After Hours

First gush of darkness blinded Dhee.

She closed her eyes to adjust vision. Opening them she found phosphorescent Grinchin, emitting green light, swaying its teardrop shaped body from top of the picture book pile.

Dhee waved. Grinchin said, “Don’t worry, QV. Just finish. Then you’ll carry me to the shelves for picture books.”

Obviously. Grinchin had no limb, hence, unable to move itself from place to place.

Just before the lights went off, Dhee had finished sorting books into heaps by categories. In front of geography shelves. For freeing the clutter thereof. A painstaking task. Nobody was interested.

Indexing those books and putting them on shelves by their respective indices remained pending. Dhee’s will was torn. She must leave the library somehow. It had already been closed. Otherwise, she could finish pending jobs.

Dhee opted for the latter; finished indexing all books; started shelving with picture books. As she finished there, Grinchin vanished.

It turned dark again. Dhee lost her path to geography shelves. She started circling around shelves of science, history and motor vehicles books.

She attempted reaching the volunteers’ closet, for fetching her purse and leaving. Changed course led her to another circle around biography, technology and fantasy books.

Perplexed, anxious, she touched a book on fantasy shelves. Glowfig jumped from it to floor, emanating pink lights. It started crawling along the aisles, on its head, with tiny tentacle like feet, attached, in billions, to its head, changing its color to yellow, then to cerulean, to pink again, at successive turns, leading Dhee to stacks on floor.

Remembering what happened with picture books, Dhee left the fantasy heap to be organized in the end. Pacing through the aisles, organizing books to their respective shelves, Glowfig asked, “How have you ended up alone in the library, QV?”

Dhee explained, “It closes at five thirty every Thursday. But closed at four today. They told me beforehand. Yet I couldn’t finish and leave timely.”

Glowfig was inquisitive, “Didn’t the lady in the glass box check before leaving?”

Dhee asked for clarification, “Ms. Garfunkel, the librarian?”

Glowfig confirmed, “Yap.”

Dhee reported, “She closed and left the library in hurry for attending an emergency city council meeting.”

Glowfig reflected, “Geography shelves, certainly, needed time and attention. You couldn’t notice gradual drops in footsteps… buzzes….”

Dhee sounded sad, “Did. But….”

Her guesses were correct. As soon as she finished with fantasy shelves, Glowfig was gone. She still needed to reach volunteer’s closet before leaving.

Dhee dragged her feet to the end of isles of fantasy books. All along, dark woolly formless Ghooshfus, a wizard of black magic, tried to blow her towards adult section, filled with horrors and thrillers. Ghooshfus could have frozen Dhee into a graphite lump.

Fighting tooth and nail with Ghooshfus, she took right turn to technology books. Libot greeted her by flashing its white laser headlight thrice and cooing in a metallic voice, as if, it was waiting for her. It shouted at Ghooshfus, “Shoo.”

Even Ghooshfus was scared of Libot’s advanced technological acumen. Also, of its powerful body of metallic barrel, moving smoothly on wheels, lifting, dropping and moving things by levers tucked in its body.

It asked, “Why didn’t you call for help, QV?”

Dhee murmured, “No access to landlines. I don’t have a cell phone..”

Libot questioned abruptly, “Why?”

Dhee informed, “I’m dependent on my husband and we’re on temporary Visa. So, spending thriftily.”

Libot digressed, in front of fantasy shelves, “I don’t like Ghooshfus. His world is full of blood, death and kidnapping. Crimes and criminals. Violent creatures.”

Libot’s words were music to ears of Munchkins from “The Wizard of the Oz”. They applauded. So did the goblins from Tolkien books and Harry Potter’s owl, undermining conflicts in their own worlds. Glowfig joined the pacing in gratitude.

Dhee asked, “Why are you calling me QV?”

Libot explained, “QV stands for Quirky Volunteer…. for your silent meticulous dedication.”

This conversation awakened the whole picture book section. Grinchin teased, “Here comes Glowfig from unreal world.”

Libot placed Grinchin on its flat barrel head.

Glowfig responded, “You visit that world at bedtime, every night.”

Libot tweaked closet lock and brought Dhee’s purse. They went to the exit then. Obviously, it was locked. Libot disabled the alarm, then, hummed in chorus with Glowfig and Grinchin, “Cricketycoo Thicketytoo Hm, Hmm, Hmmm.”

The keyhole expanded enough to let Dhee exit. She slipped a note of gratitude beneath the entrance.

Her husband drove in. She left with him.

Blurbs @ WEP Challenge #Long Shadow

 

Long Shadow (Flash Fiction) by Olga Godim : Paper mage Monette was called by Jane, John’s wife. The morning after John’s birthday party Jane’s house was filled up by worms. Monette cast her spell and rescued the house, Jane and John.

Thoughts on a Dying Evening (Poetry) by Denis Covey : A view of long shadow under setting sun unfolded like an impressionist painting. The urge for light and futile head smashing on shadow of continuing pandemic rolled like tear drops along the cheek. Sad and satisfying.

SHADOWS (Poetry) by Yolanda Renée : Hate is a shadow of love, when words of beloved ones wraps in companionship of piercing pain, pushes to lonely helplessness and eviscerate ones soulfulness of life leaving a shadow of liveliness.

Breath and Shadow (Non-fiction) by Nilanjana Bose : Light, shades and shadows trick mind, the visual sense. Humans, all along history, captured this visual sense in art. Oriental and occidental art captured lights and shadow in different extent. Western art used shadows more intensely. Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings moved from shadows to bright colors while the artist’s mind followed a reverse direction.

Monster (Flash Fiction) by L G Keltner : Laura the seven year old was playing with her shadow while the sun was setting, casting long shadows on tiny objects. Yet a return journey to one’s home help to turn back on one’s own monstrous long shadow.

Kirtinagar – the City of Deeds (Flash Fiction) by Sanhita Mukherjee : Ruh has a secret. She is in conflict with her mother and ancestors. Yet she carries on with the family under the long shadow of her secret.

 TheLynching (Flash Fiction) by C. Lee McKenzie : Bart was a protective father. He sought revenge on violator of her daughter Nell. Yet, he chose to forget the evening when he was out for head hunting.

Me and My Shadow (Poetry) by Elephant’s Child : A shadow always moves ahead, lighter, freer, and eluding the person whom it belong.

CAST A LONG SHADOW (Flash Fiction) by Kalpana : A wrestler Hindu priest of Ayodhya dreamt of Shri Ram narrating about his birthplace. The pious priest fancied a temple at the very birthplace of Shri Ram. He appealed to the District Magistrate. But the District Magistrate declined the priest’s proposal to prevent riots. The priest came up with a plan for manipulating tolerance of liberal egalitarian society.

The Banker (Poetry) by Susan Rouchard : A moonlit night. Benches, streets and other objects under long shadow. A man in long coat, a whore, a cat and Mr. Hacklebaum. The death waited and watched for the right opportunity.

Long Shadow (Flash Fiction) by Jemima Pett : Bobby spent his lockdown sunny days digging sand pit in garden, or climbing trees. His sister annoyed him in countless tormenting ways. Yet her mother asked him to be more involved with his sister. Also, long shadows spoke to him about sad scary dangerous matters of life unfolding truth about how his father died.

Long Shadow (Flash Fiction) by Sally : Fred was a fireman living alone at his workplace endangering his life every now and then, amidst great physical discomfort of heat, cold, lack of running water, proper bed. His great-great grandson Ryan is a fireman, too. But his work is much easier, and his world is much more comfortable.

The Long Shadow (Flash Fiction) by Pat Garcia : Jamie was ready for presenting a strategic plan in the field of space aeronautics. Yet she noticed a long shadow beside her own. The shadow belonged to a man and Jamie did not find him creepy. At the end of the day, the mystery of the man and his shadow were unraveled.

Blades of Grass (Flash Fiction) by Jemi Fraser : Toya missed her Granny. She tried to make duck calls by blades of grasses. She failed. The heap of rolled blades was full of her memories with Granny. She carefully picked them all and moved on.

Choices (Flash Fiction) by Dixie J. Jarchow : A witch her cat and a young girl. The girl wanted the witch to kill someone. Instead, the witch made some transformations and solved the girl’s problem. Yet the witch did not overwhelm the girl with mastery of witchcraft and made the girl feel responsible for her decisions.

Long Shadow (Non-fiction) by Rebecca Douglass : Life and loss of life cast long shadows on everyone related to a life. Often those shadows seem to be outcomes of decisions. Yet, life, in general, goes on under two different kinds of long shadows, of life, of loss of life.

The Deserted Railway Station (Flash Fiction) by Bernadette Braganza : A railway station without spec of any creature under setting sun. A man arrived there and dropped a heavy bag. Then he started digging. Suddenly a shadow appeared by him. Presently, there rests relic of what happened then.

A Royal Request (Flash Fiction) by Christopher Scott : Five years after the previous episode took place, the protagonist returned to England. Wary of world travel, intending to settle in the native land, yet eluding the gallows and enjoying life, his return was a response to the Royal Request. This time he acted to destroy monsters along with their progeny.

On with the show! (Continuation of The Yadira Chronicle) by Naught Netherworld Press : King Qweh was being criticized by Yadira. From interdimensional spaces, some people were eavesdropping. Qweh’s sycophants were held hostage by Nyarlathotep, Yadira’s father. These people were particularly curious about the royal opinion on Gerry.

LONG SHADOW (Flash Fiction) by Sonia Dogra : In Rumsu, a village in Himachal, on verdant valleys surrounded by mighty mountains of the Himalayas, lived a mother deserted by her children. Her children left her like feather shed by jujurana (Western Tragopan). The father of the children wished to make money from the feathers. Mother tried to return it to the bird so that her children would return to her.

Untitled (Continuation of Lisa and Pierce’s Story) by D M Hanton : Lisa met Pierce by the wall on the street. They were transported to the hospital. Then the girl who called the police on Pierce appeared and things went weirder.

Untitled (Non-fiction) by Jamie of Uniquely maladjusted but fun : Statistics about relationship between abortion and crime. That too, in specific types of crime. Mention of Levitt and Dubner’s one and half -decade old earth-shaking book Freakonomics and argument about whether there should be options of abortion and birth control. There are reminiscences of a visit to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania.

A Growing Flame (Poetry) by Toinette Thomas : A moan from under shadows of Monsters. A groan against proud oppressors. A promise of revolution brewing by the corner. Sound of footsteps of gathering mass.

Untiltled (Poetry) by Karen Sather : Sunshine and shadows goes hand in glove. One can attempt an escape form one’s own shadow and realize the futility of the endeavor and clings to the shadow.

With You I Could Steal Horses (Flash Fiction) by Carol Stolz : An epistolary fiction about sharing lives with loved ones and keeping secret guarded from them. The long shadow of secret and keeping something that way from loved ones affects relationships. Yet sharing such secrets can shatter shared love and lives, too. It is about maintaining the delicate balance.

Custody Chain CHAPTER FOUR – UMBRAGE by Roland Clarke : Urien went back to home from hospital. Tesni was there with him. Sparkle and Kama along with their uniformed colleagues stayed on vigil for the intruder to return. They already knew that the intruder masked the surveillance system. However, they succeeded in catching the intruder. Urein’s secrets were partially unearthed.

Kirtinagar – The City of Deeds @ WEP Entry # Long Shadow

When Ernest Hemingway used "Thou" and "You" in "For Whom the Bell Tolls" to imply respectively "Su", formal and "Tu", casual second person salutations in Spanish, he earned severe negative criticism for using and mixing an obsolete (English) form with modern forms. Hemingway was native English speaker. I am not. Educational and Testing Service (ETS) have recognized my writing prowess, though [ My seven year old ToEFL score card, photo of which is shared herewith, is the testimony.] After all, grammar is, from linguists' view point, codified usage of language by people belonging to defined geographies. 

Language is my tool for storytelling. In order to bring the feel to the reader I play grammar (don't search for "with the"; [Neither I am a child nor the grammar is a toy] I 'play' grammar like playing people, politics, race card, linguistic group sentiments, sexual orientations, genders and victimhood.), fiddle punctuation, doctor spelling to elucidate pronunciation, engineer words to carve impressions. For uncrossed t-s and undotted i-es or preposterous prepositions and awry articles inattentive proofreading is to blame. Storytelling is my passion, proofreading - nay.

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Kirtinagar – The City of Deeds

Ruh was watching Prajuktipur’s shadow on completely deserted, gradually waning Kirtinagar, sprawling over thousand hectares, through Eastern panes of her sixtieth-floor office.

Ruh’s mother Seema commented from behind, “Gloating?”

Ruh replied reluctantly, “Measuring, scheming…. the endeavor, the expenditure required to remove Rathin Gupto’s mess on the marsh.”

Frowning Seema snapped, “Do you care about my baba’s blood, sweat, money dissolved in the marsh, keeping Kirtinagar intact?”

Ruh bantered, “In control.”

She added then, "I’ve checked the land records. Guptos used to own the marsh. Then the government put limit on individual landholding. Rathin’s father lost the marsh.”

Seema screamed, “Rathin? Not dadan? Disrespecting your grandfather!”

Ruh laughed out loud, “Clever dadan! If I call you Seema, I’ll end up with Ma….”

Seema reminded Ruh, “This Pajuktipur office, trendy outfits, cars, your snuffs, gadgets – my shrewd baba earned all. The control you’re contorting about… he bought that, bribing politicians… freed the marsh from squatters, from their shacks made of rags and cane on raised bamboo platforms, by buying their non-salable ownership, bestowed to them by the government, for their rehabilitations...”

Ruh interrupted, “Dadan harvested return on investment. The Democratic Government, run by politicians on his payroll, paid him for filling up the marsh and building Kirtinagar thereof.”

She asserted then, “Dadan knew… every construction at Kirtinagar was destined to be corroded by moisture, creeping up through pores of landfill, by water clogging…”

Seema justified, “Drag of developing Kirtinagar inflicted baba with hypertension, culminated into cerebral thrombosis.”

Ruh slandered, “Then his dutiful daughter left fashionable student politics and joined nasty family business.”

Seema reminisced, “I’s twenty-one then. It was fun being tagalong to Mrinal, charismatic campus leader of violent student politics…”

Ruh taunted, “Tagalong? You’re lovers. Though Deepak’s your fiancé then.”

Seema scowled, “Deepak? You used to call him baba….”

Ruh sneered, “Yay, the looser tried hard to be my father.”

Seema recalled, “I approached Kirtinagar residents for converting their damp, friable small family homes to high rises. Then Prajuktipur had just began to grow, unable to accommodate all its workers belonging to several echelons of pay. High demand for low cost housing in vicinity was just about to pop.”

She continued, “Resources were scant then. Baba’s unable to walk, talk or eat. Most residents of Kirtinagar willingly converted their property, accepting compensations, in cash or flats or a combination of both. Deepak’s the lender. The wealthier Kirtinagar denizens were resistant. Mrinal’s ingenious maneuvers….”

Ruh slandered, “Ingenious maneuvers? You’re glorifying how Mrinal burned a few of them alive.”

 She went on, “Your ever-delayed repayments made Deepak look into your books. Thus, he realized how Mrinal was sucking your business, how return on investment was just break even, though sales figures were humongous continuously for ten years.”

 Seema mentioned scornfully, digressing intentionally, “On your fifth birthday, Deepak wished for another child, to help you with the business.”

Ruh laughed and replied, “You spilled the beans…..”

Seema, too, laughed and added, “The look on his face…. I still remember. He took quite a while to assimilate, then surmised, ‘Oh! It’s always Mrinal.’ I abruptly rectified though, ‘Ruh’s from Ashis, the interior decorator, hired for our Prajuktipur office.”

Ruh inferred, “Thus Deepak lived lost, till he succumbed to the road rage”.

Then, she returned to Seema’s initial question, “Not gloating, though nobody’s out there with the leverage of knowing my criminal secret…... of stealing a fatal microbial strain from the college lab, then mixing it to Kirtinagar’s water supply lines, all by myself, leaving no loose end, hence, no risk of being blackmailed, unlike your messy arrangements involving Mrinal.”

Few months ago, Seema alerted Ruh, “Business’ about to collapse, unless we match our stride to catch up with current booming trend in Prajuktipur. High rise buildings comprising dingy apartments, stingy shops, congesting Kirtinagar, like litter, must give way to planned development of spacious well-lit condos, town houses, bungalows, shopping plazas with huge parking spaces, wide drivable roads, greenery, underground sewerage and drainage…. I can’t compensate all the residents of Kirtinagar. Thirty thousand people lives in its each square kilometer, over three hundred thousand people in total, incurring a hundred billion rupees in compensation.”

Ruh sarcastically added then, “Ask Mrinal to drop a bomb on Kirtinagar, though he’ll bleed the business white for the job, wrenching you for never marrying him.”

A week after this conversation, in wee hours of a weekday, Ruh went live on social media, sharing her stray dog feeding endeavor amidst the crew of Kirtinagar Municipality, at one of Kirtinagar’s water supply maintenance sites. Instantly, she earned compassion of the crew. Keeping the crew busy in front and rear of her camera, Ruh, stealthily, added the microbe colony to the city water supply. In a few weeks, some unknown infection wiped out population of three blocks of Kirtinagar.

Ruh’s video of dog feeding went viral. Banking upon hugely compassionate public mood, she buzzed continuously against nexus of corrupt politicos and construction farms, holding them responsible for fatal infection at Kirtinagar.

In tandem, the mainstream media sensation machinery narrative held Ruh a hero, a scion revolting against her own people. Also, their reportage terrorized Kirtinagar residents of imminent death. Within weeks, Kirtinagar dwellers vacated the city, voluntarily.

Ruh’s explanation about her modus operandi silenced Seema. Ruh asserted the forward plan, “You must soon announce my engagement to Prama.”

Seema reacted, “The cement baron Dutta’s daughter!”

Ruh ignored, “It must be ostentatious. It’ll bring you to the fold of sympathizers of marginalized persons. It’ll steer clear all bad press about redevelopment of Kirtinagar”

Seema fumbled, “Even last night your orgasmic moans were from Soham! What’s about him?”

Ruh snapped, “I’ll keep him in the closet. Until open relationship for bisexuals or promiscuity in general becomes fashionably adorable, or sexual straightness starts to be ostracized….”

She digressed abruptly though, “Wanna get rid of Mrinal?”

After three months, Mrinal succumbed to heart attack, without prior heart complaint. Ruh posted a photo of Mrinal on social media explaining how he inspired Ruh. 

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WORD COUNT:  995 (nine hundred ninety five) [Including all hyphenated words, else one thousand (1000)] 

FCA – FULL CRITIQUE ACCEPTABLE

React directly.

Speak your mind freely.

August is our, the Indians', month of freedom. 15th is the Independence Day. Let's celebrate.

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Blurbs of the Entries to #WEP June 2020 Challenge: Urban Nightmare

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Blurbs of the Entries to #WEP June 2020 Challenge: Urban Nightmare

 I fancied to write blurbs for the stories of Urban Nightmare season of Write... Edit... Publish... [WEP] Flash Fiction challenges. But as nightmare continued I could not come up with the blurbs in time.  Yet I have written. :)

 GROUND ZERO (Flash Fiction) by Denise Covey: A city by a nuclear spillage site. It turned empty later. It was where experiments conducted on human endurance to radioactivity.

Lethal Weapons (Flash Fiction) by Yolanda Renée: An abusive marriage. Mysterious friends. Mysterious death of an abusive husband and later his wife. All linked to a deep instinctive cruelty.

My Happy Home (Flash Fiction) by Yolanda Renée: A woman’s husband cheated on her. She punished her husband. But she prevented her family from an evitable break up. Instead she gave her family an opportunity of staying together for ever.

Write … Edit … Publish … Bloghop/IWSG hop:Urban Nightmare … (non-Fiction) by Hilary Melton-Butcher: Worries about ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, reminiscence of Francisco Goya’s The Sleep of Reason cannot Produce Monsters and promise of endurance to see beautiful future.

Urban Nightmare (Flash Fiction) by Olga Godim: A suffocated neighborhood. A toddler suffering from Asthma and his desperate mother. All relived by a pro bono spell of Monnet.

Out of Mind (Flash Fiction) by Sanhita Mukherjee: A lonely information technology worker in Amphan hit evening of lockdown due to COVID-19 pandemic lost her life to urban mismanagement.

Fangsto Mars (Flash Fiction) by J. Lenni Dorner: A prisoner escaped death. A president was killed by a vampire aide. The next in line was about to succumb to another blood sucking vampire but was saved by democratic governmental procedures.

Pigeon.Panic. Pandemic. (Non-fiction) by Nilanjana Bose: A sub-human avian, like humans, is driven by urge of returning home. Human beings built up cities after agriculture and art. Art preceded agriculture. Yet genius Vincent Van Gogh moved to urban cityscape, Paris and succumbed to nightmares.

Inthe Streets (Poetry) by L. G Keltner: The world has seen death and destructions, overcome prophesied dates of apocalypses. Present trial of time, too, will pass if goodwill gathers to fight all ongoing human ailments.

Urban Nightmare (Flash Fiction) by Sonia Dogra: Gossamer was a game development company. All its products revolve around urban nightmare. The owner of the company was deemed expert on urban nightmare by national leadership and was invited in a meeting.

The Widow (Flash Fiction) by Shannon Lawrence: Kasey coaxed Milo to a meeting at Milo’s den, guarded by is men. Would Kasey succeed in avenging her husband’s murder and staying alive afterwards? How? That’s the story’s journey.

Urban Nightmare (Flash Fiction) by Jemima Pett: Animal instinct of survival, as individual, as race, as family, as gene pool, as parent during times of scares resources and heightened struggle – intraspecies and interspecies.

The Kidnapping (Flash Fiction) by Pat Garcia: Zelda and Beno responded to a scream and sob, amidst disappearance of half a dozen female of different age from their neighborhood. Beno had his suspicions and he worked on it.

Blame (Flash Fiction) by Sally: A rat, his explorations in time of scarcity and its capture by a rat catcher, then demise in a laboratory. Years later the rat catcher confessed to progeny that that the rats were killed for nothing.

*** COULDN’T REACH THE SITE   by Kalpana

Opting out (Flash Fiction) by Susan Baury Rouchard: New York City, hustling, bustling, regular chaotic life and loss of it. In the climax it reaches destruction of ultimate urban fad in cellu lar technology.

Driving Home (Non-fiction) by Toi Thomas: A poetic compilation of US mainstream media narrative about situation of African American teenagers, men and occasionally women, including Mexican women and other Latinas.

Remember the Words (Poetry) by Jemi Fraser: A countdown to home. Like instructions to organs, hiding in between blocks like shadow. Yet facing the question of identifying oneself.

West Holpry (A chapter from The Yadira Chronicles) by Naught Netherland Press: Serab was captured for petty theft. He was driven towards the prison by King Qweh. Onlookers were jabbering about fate of the captive and power of the captivator. Serab reminisced his best friend.

An Urban Nightmare (Poetry) by Karuna: A Unicorn, a king and folks all ends in basic moral questions of eternity.

Her Urban Nightmare (Poetry) by Carole Stolz: She escaped violence when she was fourteen and ended up in violence and rape by men even after half a decade.

An urban Nightmare (Flash Fiction) by Cindi Summerlin: Karl was losing weight. He was suffering from parasomnia. There were physical changes. Those changes confused him. Those change lead him to transformation.

Custody Chain CHAPTER THREE – CRYPTOGRAPH by Roland Clarke: Kama and Sparkle were interviewing Urien. It revealed Csilla’s escape from post-Soviet Hungary and Tesni’s identity. It left a hint about motive of Urien’s attacker, though it eluded clues about identity of the attacker. Also, it mnemonics of Sparkle.

Sally's Urban Nightmare (Flash Fiction) by Jamie: A whimsy daughter keeps her mother always on her toes. The daughter fells climbing a dresser, the mother gets scolded for not watching the daughter carefully. The mother prepares food for her recuperating daughter, the daughter escapes mother’s apartment.

URBAN HORROR (Flash Fiction) by Dixie Jarchow: Two siblings in a deserted house with their mother in their life deserted by father met unknown souls in neighboring cemetery. A soul tried to harm, the other helped recover.

Untitled (Continuation of Lisa and Pierce’s Story) by D M Hanton: The sneeze irked Lisa. She made Pierce leave. Hallucinated Pierce went through weird series of events where impersonated a king surrounded by enemies who were in real world were helpful passerby and police.

Man or Monster? (Flash Fiction) by Christopher Scott: An interesting encounter between a policeman and a serial killer where the serial killer quenches thirst of killing some paranormal creature with the help of the policeman.

 Urban Nightmare? (Flash Fiction) by Helen Mathey-Horn: Chuck met some time travelers in his well monitored, tight scheduled, systematically controlled cubiclized workplace. He fed them what he was about to feed his friends. They returned in gratitude something which made Chuck excited. Yet he used this excitement only to enhance performance of his ongoing project.

Out of Mind

Nothing else but The Story

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A car is honking in the neighborhood. Mouli feels as if she has just woken up.

She thinks of shutting the window. But cannot. The glass pane has been imploded by raging Aamphan. Since then her bed, bedroom floor has been spread with glass shards; flooded with storm water gushing through the hollow of aluminum window frame. Flood water surged through kitchen and dining area to living room and apartment entrance.

Startled by the sound of shattering windowpane, in the early evening, Mouli left her home office, in between living room and kitchen area, in awe. Reaching bedroom, she has obtained deep cuts on planters of her feet.

By this time, the storm water has engulfed the home power back up system by the apartment entrance; made it defunct, in exchange became electrified. It shocked Mouli’s submerged feet; made her climb on the bed; squirm at a corner away from hollow of the window.

Darkness, dampness, dull inactive passage of fathomless time accompanied by crazily forceful tropical cyclone continuing over six hours at a crushing hourly speed of two hundred kilometers seized Mouli’s consciousness, sealed her eyes.    

Earlier in the day, the client has sent page to Mouli’s team. It was Kushal’s shift; hence, he was responsible for acknowledging receipt of the page within an hour of receiving it. Mouli waited for half an hour for Kushal’s response, then she called him.  After several calls over an hour, he picked up and asked, “Have you responded to the page?”.

Mouli reminded him, “Since I’m your manager… I must, hence, I saved the deadline. Now start fixing the bug. It’s in client’s B2B transaction module.”  

Hanging up she sighed, “Quite unprofessional!”

Kushal gave up after two hours of effort or its pretention, around standard siesta time.

Then, Mouli had left with no choice but herself fixing the code timely to secure earning few thousand dollars for her employer and enhancing business relationship with the client. Otherwise, her employer would lose the business, incurring millions of dollars in penalty for damages caused to client’s business by incompetence of Mouli’s team, abiding by the agreement.

Hence, Mouli scanned through lines of the code, found the block of method that had been manipulated by client’s latest requirement; checked the methods linked to the changed method; figured out how to tweak them as necessary by logic. Yet she could not fix the code.

Power supply of entire city was turned off since the landfall of the cyclone, late in afternoon. Mouli’s power back up system kept her laptop and internet router alive for few hours, till her bedroom window broke. Then, she received text messages from her internet service provider intimating breakdown in internet and cell phone services. She surmised that all the electric poles and posts, connecting optic fiber cables carrying internet signals, were probably uprooted.

Without electricity, broadband, mobile data, communication became impossible, even with respective service agencies. Nor Mouli could resume resolving the business problem in hand. She helplessly observed tampering of her hitherto impeccable reputation of punctuality. Imagining the consequences of missing delivery to her employer, ensuing cascading effect on her career, then on her life, life seemed to be decimated.

Life had already been at its knees due to lockdown. Mouli had spent no weekend with her parents, siblings, or friends, at her place, or at their respective places, or someplace away from the city, for months, maintaining social distancing. Constant view of ugly erratic hardscape of maximizing profit per square feet, without considering comforts and convenience of dwellers and durability of structure constructed, strained her neurons, fatigued her muscles. Even glass-iron-concrete box, called office, appeared a soothing isolation from noise in surroundings and thoughts.

Probably, the shed of neighborhood car parking was blown off. The crown of Mahogany tree standing by the parking has been fallen on the cars. Consequently, cars started honking as alarm.

Nobody dared going outside to stop the alarms.

The honking has shaken Mouli to senses, probably. She feels like being drowned in her own perspiration, smelling like vinegar. Her hands are immovable, like being in a straitjacket, of a flex banner printed with, “Honking won’t widen the street.”

After Mouli shouted it, once, a lady left her car, rushed to Mouli to respond with slur. The street was inundated by water from roadside drain, failed to hold rainwater from previous nights, fortnights, yielding invisible potholes. The lady stepped into one of them, fell and was drowned. Without underground sewerage canals, as wide and high as two-lane street, overflowing drains, consequent road corrosion creating potholes and loss of lives remain inevitable.

Nobody sued the authorities, provider of roads, though dilapidated, yet social benefits, for citizens, hence, like royal, feudal endowment, beyond reproach.

She has thought of renting ad spaces to flash her anti-honking slogan; yet abandoned the idea. Electronic billboards are few.

Someone copied her slogan, made a cheap campaign with flex banner, fitted over iron frames or wooden batons, which has just been torn by storm wind, gushing at hundred and twenty something miles per hour, dropped in front of a moving truck and covered its windscreen.

The truck failed to sense total loss of visibility as visibility was almost nil over quarter of a day, drenched in Amphan rain. It stumbled upon iron traffic barriers lying flat on the street, slammed earlier, from their upright positions, to the street floor by storm wind, due to lack of weight of sand sacks on their respective bottoms.

The truck lost control; rammed into Mouli’s apartment building. The impact made the banner fly from the trucks’ windscreen, enter Mouli’s bedroom through the broken window and whirled around Mouli.

As Mouli struggles to free herself from the wrap, a piece of left-over wooden baton, protruding from the flex banner’s edge, pierces her left eye. Rolling in pain, she crosses the edge of the window of her seventeenth-floor apartment.

Subsequent thud on the ground remains unheard. Rain washes away splashed flesh, blood, warmth.

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I finished writing before Aamphan. After Aamphan I changed it, keeping the ending intact. After demise of actor Sushant Singh Rajput, I changed the ending further so that it would not appear to be mimic of the tragedy. 

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WORD COUNT: 1000 (One thousand) [Including all hyphenated words, else 997 (Nine hundred ninety seven)] 

FCA – FULL CRITIQUE ACCEPTABLE
Expecting honest and blatant views.