She Lived Next Door – Part 2 of 5

by with No Comment Serialized FictionShe Lived Next Door

My mother had a mother of whom I had heard very little in those first thirteen years of my life. But, around the time I met Marlena for the first time, I also began to hear more of my grandmother. My mother took me to visit her once too—her house was in a remote corner of the town it took us three hours to reach—and made me talk to her. Not that the old woman understood half of what I told her about my school, but that conversation helped transform the notion of an abstract ‘grandmother’ to a more concrete ‘Grandma’ in my mind.

“Grandma is sick,” my mother told me on the way back home.

“What has happened to her?” I asked.

“Age has gotten to her. She cannot remember things. She fails to recognize people. It is good that you spoke with her now at least.”

“Why did I not speak with her earlier?”

“You don’t want to know about all those things. They are too far back in the past. Only remember this. It was not your fault that you did not meet her before today. Not my fault either, nor your dad’s. It was her own fault. But now she is old, she is sick, and such things should be forgiven.”

My mother spoke that like the true Christian she believed she was. I nodded.

And then when Grandma began to fall sicker, Mother had to visit her more and more. She could not take me with her all the time, and she did not trust me to be alone at home either. She always had the paranoia that I would keep the television running and doze off and the television would explode due to the heat. So, she began to scout for people to babysit me.

One day she asked Aunt Mercy, a neighbor of ours, to keep me at her house. Aunt Mercy had another sister named Candice and they spoke all through the afternoon as I pretended to bury myself in my books. Their talks were full of gossip, which was guarded at first owing to my presence in the house, but then became looser as they realized I was not interested. If only they knew how sharp my ears were! I could hear them even as I read the answers aloud to myself.

In the evening, they were joined by another old hag, Aunt Janet, and the threesome had a merry time chatting about anyone and everyone. Except my mother, of course, for I was right there.

And then the discussion veered toward the inevitable topic of Miss Nose in the Air. And no sooner did I hear that name than my ears stood up on end.

“I have heard she is an actress,” Janet said.

“No, no, she has a daughter who is an actress,” Mercy said.

At that Candice let out a little snort and said, “Judy told me… Judy, that choir organizer… anyway, she told me that she has a husband without marriage.”

This brought out sufficient oohs and aahs from Janet.

“He is some kind of movie director,” Candice said with effect.

“Oh, these Hollywood people!” Janet said as though she had been living in Hollywood since the earliest times in its history.

“He comes to visit her sometimes,” Mercy added.

“Does he now?” Janet said. “I wonder when he comes.”

“It’s always after rosary time,” Candice said. Rosary time for the Catholic families in The Seabird meant 8:45 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

“And…” Mercy said, casting a furtive glance at me and lowering her voice, “he leaves in the mornings.”

More oohs and aahs.

And that night, when I was back home, I don’t know why I found myself imagining Marlena with the unknown man who was supposed to be her ‘husband without marriage’. I could not clearly understand what they would do for a whole night—maybe watch those late night movies that were prohibited for me? I thought of asking Johnny about it, but somehow I didn’t want to tell him anything about Marlena. I wanted to keep all information I knew about her to myself. I don’t know where that possessiveness came from, but I wanted Marlena all to myself.

***

Then one day, mother couldn’t find anyone to keep me with. Aunt Candice had herself fallen sick and everyone else was busy with something or the other. Finally, she knocked at the one door she didn’t expect she’d ever do.

When Marlena opened the door, a whiff of jasmine assailed my nostrils even before I saw her. She had just had a bath. I could tell from the moisture in her ringlets. But she still had had time to put on her makeup. “What does she put makeup on for, if she is alone at home all the time?” my mother had asked me that night after she returned, and I had no answer to that.

“Marlena,” my mother said, “I have come to ask you for a favor today.”

“Sure, Edith,” Marlena said, “anything.” And she clutched the sides of her robes together, but not before I had caught an eyeful of her milk-white skin underneath. It made something happen to me in my groin, but I had to check that as I was in the presence of not one but two women and one of them was my mother.

“I’d like to know if you could allow Jeff to stay at your place for today?” my mother asked, holding my arm tightly. “These are really difficult days for me. You see, my mother has got Alzheimer’s and she is quite alone. I could bring her here and look after her, but she refuses to budge. I am appointing a nurse for her today, and will be at her place till evening. I mean… it is all right if you are busy or something; then I’ll just have to take him along.”

There was a moment’s silence, and I began to feel that I’d lose this wonderful opportunity to spend a day with the woman of my fantasies.

“No, no, that would not be a problem at all,” Marlena then said, and I felt butterflies moving in my guts. “Geoffrey can stay here with me. Will you be okay with that, Geoffrey?”

“Call me Jeff,” I said with a smile that was probably as goofy as I thought it was.

“Thank you so much Marlena,” my mother said. “I’ll send him right away. This really means a lot to me.”

Back home, I dressed up almost like I did when going for mass on Sundays. I put on long pants and the white full-sleeved shirt that my father had got stitched for me from his tailor.

The day with Marlena was quite unlike any other I had ever had in my life before. Here I was, sitting like a gentleman on her couch, facing her, and attempting to actually make conversation. I had carried my books along, but I did not feel like reading them that day. I wasn’t going to waste even a moment of this precious time.

I looked at her painting her nails. I wanted to break the ice with her, but I was worried I would say something that she would laugh at. I usually did those things. Normally I was a good speaker, even on stage, but when it came to one-on-one conversations with people who mattered, my tongue deceived me on the best of occasions.

Finally, she sensed me looking at her and broke the ice.

“What do you do, Jeff?”

It was a meaningless question—and I was sure it meant nothing to her—but it was a wonderful conversation-starter. There were lots of things I did, and I began talking about them. I told her of my one gold medal and three bronze medals in athletics that year, and my A grades in Science and English, and my tryst with interschool debating. The best part was that she seemed suitably impressed. Like other elders, she did not just grunt ‘hmm’ at the end of each sentence I said, but she actually asked questions that showed she was listening and not just hearing.

“You know I can make portraits,” I told her enthusiastically. I never told anyone about this budding talent of mine, not even my mother. Or maybe I told my mother once and she had waved it away. Anyway, I deeply felt like I should tell Marlena this.

“Oh, how wonderful!” she said and her eyes went round in eagerness. It instantly made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. “Could you paint me?” she asked.

“Sure!” I said almost too loudly. Painting her would give me free license to ogle at her without feeling ashamed. It would be better than taking a photograph. “But I am just learning how to do it,” I added, just to keep my options open.

“It’s okay,” Marlena said. “You could practice on me.”

Those words did something to me I cannot quite explain. Especially the last two words. If Johnny and the others would have been here, they would have made an obscene innuendo about it and sniggered to high heavens. And that put a thought in my head—what would Johnny and the others say if they saw me alone at her house?

So she gave me a writing pad and a pencil. “Would that be enough?” she asked. The equipment was not quite appropriate for an artist—the writing pad was actually a letterhead pad that so unromantically had the name of an unpronounceable medicine on its masthead and the pencil was one with a dull unsharpened lead. But I, with all my manners intact, said that it was perfectly fine.

“Where do you want me to sit?” she asked.

I moved a chair to a spot where the light from the window fell directly. “This will give better natural light,” I said.

“Good idea,” she said like a schoolgirl and enthusiastically sat on the chair. Back now when I think about that day, I don’t know what was in her mind exactly when she surrendered to me in that fashion. Did she do it because she really thought I would create a masterpiece for her? Did she do it because she was curious to see how I saw her? Or did she do it because she thought I was a child who needed to be patronized?

But I think we can strike off the last option—the times we had in the subsequent days left no doubt in my mind. Thinking of me as a child was the last thing she did.

 

Continue to Part 3.

She Lived Next Door – Part 1 of 5

by with No Comment She Lived Next Door

Life for a thirteen-year old boy is extremely excruciating. There are things you begin to understand and desire, but for some reason they are kept just out of your reach. It is a pity that our societal norms do not keep pace with our hormonal development. You do not understand the reasons that adults give. In your mind, you know much beyond your years, and you can handle everything, but there’s never an elder around who believes in the truth of your feelings.

Being a single child growing up with mostly my mother (father used to come home late at nights from work), I developed a vivid imagination. I believe I hit puberty early too; by the time I was in seventh grade, I already had pimples on my face and was much taller than my peers. Stronger too. The sports teachers prided in placing me at the forefront of all athletic events, and I don’t remember a time when I disappointed them.

Those were the days of no electronic distractions. It was the year 1988, when all we had to fuel our imagination were books. Satellite TV hadn’t made inroads yet. I could read one book a day; I read anything and everything, from my mother’s cookbooks and movie magazines to my friends’ novels of detective fiction and fantasy. Everything held my interest till I finished it, and then I was back to feeling bored. Then, one afternoon, when my mother was having her little siesta, I climbed up the stool to reach the upper shelves of my father’s bookcase. And that’s when I began to discover the joys of things that were not meant for me yet.

My father, a man of varied interests, kept a stash of almost all kinds of books in his wooden bookcase. The books I hit upon were more of a medical nature—those that spoke of the human anatomy with the somber intentions of disseminating information. But for my curious mind, even that somber language was enough. I read on, page by page, fascinated by each picture of the human body, grasping each nugget of information, understanding why my body had begun acting the way it did at times.

And then, when my adolescent mind had reached such a peak where it was flooded with fantasies that had no outlets, I became aware of Marlena.

***

Marlena (I never knew her last name) was our next-door neighbor in the three-story apartment building that we lived in.

Our housing society was known as The Seabird because of its closeness to the sea. It was a cluster of 24 houses. We had a little garden outside the building, which was a garden shared by all the children in the building, and there were park benches, where mothers could sit and monitor their children and chat with each other. For that reason, I knew most of the boys and their mothers that I grew up with. I found most of my peers annoying and less-informed. No one knew the stories that I did, and they held me in awe for a while whenever I spoke to them of things I had read in books. But that did not last forever. As my friends grew up, they had other things to interest them than my stories. The aunts were insufferable too. I remember most of them pinching my cheeks even when I was eight, and always chatting about the most ordinary things with the greatest amount of enthusiasm.

Marlena, however, was an enigma. The only thing people knew about her for sure was that she lived in our building. She had just moved in a few months ago that year. People only saw her when she went on her small trips to the market, and she didn’t seem to be interested in the other women’s topics of discussion. Or perhaps she just felt herself to be a stranger. Yet that aloofness was easily interpreted by the other women, and they began to variously label her as Miss Snooty Hotpants and Nose in the Air and Hoity-Toity and Twinkle Toes. I never did understand those names.

I also did not understand, at first, why my older friends acted crazily whenever she passed by. They kept looking at her as she walked out of the gate, making comments and remarks that I thought I understood and even laughed appropriately at them, but wasn’t sure what they meant.

“She’s hot,” Johnny always used to say.

“She makes me clean my whistle,” Sam would say and everyone would laugh.

“She is heavy,” Rusky would say with the emphasis on the ‘is’.

I did know, however, that they were things I could not repeat at home, and definitely not ask my mother about it.

And then Sam asked me one day, “Hey Jeff, doesn’t she live next door to you? Don’t you ever catch a glimpse?”

I laughed with the other boys, not really understanding what kind of glimpse he had meant.

The enigma named Marlena began to unravel slowly one night when I was preparing for a Science test at school the next day. It was well over 9 o’clock and there was no sign of Dad yet. He would come back much after 11 in those days, and so there was nothing out of place. Then, when I was busy studying the different kinds of induced magnetism, there was a sharp bell at the door.

Mother was watching Lucille Ball when the distraction occurred. She asked me to open the door, and I did. I was dressed in shabby home clothes—an Addams Family T-shirt that I had outgrown two years ago and blue shorts that had begun to fray at the hems. I went to the door expecting nothing, but the moment I opened it, I was in for the most pleasant surprise I had that evening.

It was Marlena at the door, in a short home dress, clutching a Buddha statue.

“Is your mother in?” she asked.

That was the first time I had heard her voice. I felt it to be a bit raspy, not the way I would have pictured it (not that I had ever felt inclined to do so until then), and that stalled me a bit.

“I asked if your mother is in,” she repeated.

“Who is it?” my mother asked from inside.

“It is the woman from next door,” I said.

At that, mother immediately downed the volume of the TV and came rushing to the door. It was certainly a surprise for her as well.

“I am Marlena,” the woman said, “I live next door.”

“Yes, I know,” my mother said. “I am Edith. Wouldn’t you like to come in, Marlena?”

She moved in gingerly, looking all about the house. At close quarters, the woman seemed quite exotic. She had that tanned Mediterranean skin that I knew would drive Johnny and the others crazy. But the one thing that attracted my attention was the copious amount of makeup that she had on her face.

“Edith…” she said, “may I call you that?”

My mother nodded.

“Okay, Edith, I have a favor to ask of you.”

“Of course, of course,” my mother said as if she lived for doing good turns for random people.

“I want you to keep this in your house for a few days,” Marlena said, and held out the Buddha statue to my mother.

My mother wasn’t exactly superstitious but she held some strong views about curious things that belonged to other religions and cultures. She looked quizzically at the serene statue of the founder of the South-Asian religion.

“Is that a gold statue?” my mother asked, not mentioning her actual concern.

“Yes, it is,” Marlena said. “It is a kind of family heirloom.”

“All right,” my mother said. “But why do you want me to keep it?”

“It’s okay if you are concerned,” Marlena said, taking back the statue. “It won’t do you any harm, if that’s what you think. The actual matter is that I don’t want to keep it with me for a few days. There are some people who might try to take it away from me.”

“Oh, so you want me to safeguard it?”

“Yes,” Marlena said. “I will take it back from you next month.”

Mother mulled over it. It was not that she had to spend any money on this; if she had had to do that, she would have politely declined right away. She only had to keep a statue. Well, that she could do easily, and earn some brownie points in the process too.

“Okay,” my mother said eventually. “Give me the statue. I will keep it in such a hidden place that even my own husband will not be able to get it. Not that Roger knows a thing about this house anyway!”

“Thanks,” Marlena said. “This means a lot to me.”

I had been sitting there the whole time, listening to the conversation with rapt attention. All the time, I looked at Marlena’s beautiful form. She reminded me of those Italian goddesses our History teacher had shown us on video. She had that perfect glazed look and those hair in ringlets. I am sure Da Vinci would have painted her if she had been available at that time.

Then I realized that she was about to leave, and I could not have allowed that to happen without getting introduced to her.

So I went into the kitchen and put out some cookies in a tray—the good Danish cookies that mother had bought ‘only for good guests’—and brought them out to her. Averting my mother’s befuddled expression, I walked up to Marlena and held out the tray.

Marlena was taken aback at that too, and I immediately realized I had done a very stupid thing. “Oh, how nice of you,” she said. “What’s your name?”

That was enough to dissipate my humiliation. I put out my bony chest as much as I could and said, “Geoffrey Haines.”

But my proud moment was deflated like a punctured balloon by my mother (who must have got a hang of things with her unnatural instincts). Waving her hand like she usually did, she said, “Jeff, haven’t I told you not to wear those torn shorts anymore?”

Just like that, I felt lower than a caterpillar’s belly button. With the tray still in my hand, I retreated from the hall and stayed firmly put in the kitchen till Marlena left for her home.

 

Continue to Part 2.

She Lived Next Door

by with No Comment Serialized FictionShe Lived Next Door

AUTHOR’S NOTE

She Lived Next Door is quite different from other stories that I have written, and hence it holds special meaning to me. The story is mostly told from the eyes of a 13 year old. At that age, our vision is restricted to the things we wish to see, our thoughts are confined to what we want to think. We do not ask questions we need to ask. We do not see the larger picture. This is the story of the first infatuation of such a young boy.

In the Line of Fire

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At the end of the rope, when there is no hope,

You begin to separate the truth from the lies.

Explosions usually end stories. But this explosion started a new tale, albeit a very short one.

The explosion was of a bomb thrown from the top of the war-torn mountain ridge. Lance Naik Sumer Bishti had been warned of such attacks. “That is their leverage,” his Commander had said, “but you have to break into that zone at any cost.” The Commander’s words had been enough, enough for the platoon to surge ahead.

The others were far below now, and Bishti, without concern for life or limb, began crawling upward on the hill on that fateful night at the border.

He hoped his guerrilla gear would camouflage him enough to reach the summit where the enemy outpost was. His task had been direct — to take down the single sniper in that outpost; and if he did that well, the others could move in.

But he had forgotten about the bombs. He was halfway up when the explosion occurred. He first saw the light—a blinding bright light that lit up the atmosphere and exposed every tiny fragment of the ridge. And, no sooner had the flash penetrated his slightly myopic eyes than he felt the impact. The blaze came up to him, from more than a hundred meters away, but still it clean threw him off the ground and burned his clothes and part of skin away, leaving him a little more than a mass of writhing flesh.

For long moments, he lay on the ground, bleeding and believing he was dead, but then he began to feel the pain. The immense pain started from his back. He turned to see, but the moonless night didn’t help him see any more than a mass of blood and burned tissue. Then the pain began to grow; and it enveloped every portion of his body, except his right leg. His right leg. He didn’t dare to find out the reason why his right leg felt no pain. He knew what that meant.

And, even in that pain, he was aware of one thing—he had to get out of there. Soon the ridge would be teeming with the enemy soldiers, and if they caught him there, it would spell the doom for his nation’s campaign. His Commander had told them, “Die, but don’t fall into the enemy’s hands.”

He started crawling on his stomach, with only his two arms and one leg to help him, to reach someplace where he would not be caught, where he could die in peace. He laughed at the irony of it—Why had Fate given him these moments of pain? Why couldn’t it have killed him in the blast and just got done with it?

When he had crawled a few meters, he saw the small rock formation. This could be place for him to hide till he died. It was just hidden from the enemy side. The only downside was that he wouldn’t be able to see his own side from that place, but did it matter anymore? He dug into the barren soil of the ground and moved on to the place, which would be his last refuge.

It surprised him that he did not die on the way. There was still life left in him, still a few more breaths he didn’t know what to do with, when he reached the rocks. They weren’t high, just enough to let a sitting man hide from view, but they would be adequate. They were removed from both enemy sides and thus provided some kind of respite from the mad firing that constantly pierced the silence of the night.

And then he found out that he wasn’t the only one who had thought the rocks were a good hiding place.

There was another man there, a younger man, and he was grievously wounded too. His eyes were closed and his clothes were completely soaked in blood. “Certainly he is another of the Commander’s scapegoats, poor fool like me,” he thought. He tugged at the man’s foot to see whether he had died.

But he opened his eyes, and it was clear that even the action of opening his eyes hurt him to damnation.

“Hello brother,” Sumer said through his bloody lips.

“Hello brother,” he replied and coughed up a volley of blood-stained spit.

“I am Sumer Bishti. Who are you?”

“Aman Chowdhary,” he said and winced in pain.

Sumer pulled himself closer to the man and propped his head on a shorter rock. “I am not going to make it,” he said.

“Neither am I,” Aman said.

“It seems we are fated to die together. That’s a good thing, isn’t it? It is good fortune that I won’t be dying alone. What was it, this bomb?”

“No,” the younger man said. “The previous one. The Commander sent me to scout out the enemy, and they got me. Do you have some water?”

Sumer shook his head as much as he could.

“Seems you lost a foot,” Aman said. “I lost an arm, my good arm.”

Sumer shut his eyes and became still. He found the peace overcoming him, and he wanted to sleep more than anything else, but he found himself being tugged on his shoulder by the young man’s hand.

“No, don’t sleep,” he said. “You have to give me company. We go together, okay?”

“Okay,” Sumer breathed.

“How will it be, I wonder? Some people say there will be a blinding white light. Some say we will see darkness. My grandfather said that he saw serpents on the floor before he went. I wonder how it will be.” Aman had a childlike innocence when he said that, almost like a child who anticipates a joyride at an amusement park.

“I don’t know,” Sumer said. “I haven’t had any experience with dying. I hope it is just over. But I only wish I could have seen my twins who were born last month.”

“Oh, that sucks. Boys?”

“A boy and a girl. My wife says they look like angels.” He let out a sardonic laugh. “And I didn’t even get to see them. Maybe that’s all for the best. If I’d seen them, I wouldn’t have been able to leave so easily. What about you? Any regrets?”

“Perhaps… I wanted to have a wife. I have never done it, you know?”

“You have never been with a woman? How old are you?”

“22.”

This made Sumer laugh. His laugh was broken and punctuated with blood spurts from his mouth, but it was genuine and hearty.

“Why do you laugh?” Aman asked him.

“Nothing,” he said.

“Oh tell me, I could do with some laughing too.”

“It’s just that—you don’t have a woman and now you don’t have your good hand either. It’s better you die, fucker!” He laughed again, and this time the younger man joined too, and they laughed at the cheap locker-room joke till they could be heard over the sounds of the gunfire and the bombing.

“Shh… shh… the enemy may hear us,” Sumer said.

They relapsed into silence, and their eyes began to close, the stars over their heads beginning to dim into nothingness. But they weren’t destined to die just then, for there was a loud explosion quite close to where they sat, and they opened their eyes painfully.

“How long will this go on?” Aman asked.

“Till one side wins over the other, I guess. Till we rout the enemy and take back what’s ours. But it seems for us, there are a few more moments. Tell me, why did you become a soldier?”

“Oh, don’t ask that. That story is quite long; it may not finish before I do.”

“Then don’t start,” Sumer said. “It’s better that we don’t keep behind any more unfinished business.”

“I wasn’t going to be, you know. This soldier stuff is not meant for me. We are farmers, but my father said, ‘Son, go join the army. There’s money and glory in that. There is no money in farming. Our lands have gone barren.’ And then the Commander came to recruit people, and I was among them.”

“What about patriotism?”

“I don’t know about that,” Aman said. “I was here only to feed my family. And now—”

“There is so much similarity between us,” Sumer said. “I am here for my family too. My father was a Subedar and his father before that, and he pushed me into it. Anyway, that’s how I got here.”

“So we are both incidental soldiers, ha! There is so much in common between us.”

“Maybe. The Commander never impressed me,” Sumer said. “All this talk of war and fighting—it’s all political. We are just pawns of a large power struggle. Did you hear about the 40 civilians dying yesterday? They died of our bombs, that’s what. Sometimes, it makes me wonder—whom are we protecting?”

“I believe in you, brother. Really, whom are we fighting for?”

“That’s it for me I think,” the older one said after a moment of pensive silence. “I can see the white light.”

“Ah, the tunnel,” Aman said. “It’s happening. Yes, it really is a tunnel. We’ll meet soon in the afterlife.”

The sounds of the bombing seemed to have ceased. Now, all the two men on the verge of death could think of was of dying itself. There was no other thought clouding their minds; perhaps this was the reason why all other sounds seemed to have ceased.

“I cannot hear the bombs,” Aman said. “Can you?”

“Maybe this is the peace they speak of.”

And when they realized their last dying moment had arrived, Sumer held the other man’s surviving hand in good comradeship. He made a feeble attempt to shake his hand, like one does to someone he has well-met, but his body had now given up.

His words were drying up too, but in those scarce moments, he said, “Well-met brother. May my sacrifice mean something to my India.”

And at that moment, the grip loosened. The younger man’s hand moved in the older man’s. “Are you, my brother, an Indian?” Aman asked.

The realization came at the very end.

The man whose hand he held and died, the man he thought was his brother, was not from his country.

He was, in fact, what the higher powers had deemed to be ‘his enemy’.

And both had died in an attempt to attack each other’s people.

END

Julie’s Story

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When he touches me, my hair stands on end

How then can he be just a mere friend?

Hector says I have strange powers. I can understand why he says that. At times, he has caught me staring into the distance, looking at something he cannot see; or seen me react to a faint sound somewhere, a sound that he cannot hear. There is no doubt that I have better senses than he has. That is perhaps why I have been able to take care of him thus far.

At times, when he is walking on those long country paths, immersed in thoughts of his characters and his stories (for he is a writer), I accompany him. I give him his space. Though I walk with him, I never intrude upon his thoughts. When he thinks, I do not disturb. I occupy myself looking at those lovely woodsy sights that we pass along. I love being out in these misty woods anyway; I do all I can to smell each flower, hear each chirp and see each tree.

Sometimes he walks much ahead and then turns back to look for me. With mild irritation, he says, “Julie, you have to be quicker. Buck up!” And then I leave whichever bush I am admiring at the moment and run along to catch up with him, the smell of the earth still fresh upon me.

When he left home three years ago to come down and settle in these woods, it was only me that he took along. He said, “Julie, we are going to make a home together, out there in the woods. Would you like to be with me—only you and me?”

I was touched. I had never cried before that—I didn’t even know what crying meant—but those words brought some moistness to my eyes. I didn’t have words to express my feelings for him; I just tried to kiss him clumsily with my mouth, the way he liked. And he played with my soft hair the way I liked it.

The house wasn’t big, but it was enough for the two of us. While he typed out page after page of his stories, I kept myself entertained, never treading in his path. I made sure the house was exactly the way he liked it. He loved things to be in a particular way, and I made sure that even a pen wasn’t moved from its place in his absence. It was a happy home, for the two of us. We didn’t have much to eat or drink, but we kept ourselves happy.

Then his book was published, and people came to know him. It was wonderful that first night! We had a party, a house full of people, for the first time. Everyone wanted to meet him, talk to him. He introduced me to a few people, and I smiled politely at them. But not all his guests were good people. Some of them looked at me with odd looks, as if wanting to say, “What is he doing with that bitch?” I understood their feelings even if they didn’t say it out loud. And it was understandable. He was a remarkably handsome man after all, now even famous, and I had him all to myself.

But then, the happy bubble slowly began to burst. It was a very cold night when he brought the woman home. Yes, I will only refer to her as ‘the woman’ though I know her name. She was the real bitch, if you ask me. With those long eyelashes and pretty dolled up face and short skirts, she seduced my Hector. The first time she saw me, she looked down at me and, putting a very fake smile on her face, said, “Good to see you, Julie!” As though she meant that. I didn’t even answer her. Her perfume suffocated me. I looked away as a mark of protest.

Not that it made any difference to her. She began visiting us more and more, and she changed my poor Hector. She sat down to dinners with us, but I stubbornly refused to leave Hector’s side. Why should I give up my place to her? He didn’t tell me anything either, nor did she. They kept on their lovey-dovey talks right in my presence, in low whispers. They thought I couldn’t hear. But Hector seemed to have forgotten about my strange powers.

Then one night, he took her into his room, to his bed. That bed was mine! I had always slept on that bed with him. How dare he do that to me? He shut the door, and told me, “Julie, you don’t mind, do you? Why don’t you sleep on the couch tonight?” And he shut the door. I kept looking at him, thunderstruck.

I should have done something, maybe run away and never come back. I could not stand being treated like dirt in this manner. But I hung on. I knew Hector was misguided. I knew this would pass. He couldn’t abandon me just like that.

And I wasn’t wrong.

A few weeks later, the woman stopped coming. I don’t know what had happened between them. I tried asking him several times about her, but I could not express myself properly. That has always been a big issue with me—I can never say the things I want to say. I expect people to understand me.

But Hector did not. He only started wasting away. He didn’t write anymore. He only sat by the window and reeked of smoke and alcohol. But I sat by him, silently, soaking in his misery. Assuring him that I would always be by his side, come what may.

Weeks passed, and slowly he came out of his shell. I was very happy when he took out his typewriter again. I followed him in delight till he told me to leave him alone. That night, he wrote furiously till a very late hour, and when he could not sit anymore, he came and slept on the bed beside me. It was just like the good old times once again.

His second book was also a big hit. He was a changed man, rugged and more handsome in my eyes now. His guests began accepting me too. They seemed to say, “Yes, she is the one who gives him strength. She is his muse.” And then they laughed. I did not understand the laughter, but it was a compliment nonetheless. I grinned from ear to ear all through that night.

Tonight, I am on the bed, and he is sleeping beside me. I see his beautiful sleeping form and I snuggle close to him. He places his arm over me, still asleep. My eyes are drooping too.

Then I hear it—

A slow scraping sound at first, which begins to grow louder.

It is coming from the hall outside. Hector is still sleeping. He’s tired, I won’t disturb him. I get out slowly from the bed, without troubling him, and move toward the source of the sound.

I see it now—a window is open. There is someone inside. I can feel him. He has a strong smell of beer upon him. I can smell the bad beer.

I go back into the room where Hector’s sleeping. This is where the smell is the strongest. It takes a while to attune my vision to this darkness. And then I see him— the intruder. He has tiptoed into Hector’s room, and now he stands over his sleeping form. He raises his hand. He has something in it. A dagger. Its blade glints menacingly in the moonlight.

There is no time—

He is just about to strike.

And I lunge at him.

There’s nothing else I could have done. He was too far from me, and I was unarmed. He hadn’t seen me, and I took the benefit of it.

But it is too late.

Hector is up, writhing in pain. The man has stabbed him, right across his chest. I can see the gaping wound. Hector is passing out, collapsing.

The man has dropped his weapon in the scuffle. I try to take the weapon and finish him once and for all, but I cannot. I am blinded with rage. He has hurt my dear Hector. I am not going to leave him. But I let the dagger be on the floor. I don’t want any dagger for this wimp; my brute strength and my anger is enough.

I pin him to the ground; surprisingly, I am too strong for him. I never knew I had this strength myself. The rage is so strong within me that I can think of nothing but revenge. Using just my arms and my teeth, I rip the man apart to shreds. I keep up till he is gone. Just a mangled mess on the floor.

Then I go up on the bed to my poor Hector. He is still breathing.

I can still save him.

I hop off the bed, and plan to leap out of the window to alert someone’s attention.

And as I am about to leave the room, Hector calls out to me, and says with halting words:

“Julie… my dear Julie… you are the best dog a man could ever have.”

That’s all the gratitude a four-legged friend like me wants. I will save his life, I will.

END

 

 

The Death of Parker Greene also appears in Neil D’Silva’s short story collection Bound in Love.

Rising

by with No Comment RisingShort Fiction

This pinnacle, this pedestal, this face

Isn’t this my rightful place?

The superstar hovered above all, the crowds by his feet, the open sky above him. This was the moment he had lived for. This was for what he had endured all those difficult times of trying to make people believe in him, of trying to win the love and compassion of these people. Now, at this moment of his grand performance, he stayed silent, taking it all in.

The Icy Hand

by with No Comment Uncategorized

The icy hand comes and it spares none

Its grip is a vice, steely cold as ice,

That cannot even be melted by the searing sun

And cannot be corrupted by any price.

In the damp and dark room where I sit on the floor, a million thoughts run through my head. None of these thoughts give me any pleasure; but like unwanted ghosts haunting a prized estate, they refuse to leave me at peace. I think of the people in my life I have lost, people whom I had been born to love and people whom I had learnt to love.

All through my life, they have fallen dead like flies. Helpless, unreasonable deaths. Unavoidable deaths. Deaths that left gaping voids behind.

I knew this faceless brute called death even before I knew what life was. It began with the people who had birthed me—good god-fearing, churchgoing folk—who were snuffed away when the car we were in collided headlong with a tanker. The baby seat saved me, I was told later when I could understand.

Caretakers of orphanages are usually shady criminals, I have heard, who mutilate those they are entrusted to protect. But my folk were kindred souls. They fed me, clothed me, trained me and educated me. I grew to love them—the fat generous matron and her strict husband who had a merry heart of gold. I made friends too, boys of my age who were just as unfortunate as I was. Our individual tragedies bound us together. And then the fire happened. Everything and everyone I knew burned to cinder. I don’t even remember their faces now; I only remember the inferno blazing into the night. But I survived. They had sent me out in the garden to walk the dogs.

Then he took me in as a waiter. A lowly waiter in shabby clothes in a grubby bar serving stale wine. But it was a job, and it fed me. And he was a nice man too. He held my hand when I had no hand to hold. I graduated from boyhood to manhood at his bar. I understood what hardship means. I got beaten by irate customers and I learned to fight back. However, that was not meant to last either. Such a noble man, such a compassionate person—but he was destined to die by a bandit’s bullet. While I crouched under the bar table, I saw him collapsing to the floor, his outstretched hand pleading to me to save him. But I could not.

A little down the lane, I met her. Beautiful as the earliest drop of morning dew was her face—spotless, without a feature out of place. Sparkling as the water of the clearest spring was her heart—blameless, without a shred of sin. She gave me love. She taught me to love. We vowed to share our joys and sorrows till death do us part. And death did do us apart. The sickness came over her when I was at my happiest, and consumed her entirely, leaving behind her rotting self in my trembling hands.

 

*

 

And that is not all the death I have seen.

I have seen corpses of people I hardly know. People dying in front of me, pleading with me for that elusive one more day to live. But they won’t get it, will they? Is there anything as unsympathetic as death is?

The young fresh-faced college boy, rife with the hope of a budding career, died in my hands last week. I was beside him as he winced in pain, clutching his torn abdomen. I cried for him, but death forgives no one. He should have known that, shouldn’t he?

The new mother who had just kept her baby in the crib collapsed and died in her house three days ago. Stabbed in the back. Right in front of my eyes. There was nothing to save her. Her baby cried, I cried, but death spares no one. The baby will learn that as he grows.

And now, here, the teenage girl lies lifeless in front of me. How innocent she looks! Even in death, she has the face of an angel, regardless of the fact that her throat is slit in the most gruesome way.

When I had no respite from death, how could they have had?

But I won’t see any more deaths now, I think.

They have been investigating, probably even following me; and, as I wipe the poor girl’s blood off the butcher’s knife in my hands, I hear the angry law-keepers banging at the door.

 

END

The Death of Parker Greene

by with 17 Comments Uncategorized

And, sometimes, the sanest of us do the wickedest of deeds

And weep in repentance till the heart bleeds.

What would you feel if you knew you had only ten minutes to live? If you knew that in just ten minutes, your eyes would turn inside-out, your organs would fail, your body would stiffen, and you would die a nameless, ignominious death, leaving all those tasks undone, all those dreams unaccomplished? It would be the most excruciating ten minutes of your life. If you weren’t sure about your impending death, you would wish to die already.

Well, what would you feel?

But Parker Greene only felt thirsty—very, very thirsty.

The thirst began as a tingling sensation from the back of his mouth, then started to prick at the palate, and finally moved down his throat. He felt the rough-edged discomfort of wanting something to sip—it could be any liquid, it just needed to have the fluid consistency that could enliven his throat. In a few minutes he would turn blue and it would be all over, but why did he have to suffer this inexorable thirst before he popped out? Maybe it was part of the process.

He sat on the floor and tried to swallow his saliva to compensate for the dryness, but it didn’t work. He didn’t have any saliva left.

Almost gasping for breath now, he looked up at the bed. And then he began to forget about the thirst.

The first thing he saw of her was her feet. They were tiny and cute, and he had always remarked about how dainty they were. Just like the tight feet of a Japanese geisha, so fair and so delicate. But they had now turned blue. Like the rest of her body.

He slowly craned his neck to look at her.

She lay on her back on the bed in completely consuming and everlasting sleep; and she was a sick shade of blue, but still she looked lovely to him. He could see a portion of her face. An open eye still pleaded to him, begged him to save her, and the lips that had now turned dark blue were slightly parted, as if they were making a final request. Quite fittingly, her dress was dark blue too, and it was beset with shiny satin threads. It was a special dress he had gifted her that she wore only on special occasions. Could dying be considered a special occasion too?

But she didn’t know she would die. She was, in fact, surprised when she saw him at the house—this house, away in the woods, an investment they had made when things had been better. He had stood at the door with a smile on his face and a bouquet of very special roses in his hand. But the smile was just a façade—in his mind was dark, bottomless anger, anger for all the secrets this beautiful form had hidden behind his back. And the roses were just an illusion—within their thorns was the essence of poison of a thousand venomous snakes.

Plotting his wife’s murder had pained him more than his own impending death did. Berenice had been his sunshine for three years. She had taken him out of the depths of despair and drug addiction. She had sobered him up, and then given his sober life true meaning and joy. The beautiful caregiver that she was, she knew what life meant. Not only did she live each moment to the fullest, but she made everyone around her live to the fullest too. With her by his side, even the withdrawal had been easier; he had been born again.

But recently, Berenice had been drifting away. He had sensed it. A new man had entered her life. He was Timothy, his own best friend, with whom he grew up in that small neighborhood, and who knew every one of his secrets. Why did Timothy have to do this to him? Timothy, dear old Tim, of all people! Timothy always had had better luck with women. They were silly putty in front of his charming ways, and he molded them whichever way he wanted. He had seen that happen countless times before, in bars and clubs and even in the real estate firm where they briefly worked together. However, he did not expect Timothy would seduce his own wife with his easygoing charm.

Berenice was all he had—and she had been slipping away like dry sand from his fingers.

Lately, Timothy had been coming to their house often. What rankled him more was that these visits were mostly in his absence. There were small signs that he noticed—two water rings left by two glasses on the coffee-table, two dining table chairs pulled out irregularly, the stubs of his favorite brand of cigarettes in the ashtray, the big prints of shoes on their suede welcome mat, and once even the commode lid was fully open. She spoke of Timothy more often too, and when he asked probing questions, she just laughed them off. Something was definitely brewing between the two.

He thought he would confront Berenice about it, but what would be the use of it? No self-respecting woman would accept that she was in an extramarital affair. No one could elicit that out of her. For a while, he chose to ignore the dalliance, hoping it would be just a passing phase. That she would return to him.

Then one day she asked him what gift he would like for his forthcoming birthday, and he actually thought she had begun caring for him again. He sensed the warmth in her question, like there was no one else she cared for.

He would have happily chosen to live with that illusion. As long as Berenice loved him and was with him, he could choose to be a little blind to her ways outside. True love is forgiving, and he could forgive. But then the next day he overheard something that did not sit well with him at all.

It was a phone conversation, and he did not need to know who was on the other line. Berenice took the phone and moved out of the room, but he tailed her, and stood outside the door and eavesdropped.

And he heard it—she was planning to meet him at the cottage in the woods. She doubly promised him that she would be there. She told him that Parker wouldn’t know of it; he never went that way in the woods anymore.

The affection in the voice, the silent whispers, the planning behind his back—it all added up to a monstrous surge of anger in Parker’s chest. He felt he would explode. He could not have this scheming going on. It ate him from within, his head felt fit to explode. He had a sick feeling in his abdomen as if it would rupture with anger.

But he checked it.

He had learnt to keep his anger within himself.

He would have the final strike though, there was no doubting that.

Parker Greene had spent the previous evening visiting an herbalist’s shop that he had once seen in a shady corner of the town. The herbalist’s fliers had proclaimed that he had all kinds of medicines for all kinds of illnesses, however lethal they may be. He had also proclaimed to have a cure for cancer. But the thing that had caught his eye was the small line at the bottom of the flier—stocking all poisons and their antidotes.

He did not want the latter, and he paid a hefty price for the former.

Then, in the early morning when she had left, he stayed behind. He bought a bouquet of special roses from the florist outside his church and  started to meticulously daub their thorns with the essence of the poison he had bought. The herbalist had told him that one drop would be enough to bring a slow painful death in a few minutes, and death would be quicker as soon as it hit the bloodstream.

When she had seen him at the door of this cottage about an hour ago, she had a puzzled expression. He was certainly unwelcome. Parker had hoped to catch both of them together and he had brought the remaining poison in its bottle, but that eventuality did not arise. She was alone when he knocked.

Still with the smile on his face, and without a word, he had offered her the roses. She had said something that he did not quite catch, and took the roses. He had made sure they hit their mark. He had seen the poison-smeared thorn pressing into her white flesh. And then he had seen her retracting horrifically, grasping her throat at once, falling on the bed and twitching to her death in the most merciless manner.

Then it hit him.

The loss. The tragedy. The end of everything that meant anything to him.

Berenice was gone—what was left for him? He cried with a hollow sound. He sat on the floor, froglike, with his head buried between his knees, refusing to see her fallen form, and saw the darkness within himself.

There was nothing left for him.

Slowly, he took out the remaining poison from the bottle still with him and placed one unholy drop of it on his outstretched tongue.

The impact wasn’t as immediate though since the poison didn’t mix into the bloodstream all at once. It took its own time, making him suffer every imaginable pain of his death.

And when his vision was starting to become blurry and he realized that his suffering would soon come to an end, he heard the knocking on the door.

He had closed the door behind him as he entered and the windows had never been opened. The knocking continued, almost insistent. For a moment, he got a nagging feeling that he should open the door, but he couldn’t even open his eyes now.

When his tongue began to hang out, and his body collapsed to the ground, unable to ever rise again, he heard Timothy.

From a slight opening in the window, Timothy shouted out:

“Berenice! Berenice! Open the door. I have brought the decorations and invites for Parker’s surprise birthday party tomorrow.”

END

 

 

The Death of Parker Greene also appears in Neil D’Silva’s short story collection Bound in Love.