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."
Showing posts with label short story. Show all posts
Showing posts with label short story. Show all posts
Saturday, 18 June 2011
Thursday, 26 May 2011
Ghost Wilkie
As soon as they found out that Father Ribisi was insured, they also found arsenic in his tea.
After deciding to leave the cabin, momma and poppa fighting, we drew lots and then drove east.
The city was magnificent but dull, something and nothing: people wore flashy coats but no smiles.
Leka was born on a wintry New York night under no moon but many stars.
That was the night pappa walked out with the bounty, plunging us into poverty.
Momma was having more and more drunk men over to tolerate lonely nights.
The farm was not doing as well as she thought it was.
She discovered that I was the one cutting up the roosters.
Church was the place for me; my family ditched me.
Embracing religion would be necessary to inculcate disciplining habits.
I had diarrhoea from drinking the holy water.
I was given morphine to be silenced.
The doctor groped me all over.
Wild electric shocks underneath skin.
Acidic taste on tongue.
Tincture of opium.
Golden bitch.
Laudanum.
After deciding to leave the cabin, momma and poppa fighting, we drew lots and then drove east.
The city was magnificent but dull, something and nothing: people wore flashy coats but no smiles.
Leka was born on a wintry New York night under no moon but many stars.
That was the night pappa walked out with the bounty, plunging us into poverty.
Momma was having more and more drunk men over to tolerate lonely nights.
The farm was not doing as well as she thought it was.
She discovered that I was the one cutting up the roosters.
Church was the place for me; my family ditched me.
Embracing religion would be necessary to inculcate disciplining habits.
I had diarrhoea from drinking the holy water.
I was given morphine to be silenced.
The doctor groped me all over.
Wild electric shocks underneath skin.
Acidic taste on tongue.
Tincture of opium.
Golden bitch.
Laudanum.
Monday, 2 May 2011
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?
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?
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?
Wednesday, 16 March 2011
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
--
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
Monday, 17 January 2011
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)