Feraline

Prologue (It’s long so I don’t expect most of you to read it)

Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 | mini-story | 6 Comments

The car was making Faye sick. She didn’t like the smell of the burrito that her younger brother Cameron was eating. She didn’t like the heat in the car despite the air-conditioning. Faye and her family lived in Miami Beach so heat wasn’t really a problem for Faye, but she hated the rancid hot air of the car.

Her mother was driving, whistling cheerfully. She was the one who kept insisting that they go visit Faye’s grandmother, who lived in a huge ranch in Montana, this summer. They couldn’t afford the plane tickets for everyone, so they were driving. It would take 45 hot sticky smelly hours of non-stop driving. They were on the 34^th hour now. Faye knew because she was keeping count.

Faye didn’t even know the name of the ranch. The name wasn’t on the map. To her six-year-old mind, that meant the place didn’t exist.

They had been driving all night and day. She hated being crammed in the back seat of their SUV with her four brothers. She hated that her youngest brother Angus, who usually smells so nice now smelled like baby poop. Her mother kept changing him but he still smelt like poop. And before this, she never really noticed that he screams so much.

Faye’s stomach grumbled noisily and she tasted something vile in her throat.

“Mommy!”

“You feeling ill again honey?” Her mother called from the drivers seat. Fayee nodded her head, her mouth twisted from trying not to vomit on the smell of burrito and baby poop.

Fayee’s mother stopped the car, despite the protests from her half-asleep father. Her brother Kyle, who had been peacefully snoozing a minute ago jolted awake.

“Faye feeling ill again?” He asked groggily. Kyle was 10 and the oldest in the family. He takes that to mean he’s the man of the house, and thus needs to take care of everyone else. It was actually very sweet when it’s not annoying.

“We wont be a minute. Jonathan, watch the kids!”

Faye’s mum nudged her father on the head before getting out. He mumbled something but didn’t open his eyes. He had been driving all the night before, letting her mum rest and now it was his turn to sleep.

Faye stumbled out of the car and knelt down on all fours at the edge of the gravel, trying not to vomit. There was a metal sign a little further away from her that said ROUTE 99. She stared at it and swallowed something big that was threatening to come out of her throat.

“You okay Faye?” Kyle ambled out of car and put a hand on her head. Fayee looked at him and tried to smile. Her mother was back at the car, trying to calm down Angus. He had been sleeping, but was now awake and screaming.

“I don’t feel too good, but I think I’m ok” Faye told him. She swallowed loudly again and tried to count cars. There were six cars coming towards them. She could see a big blue one, and a really fast red one.

And then for reason at all, all the hairs at the back of her neck stood still.

She shivered.

“Fayee, you sure you’re okay?” Kyle asked again. She looked at him and shivered again, despite the fact that sweat was beaded on her forehead.

“Maybe I caught a flu or something” She whispered. She looked at the ground again and then at the metal road sign next to her. ROUTE 99. Her arms erupted in gooseflesh.

She shivered and turned the other way and caught sight of the cars again. They were close enough that she could tell that the blue one was a big Van. She shivered, and suddenly, someone who’s voice sounded remarkably similar to her own was speaking in her ear

“They’ll reach us in exactly four minutes Faye…”

Faye frowned, looking around, wondering where the voice came from. She squinted at the Van again.

“3 minutes and 45 seconds now Faye!” The voice whispered again in a frightened voice.

Her entire body was convulsing now, her muscles jerking as though in some terrible pain. Something wet tickled down her face, from her nose. Faye quickly rubbed at it with her hands and saw blood. Her eyes widened at the redness she saw. And then, every nerve, every fiber in her body began screaming at her.

‘RUN FAYE, RUN!’

She hesitated for a split second. Her heart was exploding in her throat and adrenaline dominated her veins. She hardly understood anything, any of this at that moment. All she knew was she had to RUN!

Faye jumped to her feet and sprinted across the desert.

“Hey!” She heard Kyle exclaim from behind her. She thought she heard her mother screaming her name. She didn’t care. She had to run. She had to RUN. She couldn’t stop running until she reached…

Her eyes focused on a spot a few kilometers away where a large bunch of boulders were scattered on the ground. As soon as she saw the biggest boulder she knew it was SAFE. Her heart raced harder and she ran even faster than before.

“3 minutes and 5 seconds”

Something was going to happen; something that her entire body and that voice knew was BAD!

“Faye, stop, FAYE!” She heard Kyle’s voice from somewhere close behind her. But she couldn’t stop.

“1 minute and 35 seconds Faye. We need to hurry. We need to run faster. One minute and 30 seconds Faye!”

She leaped and jumped over some smaller boulders, something she knew she couldn’t really do. Not her, not clumsy Faye. Maybe it was the voice helping her. Faye didn’t really care.

She finally reached the largest boulder. She ducked behind it, resting her head on the hot rock. Sweat was pouring down her body but she didn’t care. Only one word was echoing in her head now, one soothing, and sweet word.

“SAFE! SAFE! SAFE! SAFE! SAFE! SAFE! SAFE!”

“Faye, what the hell do you think you’re doing?” Kyle was suddenly there, heaving to find his breath. He had his hands on his knees was looking at her like she was insane. And her heart went crazy!

Kyle wasn’t SAFE! The voice didn’t care much but Faye did.

She didn’t exactly know what she was doing before she did it. She grabbed his ankles and pulled. With a cry, Kyle fell on his back, but before he was done falling, Faye pulled him forward. He landed with a thump next to her and she grabbed the neck of his t-shirt and jerked him into sitting position before he could so much as breath.

“Only ten seconds now!”

They were both covered behind the boulder. Faye never knew she was this strong. Kyle seemed too dazed to speak. He looked at Faye and tried but nothing really came out.

“He’s okay,” The voice assured her. “He’s safe with us”

Tears started leaking out of Faye’s eyes as she thought of her mother, her father, Angus and Cameron.

“5 seconds” The voice said soothingly.

Should she have tried to help them? She buried her face into Kyle’s shoulder.

“There was nothing you could do. Kyle is here. We are safe. Three seconds now. Lets brace ourselves”

She nodded, clenching her eyes shut, crying silently, holding onto Kyle as hard as she could.

And then they heard the explosion.

Epilogue

Wednesday, February 27th, 2008 | mini-story | 2 Comments

There were three of them in that room. All of them were silent. All of them were staring at him. He knew none of them. He was nervous because he wanted to succeed where everyone else had failed. He was young but he had strong dreams. He wanted to be the pioneer, the one who would reach the breaking point in this situation a situation that had confused and caused failure in everyone else, even those greater and more learned than him.

“It ends too quickly for some, and too late for others; it takes too long for us to learn what we need to learn, and by the time we have, everything is messed up!” The first to speak was a soft spoken woman, probably in her early thirties, and he immediately named her Juliana in his mind. That was bad, he must have thought of a way to keep the voices disguised too. But it was too late for that now.

“There’s no turning back. You can’t change anything!” He felt like he liked her. That was bad too. He shouldn’t have felt that.

“The worst thing is human nature. Our inability to feel satisfaction with anything, our starvation for power and our natural instincts to lie, kick, scream, manipulate and kill. Deep inside, we are all animals.” The second one had a voice like broken glass. She couldn’t have been more than eighteen years old. Carri, he thought. Such a sunny, cheery name but such a broken voice. He felt an odd longing to put his arms around her, hug her and hold her tight and safe, a tug in his heart that he couldn’t control. The third bad sign. He wondered if he should stop, but something, perhaps his vanity made him continue. So sure he was of his control. Until the last one spoke.

The last one to speak had a voice that was indescribable. He couldn’t even begin to fathom the age of the speaker, lest the gender, the mood. It had the slight tenor of masculinity, wrapped in sonorous femininity that was regular in both the dazzling slightly androgynous men and fervently sultry women. It was utterly and completely blank, characterless, void of both emotion and expression. And yet, in his mind, he was sure it was a woman.

He was at a complete loss of what to call her.

“The worst thing about life… is that we can’t choose how it begins. We are thrust out of the womb of a stranger whom we grow to love, because she thrust us out. We are thrust into a society we grow up in. We are thrust into religions, into a bunch of beliefs that we are told are right. We cannot choose, not how we are born, not where we are born, not whom we are born to. And if the beginning of life itself is soiled, is predestined, how can we be content with anything that follows?”

Her words weren’t any more powerful or true than anything else spoken by the preceding two, who were suddenly so utterly unimportant. But the absolute truth that rang in her voice was so distinctive that he felt his heart break and he asked himself, why cannot he choose his birth? It was his life, but this very first, very important right has never been his.

He wanted to worship this Goddess sitting before him. This Goddess with the powerful voice. He wanted to see her face, kiss her palms and lie weeping at her feet. She deserved no less, he was sure.

“You see, this… unnecessary control I have over you people is what got me here in the first place,” There was laughter in her voice. He felt good because she was laughing. Everything was right.

“Goddess…” He whispered.

“You think so?” She asked, her voice going throaty, sultry, full of sparkling feminine wiles. “What would you do for me then, good sir?”

“Anything. Anything you desire in your heart, my Goddess!” He gasped out because he longed, oh how he longed to touch her, to feel her silky skin.

“You think I am a Goddess?” She asked.

“In every aspect of the word!” He replied breathlessly, hoping to please her with his pretty words. Pleased enough to smile at him, show him her face and enchanting smile.

“Then build me a Heaven to reside in!” She laughed again. He fell sobbing at her feet, unable to touch her through the thick glass, and felt his heart break at that inability as he cried out ‘Yes, yes, with every breath in my body, yes, I will build you a heaven my Goddess!’

To be continued…?

The Brilliant Idea

Monday, April 30th, 2007 | mini-story | 7 Comments

The brilliant idea struck him, like most of his brilliant ideas, while he sat stoned in the corner of Ahmed’s oh-so-clean bathroom, blinking stupidly at a cockroach that was making a slow painful journey up the wall in its search for food. A hint of a noise and he knew the sneaky little motherfucker would be gone, in the blink of an eye, like lightening. For some stupid reason, it reminded him of Nisha. Yes, she was an annoyingly quick-witted one, she was. But that didn’t really surprise him. He couldn’t take his mind off her; most things reminded him of Nisha these days.

And that’s when a brilliantly formulated plan just walked into his head, half of it was most surely the pot, the other half his utter lack of sense [or maybe that last swig of vodka]. In any case, he got to his feet in a rather unsteady manner and announced sluggishly to his audience, Ahmed and Maaniu that is, that he was going to write Nisha a letter.

“Dude, you’re nuts!” Ahmed told him in an offhanded manner, crunching biscuit after biscuit of some shit called ‘marie’ or something, watching a game on the TV. He didn’t seem particularly concerned about it. Ahmed was the one closest to being sober.

The biscuits reminded him of Nisha too because her first name was Mariyam. Wait, that was some sort of actress of something. Maybe it was Ibrahim? Nah, it was definitely not Ibrahim. It didn’t matter anyway; the important thing was that it reminded him of her again. Bloody bitch had infested his head!

He walked over to Ahmed’s computer and opened a new notepad file and laid his long fingered hands on the keyboard.

“Uh, where do I start?” He asked stupidly.

“Its usually Dear something,” Ahmed told him expertly as though this was something he did everyday.

“Like Dear Nisha?”

“Whatever you wanna call her!” Ahmed waved his hand around, emphasizing the unimportance of proper naming.

He grinned at his friend’s brilliance and wrote down a few words. He loved how tidy his handwriting looked.

“Tell her you like her tits!” Maaniu called helpfully from somewhere inside the heap of blankets that was Ahmed’s bed.

“Sheesh, how stupid can you get?” Ahmed asked loudly. “That’s sure to piss her off!”

“Well, I don’t get it!” Maaniu argued. “We can tell them that they have pretty eyes and they go off their rocker, but we can’t talk about their tits! That’s like taboo. Why the hell man? Its just physical features, both of them!”

Obviously tired after his little speech, he disappeared into whatever hole he had crawled out of. Ahmed went back to munching his biscuits. He sat for a moment, awash in the glow that comes often when you look at people who are so much stupider than you are. He marveled at his utter superiority over the rest of the male species for a few minutes and then went back to the letter.

* * *

The first thing she did when she came into school was show the piece of paper, or love letter for lack of a better word, to Sheila and Mary.

“Look at this!” She said with a grin, shoving the letter into their hands. The two of them began to read it and Mary soon dissolved into giggles.

“Who the hell wrote this?!” She asked between giggles, “I need to give him an award!”

“A couple of brain cells would suit him well,” She answered in a half agitated tone. “It was Fazal”

“Its sort of adorable in a way you know,” Mary said, cocking her head at the words on the paper. “I mean, you can see he really means what he’s saying,”

“Yes, you think he’s hot, we know, thank you” She snatched the letter out of Mary’s hands. “But I’m not about to let him get away with this! I’m going to confront him!”

“Confront him?” Sheila repeated, looking excited at the idea.

“Yes, I’m gonna go upto him and ask him….”

“…what the hell is the meaning of this?” She bellowed angrily. Fazal was sleeping soundly with his head on his desk. He rubbed his eyes sleepily as he looked up. Nisha shoved the paper under his nose. He gave her a vague smile and took it and gave it a lazy look.

* * *

“What the hell is the meaning of this?”

She was standing surrounded by her friends and who-not. He thought for a moment that he was dreaming. But his dreams are never really this good. And he usually messes up her face in his dreams.

She shoved a piece of paper at him. He smiled and took it. Why the fuck would she give him paper? He had books of his own, and most of the pages were blank anyway. But it was a letter. He couldnt bother reading it so he smiled [as politely as he could] at her again.

“Is this for me?” He asked her sweetly.

“No, that’s the ‘love letter’ you sent me” She said and people around began to giggle. “Is there something wrong with you you crackhead? You dont understand simple english?”

An outburst of laughter this time.

“Love letter!” He repeated stupidly. He looked back at the paper, full of mushy words and such. And the idea that had come to him suddenly came back into his head.

“Tsk, tsk!” He said and started chuckling.

“What in the world is so funny?” Nisha demanded. She seemed to be enjoying herself.

“You’re such an attention whore!” He said, shoving the paper back at her. A collective gasp went through the crowd as he said the ‘W’ word. Nisha’s mouth fell open.

“How dare you!?” She said.

“How dare I?” He said and chuckled. “Nisha, baby, next time you decide to write yourself a letter and say it’s from me, at least try to spell my name right!”

And he was right. It read, in clean print, Fazaeel, not Fazal. And now it was Nisha the crowd was giggling at, she was the one they were taunting, her audacity, her embarrassment. And he watched gleefully as she hung her head in shame and fled.

Revenge is sweet, isn’t it?

Revenge

Sunday, February 25th, 2007 | mini-story | 4 Comments

It wasn’t until two hours of sitting slumped in the corner of the bathroom that she realized something.

There was really no point to it.

She could still see a pinkish tinge to the water that was swirling down the drain in such perfect little spirals. Her skin felt raw and painful from the hot water that was still pouring down over her. The places where those grimy fingernails gnawed at her skin were still bleeding. She could still feel that hot clammy breath in her face (ya wan’ sumah this haney’bunch) and those hands, those awful cold hands grabbing at anything it could touch.

Her right hand was clenched, resting lightly on the floor, away from the resilient spray of water.

She lowered her head on her knees and decided that it was time to think. She had finished with the the tears and repetitive ‘why me?’s. It not like there’s any bloody point to sitting there and screaming and shouting about how unfair it was. She got up suddenly and rocked on her unsteady feet. Little needle-like pinpricks were agonizing her entire lower body. She ignored it and walked precariously out of the bathroom.
_________________________________________________________

Her mother’s jaw dropped open as she watched her daughter, fully clothed, soaking wet, her skin broken, peeled and red raw, stagger towards her room. At that moment, she made the assumption that her daughter was on drugs, oh lord, oh no, not her daughter, no, something terrible must have happened.
_________________________________________________________

She saw her mother looking. Did she care? Would her mother really listen? Would she believe her? She looked at herself in the mirror and knew, somehow, even through the tidbits of thoughts (wan’ sumah this?) that her mamma was going to follow her into her room. And she did. Her mother came and sat on the bed and watched as she shed off her wet clothing. Her right hand was still stubbornly closed.

“Dhooni, what happened to you?” Her mother asked her timidly.

“Nothing mamma!” She heard herself say in such a clear voice that it hurt her ears.

“But…all that blood!” Her mother continued. “Something awful happened to you didn’t it? Tell me the truth! Did someone hurt you?”

“No Mamma,” She lied calmly, observing herself in the mirror in her soaked underwear. “I just had a fight with a friend at school!”

“Oh, again!” Her mother said. She could see the relief on her face and almost laughed (gimme some shoogah!) but her face seemed to have forgotten which muscles to use. “Do you want me to do something about it?”

Do something about it. This time she did smile to herself. She could hear him screaming, screaming, and screaming. Screaming so loud and so clear, screaming…screaming… why did the bastard scream so loud? It’s not like she screamed once when he was taking away what was hers. Why should he scream?

Smiling to herself, she went over to her dustbin, her back to her mother, and opened the top, extending her right hand over it. The burst eyeball fell with a squish onto the discarded pieces of papers and hairballs. The oddly disoriented pupil stared at her in what she thought was fear.

She turned around, wiping the liquid mess on her hand with a tissue. There was a slightly too big grin on her face.

“Its fine Mamma, I’ve already done something about it!”

Prologue

Sunday, January 7th, 2007 | mini-story | 5 Comments

The second hand ticked almost ominously in the silence.
The breeze turned into a gentle zephyr and began to smell of clean sunshine and flowers and an iridescent glow began flickering in the darkened room. It was coming from her, from her skin and her cloud of dark hair.
A sigh fell from her mouth as she felt the first warm touch on her forehead. She murmured dreamily as the warmth enveloped her body, one hand still clutching the quilt loosely. There was a second where her body gently rose into the air, quilt still covering her, and the second hand and minute hand melded together, quivered for exactly a second and then moved together onto the twelve. At the exact same second, with a flash of light, she disappeared.