The Assignment

A silent, swirling mist flooded the lane in billows of obscurity as darkness claimed the city. On either side of it, the windows of the buildings were blurry blazes of yellow, a few with blinds drawn. The lamp-posts on the street were thoroughly ill-maintained by the authorities considering the paltry significance they held in the daily transport of the metropolis. But even then, they made their best endeavour to combat the night, each determined to retain its circular domain of light. Nothing much ever occurred on that particular street, but that night it was ominously quiet, apart from the occasional yelps of the stray dogs the lane boasted, unable to endure the deathly chill in the air.

   The stillness of the shadows was suddenly disturbed, as a pair of feet strode into the lane, feet evidently meant to be noiseless, but the shoes wrapping it betraying such intentions. The owner of these feet, a tall, stalwart man of around thirty-five, somewhat past his prime, padded along the pavement, warily treading clear of the lamp-posts. He was clad in inky blackness, blending admirably with the murky place. He had on a thick overcoat with its collar turned up, almost touching the rim of the considerable felt hat which shrouded his countenance. With hands tucked away in the trouser pockets, he walked in the dark, his attire gentlemanly, though his purpose was not.

   He stopped by a ramshackle pawnbroker’s further down the deserted street. Beside him now was a dark figure leaning against the wall, clothed in an odd huddle of winterwear, with something like a great woolen hood concealing the face entirely. To this grotesque spectacle the man said nothing, neither did he offer a cigarette as he lit one, blowing rings of smoke in still anticipation.

  The man smoked hard to steady his nerves. It wasn’t that he was scared or anything. All emotions, and particularly fear, were alien to his austere, unfeeling nature. It was precisely these characteristics of his, coupled with an immaculate set of ‘skills’, which had landed him his present job, and consequently, lost him his family. He mused on the happy memories of his wife and daughter as he lurked around the place, which was his customary preparation when on an assignment.

   He and his wife never got along too well because they had discovered, as the profound warmth of illusory love slackened between them, that they had hardly anything in common to bind them. Moreover, his vices were despicable, and he was nothing short of a fiend when drunk. The final, crushing blow in their marriage came when he lost his post in the army. The inevitable ensued; a dolorous separation at court, but in the process he lost the one he loved most, his daughter. Life went further downhill when he dreadfully wounded a rival in a bar brawl, and after serving a short term for it in the bowels of an infernal prison, he emerged, positively suicidal. It was then that the agents of his nameless ‘employer’ found and sheltered him, for he had been a gunner of repute while in service.

   The man despised his job, though it was the only available for him. It brought in enough to allay his material desires, and involved the stealthy removal of people from the face of the earth. His talent and experience had made his first three assignments exceedingly successful, all his victims meeting their demise under ‘circumstances pointing to foul play’, as the papers loved to call such happenings. He had received phone calls in each of the cases, a raspy voice furnishing him with all necessary details, and a photograph of the target lying inexplicably on his table when he got home after an outing. Every call ended with the routine warning that there should be no failure, and no mess, just a quiet, clean kill. His last three had, thus, met every criterion, resulting in the mysterious appearance of a note-stuffed envelope on the mantelpiece of his house. He harboured high hopes that the fourth would conclude with a similar aftermath, and dared not think of the negative.

  The phone had rung again that morning, and the unknown voice had informed him of the man who’d be driving down the very street he was on. He’d asked for certain arrangements to facilitate his objective, and it was all as he desired. Now, he could only wait.

  The vigil wasn’t long. As his keen senses told him it was coming, he dropped the cigarette and pulped it under his foot, scurrying up to the figure and straightening it onto its feet, balancing it on a skateboard. It was only a mannequin, a clever contrivance of his, meant specifically for the task at hand.

  The curtains of yellowish fog parted in the distance as the headlights came into view, emitting tunnels of light. The man waited until they came into distinct visibility, bathing the street with a soft white illumination. Then he shoved the mannequin with proper force, just enough for it to trundle down and stop in the vehicle’s path. A resounding screech cleaved through the air as the car halted, having rammed into the plastic figure and reduced it to scattered bits and pieces. The killer briskly pulled out a revolver. His moment had arrived.

   The driver, his target, clambered out of the car in consternation, and walked timidly up to the mess in front. The gun was raised in the dark, its muzzle in a silent beeline with its target’s head. It was then that the killer noticed her out of the corner of his eye, in the backseat of the car. In ghastly stupefaction he gazed at the little girl, as if he had seen an apparition. He thought at first that it was his daughter, but realized a while later the impossibly curious resemblance of that child to his girl as he had seen her last, more than seven years ago! A flood of agonizingly passionate memories consumed him. He was disarmed, incapacited.

   He could only stare as the girl’s father got back and turned on the ignition again. It was his last chance, but his hands were cold, they refused to budge. For the first time in his life, he had a profound, overwhelming grief mingled with a human sort of feeling he didn’t know, pity perhaps.

  The orange backlights of the car dashed off into the empty night as the killer strained his eyes to discern the last rays ripple away through the fog. He had failed in his assignment. However unpleasant the result of his futility might be, he was prepared to face it.

   

Nearer

It had eventually dawned upon me just how thoroughly useless an encumbrance my existence was, entirely comparable to a very displeasing half-memory of some childish nightmare. I might, upon reflection, liken it to some hideous fever or ailment, a span of suffering between my past life, if there was any such, and the potential next one. A body riddled with interminable disease, a mind laden with the hopelessness of defeats. It was certainly irrational to trouble them anymore. They had done all they could for me, and I had done my best to keep them well. Something else had done its best to make everything much less pleasant, that invisible something which cannot be explained, malicious in its efforts. I believed it had some generosity too, until circumstances would not permit such conviction anymore.

    There still was hope of escape. I had long contemplated it. But a rather combative nature always stayed my hand. I hated to lose, and would not let that something have its way yet again. I hadn’t lived in lies and agonies all these years for nothing.

    But when ailments threatened to permanently disqualify me from work, and confine me to days of starvation, only perhaps to be fed once in a while so that I might starve again, I decided to do the needful.

    They were but tiny white discs of finite thickness. There were many of them, fitting easily in the hollow of my palm. They had a lot to promise…

    The darkness was heavy. I was like a bubble adhering to a writhing seaweed, floundering on the bed with the weight of oceans upon me. A current came from nowhere and tore me upwards. I felt a lightness which I never knew existed. Thus levitating, I soared vertically upwards for quite a while unhindered. Then, unseen things swept past with soft gurgling echoes, sending me gently to and fro until I was drawn into a plethora of chaotic, conflicting forces. The blackness clobbered all about, and I grew increasingly certain of being reduced to pulp, when abruptly, the world turned to a shade of quiet grey, pushing me about more uniformly. A gentler stream at last, I thought, away from the ruthless maw of stormy waves.

    Thenceforth, I traveled harmoniously upwards in a circular fashion, until things suddenly darkened, and the ride ended with the unprecedented vision of a deathly sky. Each living cloud resembled solid stone, comprising a mighty wall, utterly impassable, and throbbing with veins of intermittent lightning.

    An unforeseen, titanic blast of thunder ensued, nearly shattering my sanity. When I could see again, the heavens lay sundered, the rupture broadening swiftly. It opened like a pair of eyelids being pulled apart with enormous force, severing rather succulent, venous meshes of lightning. A circular portal materialized, and I was hurled in by a massive whirlwind.

    Pandemonium prevailed as I drifted towards what seemed a distant speck or white star with maddening velocity. Fleeting glimpses of hideous tentacles and lashing vines flew past me, as did execrable cackles, tortured cries and litanies of portent from amorphous, insectoid mouths. Had I traveled any slower, they would have surely consumed me. But I flew towards the gradually nearing light at the end of the tunnel with unflagging, urgent force.

    I little knew when I had been carried far past the monstrosity-fraught regions of the tunnel, the morbidity having now been replaced by a curious shade of pale azure walling me in with its enormous circumference. At lessened speed, I gazed at the changeless hue swimming by, seeming near, yet ever too distant.

    A deluge of abrupt illumination enthralled me, and the effulgence of pure white light forced me to embed my consciousness into its depths. The light was agonizing to the eye, yet mesmerized in a manner that prevented turning away from it. I noticed that I was no longer drawn towards the light, but flailed my limbs in an attempt to swim upto it through the vacuum in between, like a moth to an enchanting flame.

    At length, my efforts were rewarded, and the moment I waded through the barrier of light, there appeared celestial vistas of empyreal numerosity. Engulfed in boundless light, I perceived unearthly patterns of pure energy, woven by some distant nucleus at the far end. Nebulae of pure white beams emerged from it, floating about like gossamer extending to the throne of some nameless god. In my hopes of clambering up to the very core, I endeavoured to grasp one of these, but they all shied just out of my reach. After great struggle I caught hold of one of the stray, fainter beams which instantly gave way, sending pulses of unrestrained suffering tearing through me as it disappeared.

    I fell, agonies ever rising as I descended even faster than my journey upwards. All the regions traversed vanished around on my way down like lightning shadows of dim memory. The fall stopped at last with a muffled noise, the pains multiplying into a bizarre sea of suffering.

    My eyes opened to the white lights characteristic of hospitals, accompanied by similar conversations of concern. The pain of my soul far surpassed that of the body, for deep within, I knew that the nameless ‘something’ had won again. But there was solace at the end of the path I had traveled. And sooner or later I would find it. I was indeed much nearer to the peace I sought. I still had my friends in the bottle at home. I was nearer, yes, nearer.

Something Bad

“ Highway 3 is reportedly getting increasingly unsafe for vehicles, as a band of robbers is supposed to be operating on it and several others as well. The police have –“

“ – Cause the lies become the truth. Hey, hey, hey, Billie- “

“ – There is no pain, you are receding- “

“ – has been found that the building certainly had something by way of paranormal activity going on in it. Investigators suggest that any entity- “

    The man abruptly turned off the radio in rebellious disgust. Driving alone on such a bleak highway was bad in itself, and he didn’t want to add the misery of listening to news as depressing as that. He had driven down many such roads on even stormy nights, and had never had any fear of being attacked. He knew that more than half of what the newsmongers said was purest fiction. But even the music didn’t seem to alleviate that weird solitude which was only too natural on such an occasion.

    He suddenly became aware of a storm gathering, for the moonless night was suddenly lit up by an enormous jagged fork of lightning, the following clap of thunder pervading his senses.

    Another flash soon met his eyes, but not of lightning. In the little rear view mirror appeared the headlights of a trailing car. He could somehow make out the indistinct silhouettes of two rather broad-shouldered individuals. The one to the right snaked his head out of the window and raised his dangling arm. Soon, there were some holes in both screens of the vehicle, and one in his left shoulder. It felt as if a white hot metal rod had been pressed against his innards, and blood flowed freely. The newsmen, for once, had been exceedingly, painfully honest.

    The rest was all a bizarre haze, much like a very displeasing half-memory of a nightmare. His whole frame felt like a stiff block of pulsating agony, refusing to yield. He somehow managed to push the speed up, driving towards nothing. He had a dim idea that perhaps he was still being pursued, or perhaps they had given up. But he was taking no risks. He must get to town.

    He little knew when the fuel meter had plummeted towards the E mark! He wouldn’t make it! Very ill, fading, asphyxiating, he sought the world outside the car, however terrible. The last memory was that of opening the door of the running vehicle and…

    Rain fell. He opened his eyes to frigid beads rushing down to meet him. A sizzling arc of lightning cut across the firmament, revealing the torrents. He started, and found upon crawling up, that he had lain, muddied and very wounded all over, in a barren field. His car was nowhere to be found.

    Shivering, weak, and feeling horribly faint, he somehow pulled himself onto all fours, gritting his teeth against the pain. In the distance, a flash of lightning helped him discern a house, its black form looming large, like a sudden mountain in a river plain. All his hopes lay there. Much enthused, he dragged himself together as he could, and shambled totteringly towards it. The house, two-storied, was nearer than he thought, much to his relief. Upon reaching it, he found it in complete darkness. The ramshackle door, however, remained alluringly ajar.

    Stumbling into the dark ante-room, he called out, but to no avail. Taking some steps forward, he tripped hard against something, but fell, as it seemed, on a heap of whitish bedding, or perhaps linen, tangled strangely together to form what he thought some sort of hammock. He sank into it, nestling wearily, and pulled the weavings like a blanket to himself. They wrapped around with unexpected ease.

    There was a vile stench, which he noticed at length. No matter how tired he was, it prevented his sleep. There was a creaking noise somewhere, and as it drew closer, he tried to lift himself up, only to find himself smothered by the mesh. A wild fear suddenly consumed him; he knew that something was not as it should be. Amidst his struggles, he thought he saw a couple of round lights approaching, and yelled for assistance. They drew closer, softly illumining his surroundings. Ceasing his fight, he noticed someone lying beside him, wrapped like a mummy. The excoriated face was scarcely even that of a corpse. Only a single eye hung from its socket, a reminder that it had once been human. He tried to shout, but was stifled. Somehow rolling and twisting around with panicking force, he came face to face with the pair of white orbs. His eardrums were rent by a thousand clicking and buzzing noises which emerged from between the lights, a large, mephitic gap which was evidently a mouth. His final scream was muffled by the gagging constraints. The lights went out.

End of the Road

Of what I saw, or what saw me, I cannot tell.

A levity like gossamer, as I fell,

From the empty-space-fraught doorstep of the stars,

To a seaside-skirted avenue of cars.

A caravan of halted wheels and souls.

Beseeched, each, by supplicating tithe bowls,

Engines, chained by eyes of tunneled light,

Lead the wanderer, twisting into the night.

Past wayside marketplaces, gaudy airs,

‘Twixt wrathful incantations, clamorous stares.

Tripping on sand castles, seagull cries,

Which cleave into the walls of moonish skies.

Thus floated I, and at length came upon,

A daze-panoplied ring of lights which shone,

Like heaven’s distant empyreal vale.

Just clumps of cars and crowds stalled in the gale.

I called to them, they surely did not hear,

And rushed over the path to where they were.

I did not shove, but wafted through to see,

A young man, slain and smiling, or was it me?

Bob

   Life was blank. There wasn’t much left in it anyway. The dreadful war was over, and it had ended in what might be considered defeat. Not merely for the country, but for the countless who had gone out to the trenches, and I happened to be among them. After several months of gallant insanity, I, like several others who had been unfortunate enough to survive, found myself entirely beyond all hope, with a fairly crippled right leg, an ailment ridden body, and no opening or position at all. It was chiefly by virtue of a government scheme which entitled hapless, war-beaten sufferers like me to a certain monthly allowance that I was able to keep soul and body together, and shelter it in a seedy room which I found in one of the most insalubrious regions of the city.

    But, after the strange manner of human nature, I continued to live. I woke up each morning to the most pointless, insipid existence imaginable, but there always seemed to be something about it which was dimly alluring. I would pretend to be a person of activity, shambling out everyday to purchase the needful, and perhaps, the very rare luxury. I could have bought a week’s stuff at once, but it gave me a good feeling, a reason to think of and look forward to tomorrow. The occasional longer journeys were to the offices, with the all-important papers in hand, which would feed me for the next month. I would display them with a forced smile, trying also, to add a similitude of pride as I would bring out a cross of gleaming silver. It was the only relic I had of the war, apart from the agonies and those papers which I fiercely guarded.

    And the papers did need guarding. I even had to stay up some nights, for such was the menace of mice in my rooms that I felt no security even after I had locked it in the cabinet. It was only natural, since my ground floor room abutted upon one of the filthiest alleys of the city. It was too malodorous for me to even open my windows.The noises of stray animals as they would battle all night for the possession of the garbage bins strewn around there would rouse me continually, thus making me a watchful sentinel of the papers.

    This problem was largely solved when Bob came. Bob was a frail, ginger tomcat. He was aggressive, but rickety and ill-fed, which evidently led to a daily defeat in the back alley fights. I first came upon him nestled cozily in a corner of my room, having made his way in while I had briefly gone out that evening, forgetting to shut the door. He was a piteous spectacle, withered and scarred all over. I tried at first to scare him off, but finding himself threatened, his mellow purrs swiftly turned to growls, resolved to fight to the end. There was something pleasing about his tenacity, which I immediately rewarded with the leftovers of my humble dinner. Since then, Bob remained with me.

    He was a furry ball of animation, was Bob. The pleasure it gave me to watch him play about was more than I can describe. Brimming with alacrity and ever alert, he would jog all around the room and often up the stairway, only to be chased away by the indignant landlord, though certainly returning with some prize which he had made away with, usually meat, or even fish. Delight would gleam in his glassy eyes, the pride of having won his meal, or earned his keep. My additional efforts soon promoted a greater improvement of the state of his health. It soon showed in the replenishment of his fur, developing into a thick coat of fiery auburn, and in heightened alacrity. This, in a way, aided my recovery immensely, too. I could sleep with greater peace at night, knowing that my papers were safe under his beady eyes, glowing green and alert. And true to his task, every morning would find me with a considerable crop of dead mice, which he would faithfully take outside one by one upon my opening the door for him.

    That night, I sat writing a letter by candle-light, when a whim suddenly led me to bring out the papers again and glance through. I did so, and leafed wearily through the sheaf, recalling the storms of the war as I put them aside on the table and continued the letter to one of my few friends with renewed vigour of narration. I failed to continue long though, and went off to sleep, forgetting to put the candle out.

    I woke up to a sudden sound and discovered, with great consternation, that the candle had fallen! The flame was steadily consuming my papers, and had reduced much of them to a charred heap. Just at that moment, Bob, who had leapt onto the table and knocked the candle down, sprang off, singed by the fire. Making a wild dash for my bottle, I deluged the table, and it all went out in wispy smoke with a sizzle, leaving behind a black lump of nothingness.

    A cloud of unmitigated rage set in, and seeing as if through a haze, I bellowed and hurled all I could lay my hands on at Bob, who dashed out of the door I had forgotten to close. I sat broken, ruined and wide awake till dawn brought an explanation. The poor creature quite possibly thought I was planning to stay up, and must have dozed off, as a result. He had surely woken up to the sound of mice, and jumped onto the table to stave them off, bringing the candle down in the process.

    A thunderstorm swept over the city all morning, but nevertheless I waited for sometime, hoping he would return. I opened my window and called out, but to no avail. I went out in the rain and searched the alley, calling out for him in vain. I waited all day, and stayed up all night listening to the anarchical rumble of the mice inside and the combat outside. A distinct feline cry amidst the wild squabble in the storm swept lane suddenly fell upon my ears, and I grabbed my umbrella, running out into the night. I yelled out for Bob and rushed towards a dim, waning circle lit by a solitary lamp-post. There, drenched in rainwater and blood, lay my Bob. He had lost the war. 

The Last Supper

    I’ve clearly had enough. And this is a true account of all that really happened, and I would swear it on a Bible if that is what it takes. It has been long and twisted in the doing of it, but surely won’t be long in telling. I would love to get down to it in my own humdrum fashion, since there isn’t much point now in hurrying up. I wish it would end up reading like one of those adventure page-turners. You wouldn’t mind reading that sort of yarn, but people are usually averse to listening to true accounts, I know, just because its true.

    But this one is true, and I hope, interesting. That I’m stuck in this place is a matter of little surprise. A stupid plan like that never could’ve worked, I knew that always. But it was still worth a try and between us two, it was nearly managed, I’d like to believe. A pat on the back after all I’ve been through is well-deserved.

    My past seems very hazy, lost behind curtains of battery-smoke. Trying to remember it is like recalling details of your past life. I know it isn’t possible. All I can recollect is that I was in a cockpit, with an array of dials and buttons, and several meters and indicators were running alarmingly low. That is where it all ends, with an earth shattering crash. It is the last vestige of my history. Oftentimes it has seemed like I was teetering on the verge of remembering everything in a sudden blast, but that never came.

    When I woke up after that, I was in this hell-hole of a place, surrounded by filth, walls, fences, watch-towers, and lots of armed Germans. That’s what they call a camp. They kept calling me 23, and that’s what I call myself too. I was treated with as much generosity as Germans can extend to their prisoners, especially British ones. Hence I was, like the rest, put to work. I slogged like a cur all day long, helping them strengthen their base so that they can catch more flies in that web like me, in exchange for just one square meal a day. They had some devilish beauty about their calorie mathematics, sparing exactly enough to keep a body alive and slaving, and not fighting. But I wasn’t really the sort who could ever endure starvation much. Bullets seem better than that to me. God, I feel I can eat all the world right now.

    There were bitter battles in the yard where we spent our days, before retiring to our nauseating quarters at night. We fought amongst ourselves for food. Much like the animal kingdom, it was survival of the fittest. And I’m very fit, you know. You wouldn’t be of a mind to write this thing had you been in my place. Takes a different sort of fitness, this.

    Teeth were broken, eyeballs squashed, and necks broken, for the sake of a cindered loaf of bread and a stale egg. The Germans found it very interesting, and placed bets on us, and I swiftly became a favourite in this rampage. So much so that I was shifted to the tiniest room in a corner of the camp, to keep me from being murdered by the others. It was more like a kennel, and I shared it with my nameless friend who had somehow contracted leprosy. I shuddered at first, but decided it was safer than staying at the quarters and having my throat slit in sleep.

    13, for he wouldn’t tell me his real name, was a truly piteous spectacle. It was not the ailment so much as it was the starvation. He looked clean enough apart from a blanched patch here and there. But he was slowly, certainly, and visibly dying of starvation. He wasn’t willing to fight for his life either. He confessed it would be of no use to him anymore, and that he had tried attacking the guards so they might have mercy and shoot him. But the cunning guards, far from doing that, even offered to help him escape, knowing full well that life out in the world as a potential leper would be far worse than in this cage. And they’d knock him unconscious and place him back in his hole again.

    I told the guards, who had taken a liking for me, that I didn’t want to be cooped up with a leper, but they assured me that they had punched him with bare hands and not got it, so I could do the same without scruples if he drew too near. A leper is a leper, they said, nodding sagely and lending me a cigar or two on the sly. Indeed, they mentioned, that was why he was number 13 in the register, and had been there for a long, long time. He was the last remaining member of the first ‘flock’ of planes they shot down. But they wouldn’t tell me his name. There was something wrong about it, and I thought it best not to press the matter.

    Apart from dermatological and nutritional shortcomings, though, 13 was a man of enormous education and refinement. He must have hailed from some wealthy, noble family, and was more learned than anyone I ever knew. He retained, even after all the vile suffering, a classical, well-bred beauty that I remember seeing in museum statues.

    I naturally didn’t mind sharing my fare with him. He always wished to die in some way other than starvation or disease, he said. We were fast friends, and he was a great talker, and told me of things I never knew existed. But I discerned a streak of madness in him, even more reason for him not to leave this place. He would be quarantined either as a leprosy sufferer or a lunatic, and administered ‘treatment’, that would surely kill him.

    But I was fairly driven madder still when he told me, being drunk off a bottle of whisky I had secretly procured, that he knew of an escape. He had never told me, fearing the loss of the only friend he had in the world.

    I finally managed to persuade him to join me in effecting an escape, chiefly by concocting lies about a herbalist who had a panacea. That was the only way to get out his secret, and having swigged several glasses by then, he believed it.

    It turned out be a long tunnel that he was literally sitting on. Just beneath his chair was the trap door, skillfully concealed by heaps of rope, odds and ends, and dirt buckets.

It used to be some kind of forgotten pipeline or sewer branch, which they never finished digging. 13 said that it stretched out to a distant field at the other end, but there had been a little cave in towards the end of the passage, and without the necessary tools it was fairly useless.

    To cut a long story short, the next few weeks passed by gathering stuff from around the camp, torches and spades, shovels and pickaxes. Stealing them was hard, but my only thought was of the rewards at the end.

    The first few nights, we investigated the subterranean route. Long ages of disuse had turned it into a hive of grotesque vegetation. Parasitic plants of sickening odour featured the walls, and hung like stalactites from the ceiling of the rodent-infested tunnel. Rats of amazing varieties and sizes scurried away with every step we took, and many-hued reptiles sped out of their crannies as we passed with our torches, their eyes like sparkling gems of surprise. It was a long and exhausting journey, and we lost all sense of time until we came up against a wall of soft-packed earth that 13 had spoken of. It would need several days of hard work to clear it up, and was so far away from the camp that it was impossible after the hard labour to make it back in time. The only way, thus, was to ensure that we could stay away for quite some time and escape directly by burrowing our way through. And even if the escape route was detected, it would take them a large amount of time to get to us.

    The last step in this madcap plan was checking what we had. Apart from a tiny heap of iron tools, tangled up in metal prongs and hilts, I had managed to grab a large bundle of rations, well salted and preserved, on a rainy evening when it arrived by truck. The final touch was a can of oil, which we watered the walls and floor of our lair with, and set on fire just as we scrambled down the tunnel like mice.

    Of course, I can almost see your guffawing face. We found how insane it all was in a matter of weeks. The eats disappeared even before we knew it, and it felt that, after all, we had managed merely to scrape the surface of a mountain. And there was no turning back. More than a week went without food and I could only sit there and look at 13 through a cloud that was settling more densely before my vision with each passing day. He had utterly given up, and it was evident that he would soon bid adieu to the world.

    But the purgatory failed to sap my will to live on. Somewhere deep within that rickety heart which had sunk into the famished vacuole that used to be my stomach, I wished to live. Every throb sent jolts of agony all over my body in monster tentacles, and existing even a minute longer seemed a daunting task.

    A pang of flaming need arose unprecedented. I could restrain myself no more, and writhed over in agony to a dying 13’s side. Just then, a highway of harsh light streamed searchingly over to us, followed by torch-wielding German soldiers. One of them fainted upon observing me.

    I can tell you that 13 didn’t struggle, but only gasped once. And also, he tasted good.

   

Coming Back To Death

    Sandwiched between a placid azure sky and the fading redness of a near evening ocean, the setting sun cast a final peep from the threshold of the Pacific horizon. This was met by the eyes of the pilot, who eased his plane along the crests of maddened winds cutting against each other.

    The pilot was truly an old hand at this, knowing very well that as long as the controller in his hands worked, there was little that could bring him down. He ranked among the foremost of fighter pilots in the country, and his coat was weighed down by the collective weight of the medals that clung to its chest. Much to the dislike of his squadron-mates, he never forgot to wear them whenever he took off. You never know when it’s your last flight, he would say with a wink.

    The Japanese had been kept at bay ever since he was stationed at Hawaii. He had led a number of successful expeditions, and for a week, there had been no air attacks at all. They were giving up slowly, he thought.

    His keen eyes caught the spark just as it arose from the rim of the sun’s arc. A lump of dread formed in his throat, for he had sent his squadron members homeward, and would have done so himself in a while. He cursed his luck.

    Surprisingly, the other plane too, was alone. It was not that he wasn’t skilled enough to handle more than one enemy, he had once tackled three and gotten away with it. But he had heard word that the war wouldn’t last much longer, and all he could wish for now was to haul his medals, laurels, and himself safely home. The lesser the risks at this stage, the better. He watched with bated breath, but no other plane joined the lone one. The Japanese too, seemed to be scrutinizing just what he was, and after a while, they both raced towards each other.

    As he drew closer, he felt the same surge of blood that he had felt in his very first dogfight. It seemed eons ago now, the span of more than a year of battle, and he felt very old. That was what war did to a man, he mused. He felt deeply senile, from his fingers right down to his bones, with his twenty seventh birthday just a week away.

    The Japanese loomed up like a hideous black bat in the distance, and he swerved this way and that, in a furtive struggle to get the bright red dot of the aiming apparatus in line with the winged monster, which didn’t fire, but got craftily out of the way, in zigzagging maneuvers until it was swiftly ascending to a strategic point behind him. He turned around in tandem, but somehow or the other, the plane always swung out of reach. The pilot realized, much to his horror, that it was simply a better, faster model than the battered tin-box he was flying. In reality, it was nowhere near that bad, and the Japanese was only a slightly better machine. But it meant all the world to the hapless American. It simply meant that he was going to die.

    His nerves faltered more than his plane. He forgot that he was the man who had once shut down three biters alone, whirling round gallantly from one to the other and setting them aflame.

    He kept up the chase rather nonchalantly, half-hoping to scare the Japanese by sticking to his tail. But that happened only in stories, he knew, and he resigned himself to the fact that soon enough, his opponent would be on his tail, and vanquish him with impunity. It was getting darker, and he began to wish it was over.

    The shock that followed knocked him back to his senses. Within seconds, the enemy aircraft actually executed a kind of acrobatic barrel roll, with an artistic grace not expected from machines, and twisted round to face him, spraying a deadly torrent of incendiary ammunition into his poor bird. His eardrums were assailed by a metallic cacophony of clangs and creaks, ending in a sighing exhalation of flames, which soon licked its way around from the fuel lines to the wings, glutting the cockpit with smothering billows of noxious smoke. He groped around for that green button amidst all those knobs and dials and controls. He had seen it almost as many times as he had put on an army suit, but never thought he would have to use it someday, no one did. And just when he had to, he couldn’t find it.

    He was certain his lungs would explode if this went on a minute longer. A bullet must have ripped past his left arm, grazed him, so to say. But it felt like a white hot iron rod had been pressed against it, and a familiar sticky wetness meandered all over his hand, that of blood.

    He began madly pressing and turning and bashing anything on the control panel that he could lay his hands on, and in a giddy nightmare, was suddenly shot out of the plane, feeling free and cool. When his senses seeped back in, a world of mighty wind sped past him, and still more layers of wind rushed up to meet him with a force that made the air seem solid. He was falling. In fact, his fall was nearly complete. He could make out the water below with fearsome clarity. The situation dawned upon him in a flash with mind shattering anguish. He pulled with all the strength he could muster at the parachute cord. Nothing happened! In a paroxysm of fear beyond fear, he only kept tugging at the cord to no avail, repeatedly as if in prayerful, beseeching movements. His stomach worked itself up into knots of organic fear, and his heart pounded away at his sanity till it all went black.

    A wind blew in slow undulations of harmony, carrying the man in its girdling embrace, bearing him with a loving, symphonic hold over to where his feet touched land. It didn’t feel like the sort of land he remembered treading back in a life he had lived sometime. A wretched kind of life which was only a lurid half-memory. It used to be quite a struggle moving about back there, by placing each step solidly on the ground in order to move forward. Walking, maybe, was what it was called. He shuddered at the thought of a thing like that. He much preferred flowing along with the hospitable soil on this newfound island. The very fabric of the ground, for it seemed a silken shade of dull silver, was his friend. Movement was as smooth as a paintbrush making love to its canvas, a matter of genuine joy.

    Up ahead, he could make out a wall of small hills of uniform, splendid green, with a narrow pass in between, which he walked into. It led him down a serpentine path, with nameless trees laden with dazzling constellations of fruits and flowers, each pulsating with otherworldly candescence. It met a starfish-like crossroad leading to four other ways, of which he took the second. He reached a winding path where a light breeze perturbed the forests into mournful rustles, and gradually rose to a point where he abruptly found himself trundling between many sepulchral barrows. They were each of hideous aspect, and housed, it seemed, chagrined souls in reluctant slumber. Here the path ended, and vanished from sight like a small stream drying up. He was alone with the mounds, which stirred to animation, and closed in from all sides in tidal heaves of the black earth, threatening to crush him. Though beset by fear, he stole  warily through the gaps between the unwieldy dunes, which widened as they moved. After thus struggling from one end of the deadened landscape to the other, the spectacle of a mountain of blinding whiteness burst in upon him. He had emerged from moonless midnight to find a sudden sun held right in his face. It was an empyreal column bridging the earth and the unblemished firmament that he climbed up. A wondrous mingling of mellifluous litanies and enthralling music engulfed him, growing unbearably beautiful as he came upon a door in the mountain.

    Brilliantine shafts of white light formed a forbidding portcullis to the egregious entrance, and behind it, he perceived amorphous, dream-beings, floating around in inscrutable strobes of astral, many-hued laughter. He ran, overcome by a sudden desire to be lost among them. They that lived in the very nucleus of all worlds, beyond all the spoliations of time, deathless entities of pure, careless truth.

    But the barrier didn’t dissipate to let him pass, as he had hoped, resulting in a forceful collision. An abrupt, clamorous discord cleaved the prevailing music in the air, and he was rent into shreds of colourless ether as the vision ebbed out of existence.

    He woke up to a suffocating blackness, which was shortly joined by soaring pain. The pilot realized he was domed in by the parachute, which had unfurled at the last, semi-conscious tug. It was now entrapping him in sinister folds, as he floated helplessly on frigid Pacific waters. He tried to struggle, but found something strange. There was a sickeningly awkward emptiness under him. One of his legs had forsaken him, and a pair of humongous jaws was making a meal of the other.