A List

The room was at the end of a long corridor, but i could hear the screams and shouts quite clearly. They would not deter me though, and I set out towards the door, gripping my clipboard firmly, adjusting the pen in my pocket, smoothing back any stray strand that might have escaped my tightly coiled hair. I stopped in front of the door, re affiring the stiffness in my back, setting the stone in my heart before i stepped in. There were more of them there than i had thought, but i didnt let it show on my face, that they had surprised me. There were the old men, and the young ones, the light skinned and the dark, the small girls and the awkward adolescents, and they had to be sorted.

They didnt notice me though, their focus was far away, their eyes watching a distant field hungrily. Every drop of blood and essence of being was tied up in the happenings in another place that most of them had never seen, and probably never would.

"Attention" I called out, stratling those closest to me, but registering just barely to those farther away, "I have come to divide you into groups. When I call out your category please raise your hand."

My announcement was met with a soft wave of confused mummurs, but I had got their attention.

"Muslim" I called out, "will all the muslims please raise their hands?"

They exchanged confused glances and whispered amongst themselves, but no one raised a hand.

"Hindu" I caled out quickly, slightly flustered by the response, "will all the hindus please raise their hands?"

I glared expectantly at my audience, but they held my gaze with an openly bewildered one of their own. They clearly had no idea what I was talking about. My training had never covered such a situation, and I could feel the panic begining to rise in my throat.

"Sikh?" I called out hopefully, "Christian? Jain? Parsi?"

I surveyed my now silent, and mildly amused audience with growing desperation, i had to put something on my clipboard.

"How can there be no hindus or muslims? You," I pointed to an old man hunched over a stick, "What are you?"

He looked blankly at me for a moment, before shaking his head sadly.

"You," I pointed, "or you! You! Someone has to tell me what you are!"

A light tapping on my wrist halted my fervour. I looked down into the wizened face of the old man I had first targeted. He smiled at me kindly, like one would at a child who is asking obvious questions of busy adults.

"We dont know," he told me softly, stroking my hand gently, "we dont remember. We dont care. The match is on."

Prophecy

Somewhere in a little house
On the plains and greens that surround you
Under a blue sky
I wander and wait
My heart in a cloth bag
I drag along behind me


Along these lonely streets
Somewhere
There is a door that will open
And I will find you
Looking for me

Perspective

Across a table on the deck of his ship, Davy Jones and I sized each other up. We werent enemies in the strictest sense, too detached really to hate each other. We didnt need to meet but we were here, bored and curious, seeking a way to distract ourselves from the burdens that we carried.

He grasped the dice that lay between us with a hand that was withered and mottled and encrusted with decay. The dice rolled and we watched, again without much interest, and only a hint of concentration.

"I would give anything to be you"

The words surprised him. He looked into my eyes and he could see I meant it. Behind me he watched my home, spread out over a vast piece of land, he glanced at the jewellry that encircled my wrists and glinted at my ears. His eyes wandered over my body, young and healthy, smooth skin and tight muscles, pleasingly shaped. My feet, that could walk on land or on the decks of ships at sea whenever and wherever I chose, were what held his gaze. He did not understand.

I brought his hand to my chest, and held it over my heart. My heart, that screamed with every beat. My heart that was withered with pain, mottled with anguish and encrusted with longing, my blasted heart that wouldnt die of the deep wounds it bled from.

"My heart cannot be cut out and left on a beach, alone in its anguish, in puinishment of its betrayal, away from me."

The wind picked up, singing a sad song in mockery of our loving.

"I would give anything to be you"

A Small Story

Amrai stared miserably out of the kitchen window at the courtyard below. It was full of her family, at their happiest and best dressed. Her mother and younger sisters bustled around offering mithai to the guests, pouring out steaming kulhads of chai and forcing them into the hands of the men and women seated on the family's best divans. They had all been moved into the courtyard the night before, so that today's proceedings could take place under the blue sky and the shade of the family's sacred old peepal tree. In the middle of the group of women sat Paali, Amrai's youngest sister. Her head bowed shyly as was expected, her red sari shimmering in the dappled sunlight under the tree. She was surrounded by the women who would soon become her family, murmuring softly as they asked her questions, and blushing prettily as they teased her. Watching her, Amrai's chest filled with the bitter fluid that she was sure had started running through her veins in the last week, since the engagement had been announced.

A glint of sunlight danced suddenly before her eyes, guiding her gaze across the courtyard, through the crowd of relatives and servants, between low tables weighed down with food and drink, gliding across the distance in a graceful serpentine dance until finally nestling below the feathers in his saafa. Amrai felt her heart, which had been beating sluggishly and painfully for days, break into pieces.

She turned away from the window, and sank her fingers back into the laddoo's she was making for the wedding feast. The batter squirmed under her fingers as she blindly pounded the yellow orange goo, watching in her mind the long corridors of a palace far away, where she had spent a childhood, growing up and falling in love. Tears dripped from her face, tasting strangely of the bitterness inside her, tracking clean channels of skin across the backs of her hands, mixing the laddoo's.

At the wedding feast Amrai's laddoo's were passed out to everyone. She could hear the laughter and singing from the corner of the kitchen where she still cried silently. She hadn’t been allowed to join the wedding or the feast; her presence would have been uncomfortable considering… Anyways, Paali refused to be married if Amrai attended so that matter had been settled early on.

It was after the laddoos had been given out that it happened. One by one the happy laughing people began to weep. Softly and slowly at first, but then, as the memory of the pain grew sharper they wailed and sobbed and beat their chests crying for a love that they had once lost. Everyone who had eaten those laddoos was overcome with the pain of heartbreak they had once felt. Tormented again with that unbearable pain, that many of them thought they had forgotten forever.

Amrai's mother beat her well that night, demanding to know what she had done, and how she had done it. Paali screamed herself into a fever over the ruin of her wedding, and it was only on the orders of their father that Amrai was not beaten anymore. The truth they didn’t believe, no matter how many times she said it. That the only thing she had added to the laddoos were the strangely bitter tears that she hadnt stopped crying.


**This is not an original concept. I heard this story at a reading some years ago, and tried to reproduce it. I dont know who the author is, but if you do, please tell me.

The Message That Coulda Changed The World

Deep in the 17th century, a tiny island lay oblivious to the human menace spreading across the globe. Though the most elite of their inhabitants guarded and patrolled their borders, the battle they would have to face could overwhelm them.

On one outpost out at sea, Del, one of the more enthusiastic members of the border police watched the horizon menacingly. He stalked up and down the deck of the wooden outpost, occasionally spinning around on his webbed feet to catch anyone lurking behind him unawares. Del was the original commando, a bird who was truly devoted to duty. And tonight that devotion would be tested.

On the horizon, appeared a ship; a Dutch ship in fact, but as Del had never heard of the Dutch, this is an irrelevant detail.
Ahem.

So a ship appeared on the horizon, and it glinted with an evil light in Del's mind. The island had to be warned! Del plumped his tail feathers, and plunged into the icy waters, paddling determinedly towards the island, his mind focused on the task at hand, and nothing else, the message of danger repeating over and over in his mind. He was so focused on the ship behind him, that he didn’t notice the ship in front of him until he plowed into it beak first. Del let out a startled squawk before his tongue slipped out the side of his mouth and he floated away, webbed feet pointing at the sky, message of danger still rotating in his mind, one beat faster than the little golden stars rotating around his head.

Aboard the ship, a large Dutch man peered down at the stunned bird floating away from his ship in the pre-dawn light.

"Dodo" he muttered disparagingly.

Love Letters to an Unfeeling Swine

2nd January, 2003

Toady you are clear, pure and transparent. Refracting light in a kaleidoscope of colours that appear just because they are passing through you.

Today you are poison. Lethal in small doses because that’s all you allow me to have. Little sips of something deadly – because you claim, you love me too much to kill me right away. I wish that I could love like you. Kill you and rejoice. Kill you and watch you rejoice because there is no greater way of dying then dying at my feet.

You swish around in your little glass bottle. Soaking slowly through the shapely brown cork that keeps you entangled inside it. You work that cork well. Never has a small piece of wood been so acutely aware that it may be too shapely. Whoever heard of a fat cork?

Stranger things happen everyday.

Like today, I let a fleeting desire to stick my face in a pile of mirror shards beat the shit out of me. It’s strange because I never felt that kind of hate for a few random features that innocently fell onto the same face. They were not right because they weren’t the ones that you would have picked, had you been given a catalogue of body parts and facial topography. You’ve more or less burned your way through the centre of that bloated piece of wood, and exposed to the sky you evaporate blithely towards everything. I’m twisted pieces of charred cork on a forest floor and love you even though you’ve left me again.

6th January, 2003

You visited me in hospital today. Stood over my bed, and gently ran your fingers over the leather straps that cut deep gauges in my wrists. I was alone with you for only a moment, but then you had managed to chip a hole the size of your fist into my skull in a few seconds less. Right now, you smiled; and carefully pulled of that cashmere coat I had woven for out of random strands of thoughts we had had together. Man had you grown. Your body seemed to have morphed out of the midgetness it had been trapped in. You were smooth and coppery and looked suspiciously like that perfect man I had pasted together last summer. The gag in my mouth was made of cotton. A relatively loose weave, hundred percent pure, undoubtedly made from the labour of some poor peasant who could not have known what it would be used for. It always tasted of nothing, except for the odd day when it would seep with old spit. You never touched me. You moved with this new found grace that I had never seen before; I didn’t want to know where you’d learned it. You decided slowly, enjoying the vain attempt of every inch of my skin and drop of my blood to leave this body that had driven you away and just touch you. You left softly… everything they put in my mouth now tastes of your tongue.

Life, or Something Like It

Thkaa stared down at the woman curled up on the pile of skins and furs that served as her bed. She was lying still, staring at the wall calmly, her brown eyes showing no emotion as Thkaa moved around the room, gathering the things she would need. Most women who came to her were terrified, quivering with fear and constantly looking to her for reassurance. This one hadnt said a word since she first stepped in, and her face had remained expressionless throughout. Thkaa heated the potion in a corner, slowly adding the poppy that would put her to sleep, so she wouldnt feel the pain.

The sharp knife caught the light and the woman on the bed turned and stared at it, her eyes becoming colder as she watched Thkaa heat it. Feeling her gaze Thkaa looked up.

"It wont hurt", Thkaa assured her softly, "You wont feel a thing".

The womans eyes narrowed, and a small bitter smile twisted her lips.
"What of my child? Can you promise him the same?"

Thkaa flushed. Killing children before they took their first breath wasnt why she had become a healer.
"You dont have to do it. You could keep the child. He'll be healthy and strong, and you..." Thkaa's voice trailed off as the woman laughed harshly.

"No".

Their eyes met, the solid brown of hers glimmered and suddenly Thkaa understood.

"His father."

It wasnt a question. In her eyes Thkaa could see, see the oceans that the man had crossed to leave her, the way he had left and her news, the bitter words he had spat at her before he left her to do this alone. She could see the richness of the life he had left for, and it stood in stark contrast to the faded, tired colours this woman wore now.

Thkaa handed her the cup. The womans eyes turned cold again, and she swallowed the potion in one gulp. Her eyes drifted shut and her fingers caressed the swell of her stomach as the potion took hold of her. Thkaa picked up the knife, and laid her fingers on the womans skin. For a moment she could hear a child laughing. It stopped abruptly as she brought the knife down.

Dont' Cry to Me, If You Loved Me, You'd Be Here With me...

We met for lunch, in a little cafe. As late afternoon turned into early evening, we sat and stared at each other over our rapidly cooling coffee, smiling the soft secret smiles that only two people completely oblivious to the rest of the world knew how to smile. Our arms snaked their way through a maze of glasses and plates and napkins, so that I could rest my fingers in the palm of his hand.

The amused, indulging waiter approached our table to refill our glasses. He offered us the dessert menus, hiding a smile as we reluctantly disentangled our fingers to grip them.

We waited. Still enjoying the quiet between us, occasionally rubbing fingers or asking a random, inconsequential question. And then he said it.

{SILENCE}

The words hung in the air between us. I looked at the view, examined the tiny scratch on the glass, shifted uncomfortably in my chair. He squeezed my fingers tightly and I looked at him.

{SAY IT}

I leaned forward and touched his chest, his eyes were glimmering with hurt he wouldnt talk to me about. I licked my lips, but they wouldnt move.

{IM SORRY}

He needed a smoke he said and got up and walked out. His heart gushed blood from between my fingers, trailing arteries from where it had been ripped out, dripping into luke warm coffee. I could feel it beating sluggishly, pushing against my palm with every beat.

{LIAR. LIAR. LIAR. LIAR...}