl, already scarlet and perspiring with extraterrestrial anxiety, he turned around and walked back, slower this time, to the heart of New City, fumbling once more for another cigarette. Again, the need for a flame presented itself, but he was sure he’d find someone in a minute or so, someone who could never understand the pleasure of starlight but knew only the coming and going of nights by the coming and going of irreverent relationships. Soon enough, he was offered a light.

On her lapel, a sham of a red cross was stitched with a border of black. He smiled as the brand came to life, throwing a dull orange glow across her lips. “Doctor mirabilis, indeed!” Tonight, miracles would be worked to restore mankind’s stature in the eyes of the Captors, a deluge of death was going to descend on the non-believers, and the name of Bradley Johansson had to be screamed into the night with fitting ecstasy.

Their gazes locked, and he blew the smoke into her eyes. She smiled.

A Story Through Ten Images

An old draft, warm with all the years of our acquaintance, edged conveniently off the table. Outside, the world was up to something, it was always up to something, but I never bothered. It was up to no good anyway. Such evenings always made me smile, not in the cocky way some old fart smiles when his midlife crises hits him in the face, but in the cocky way an old soldier is allowed to feel, is entitled to feel. Those were the days... when the world was up to worse.

[caption id="attachment_146" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Of all the many journeys I was a part of, the Kohrin Expedition comes to mind now - not always, it's too special to be wondering about on any evening except this one. The Kohrin were an ancient people who civilized slowly, deliberately, accruing for themselves a foundation for their future so strong, so unshakeable, that they automatically threatened anyone they dealt with, whether by accident or by measure. In the fourth year of the twelfth solar cycle, a secret expedition was sent forth by an affluent Kohrini thug named Brull; I was conscripted along with four other pilots to deliver resources to rebel factions coming together to topple the ruling council of ministers. Brull wanted the crown for himself, the kingdom for his house."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_149" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="A 17-hour journey later, I was at SR-71 to meet with the faction titled Bazlac. To cut a long story short, they weren't there. The place was desolate, the wooden struts had been blasted off with undue force, pocks littered the face of the earth. Some of the spots were still smoldering and a wet track led away from them, deep in the squelch, a heavy vehicle of some kind had been here. Keeping the shuttle low, I followed it north for as long as it lasted. Then, in the distance..."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_148" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="A Citadel of Light, unmistakable from this distance, with its rounded ramparts and domed crowns, with the blue flames of necromancy climbing into the sky out of the blast-capillaries, hot as Hell, cold as Hell, webs of some strange silken cord hanging in strands from its facade. The mound of land on which it stood seemed still loose, which meant it was new, a "fresh" acquisition. The Drasil were cannibals, morally decadent spawn detested by the kinds of Brull even. The Bazlac were done for, I knew, but what the Drasil were doing so far outfield I didn't, so I decided to pay them a visit. A secret one."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_151" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="The Drasil were very religious, which meant taking to the skies was equal to defying the airspace of the "Gods", so getting to the other side was easy. Perching atop a hill shrouded in mist, I found a vantage point after cloaking the shuttle, took my post and waited. Beneath, a sea of green light, within which boats were being scuttled. This was strange, there was no enemy army in sight, no threat, no chance of one either as a great army encircling the camp came to be seen under the dim light. Why were the boats being scuttled? I heard a noise behind me, and turning to look, saw it was a dunkke."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_152" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="A dunkke was a proselyte with the Drasil camp whose arms and legs had been cut off and substituted with electromechanical limbs that enhanced speed. They argued that, over the years, this left the brain to focus more on other activities, such as strategizing or backstabbing. Two red bulbs glowed bright on the bosom of this woman, which meant she had been deactivated. Her activation signals would gradually die out, leaving her immobile and starving to death. I walked up to the figure, dragged her to near the craft, and fed her some energy from the engines. She was obviously a traitor to the Drasilhani cause."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_153" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="The first words out of her mouth and I prepared to disconnect her, but her arms were exceptionally strong. She was some kind of a warrior, absorbed into the cult through blackmail and torture, to dive beneath the seas and awaken the Purge. Brull had not sought to bring down Kohrin, at least at first, but instead sought to repel the Drasil. The Bazlac were planning to awaken the Purge themselves to quench the fire of the Kohrin and the Drasil had intervened. But why? The Drasil needed life to kill, fertility to blight."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_154" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="The Purge was an antediluvian cabal buried midway between the outer crust and inner mantle of three planets in the entire galaxy, conceived and gestated since time immemorial by some Kohrin overlord, commanded to rise and be born as a machine with unimaginable power, with the sole purpose of melting and consuming whole planets within days. The one in SR-71 was named Red Hand. The three Purges were the ultimate weapons of the Kohrin, unstoppable, reckless in their hunger for metal and stone. Now, I understood the answer: the Kohrin had allied with the Drasil to eliminate fringe rebels, but the Drasil had grabbed the chance to reactivate the three Hands of Oblivion... against the Kohrin."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_155" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="This here's the construction site behind my home. They're building some sort of an office, although for what I don't know. My planet's exactly one parsec away from SR-71, which means it will be another six years before Red Hand gets here. They don't know yet, or they'd be over their sorrow already and holding some sort of celebration, calling for world peace and brotherhood, what melodrama! I can't stand that. If they let me be, I'd let them be. That looks impossible all the time. Cancer's going to take me in another four months, so I figured, hey! Let's not tell them anything. Keep the mystery alive, that sorta thing, get me? After all, anything's possible!"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_157" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Anything at all."][/caption]

Nasty Naiccus: A short story

The light from the lantern he was holding flickered whimsically, alerting us to a reordering of drafts within the narrow tunnel. It meant a train was going to pass that way soon; it also meant that if I didn't alert him about it, he wouldn't be able to stand up straight in time and save his spine from being splintered. The uneven texture underfoot made it all the more harder to stand, just stand, and hold the lantern aloft, succintly guiding the light onto the surface he cast a shadow on. Sometimes, it was this way, and the very next second, it was that. He would grunt if I was late in the catching up; he would mumble about some accidental explosion in his valley that had destroyed half a town; he would mumble about me stepping on the long fuse-wire next if I so much as shifted the weight on my feet. Even while working in the mining shafts on either sides of the valley, he was an ill-tempered anarchist, complaining about something or the other. He wasn't wholly to blame: anyone would if their wife cheated on the husband with his boss on the same day her mother-in-law died. Naiccus Arpath did not shed a single tear or bellow a single curse, he just stopped talking about the world the way he did and started going to church. There, all the Rev. Ross Punter had to do was preach his soggily religious drivel into Naiccus' infecund skull and here they were, two of the best men on the fuse about to blow up a railyway line.

The flame trembled and Naiccus caught the movement before I did, standing up in time to look at me with bloodshot eyes, the little windows shooting past not before they cast a seemingly flickering gleam in his eyes. He grunted his disapproval, I could only stare straight ahead with as much straightlacedness as I could muster. It was not right to argue with Nasty Naiccus, everyone knew that. As soon as the locomotive had exhausted its thundering advertisement of promise and opportunity in this side of the world, he went back to checking the fuse for one last time. It was proper; of course it was, Naiccus Arpath had fixed it, and when men who have a grudge not against their wives or bosses but against the world rig railway lines to blow up when innocent people are passing overhead, it is more often than not that they WILL blow up.

I handed him the lantern and set about gathering the nails and pieces of paper strewn around - of course, an explosion of this magnitude would mercilessly eviscerate all garbage from within this tunnel and this tunnel from within this mountain, but seeing as how the fuse was set for two hours, we didn't want any other loafer in the area to stumble across across our brainchild. We didn't have to be told much when it came to legal explosions: we knew the logistics like the back of our hand and we knew we didn't have to bother about which poor sod we blew up on the other side of the mountain. When it came to planning such a big deal on our own accord, it took us a month to work out the supply-chain links and another month to survey the lands and hit upon a spot at which to shine the bright torch of deliverance into the unsuspecting faces of a thousand children of this land, a thousand children of a thousand brothers who had stolen our lives from us. It was white man versus white man, not something you could hold back with civil war nor make legal with trumped up laws... I'm not sure I like myself when I drift off like this.

After a final confirmation from Naiccus, I turned around to leave, slowly marching up the gentle slope towards the lamppost at the foot of which Faffie was supposed to have stashed the escape route from the reserve about an hour ago. Seeing as how the last train had just passed us, I didn't have to look back every minute or so to check the height of the flame. That's also why I didn't realize how Naiccus had decided to stay back with the one thing that had gone right in his life in the last two years. That's also why when I looked back from the lamppost, I knew the next train through this mossy crawlway was going to be pieces of train as soon as it crossed it half-way. That's also why I knew I was a dead man, too, because the map showed that I needed to take the second train from now to escape the reserve. That's also why I knew Naiccus hadn't forgiven me yet for bringing him to this place six years ago. That's also why I decided to walk back to him and ask him for his forgiveness before we departed together. That's also when I knew Naiccus wouldn't forgive me easily. I had hesitated. I had taken time to read the map without him. I had gone all the way without looking back at him. I had been clearly selfish, and death would not deter Nasty Naiccus from being Nasty Naiccus.