waiting for the evening

I remember where we were.

The cold red floor and the soft drip-drip-drip of the last remnants of the afternoon’s rain from the damp yellow windows beyond.

Me on the tattered sofa that had somehow become yours since they’d brought it over from the house that was being sold.

And you – a half-closed eye in a dream, off running through wild grasses on some strangely coloured hill against some strangely coloured sky.

I remember how loud it was – the sound of the clock from the next room – the clock that always ran late because everyone forgot to wind it – the clock that was always so loud when everything else fell silent. Most evenings when it was just me and you and an empty floor.

A book between us and you were always only waiting for the evening.

Sometimes the fan would be working – that huge hulky fan that drowned out the clock and conjured the old ghosts under the cupboards. And under the desk – and the table – but never under the beds – because they knew where you were.

We’d leave the room and go off wandering now and then – your soft footfalls treading through the house like some sleek searching spirit of wakefulness. And mine, trudging through the grime of some unnamed hill after Charlemagne’ s army. And when we’d return, yanked back to the room by various entities, we’d listen for a while, for each other’s presence, to be comforted by a special kind of quiet silence that was ours.

In some strange miscalculation of time, we’re still there.

In that cool quiet room brimming with ghosts and words.

Perhaps it’s wrong to tie you down with it, the red floor and the fan that never works now. Wrong to tie you down – you of the strangely coloured hills and the strangely coloured sky.

But that quiet silence is tied to that room – and it drowns the clock, now that the fan doesn’t work anymore. And you will always be in my quiet silence, even though your footfalls are free now, on that strangely coloured hill, against that strangely coloured sky.

And all of those colours break in through the yellow windows and spill across the words. And the ghosts. And the tattered sofa. And that shadow by the bookcase.

Where we still are. You - the half-open eye in a dream, waiting for your evening. And me on the tattered sofa that will somehow always be yours.

Fragment

And she went so far out to sea

That she couldn’t see the rain

The wind there was like the sea itself

Dark and deep and wild

Like mountains that moved with the storm.

 

And every fog she touched

Was like her own breath

Whistled towards a long-lost coast

Lost and lost again

With each passing mist that wreathed her.

 

And each passing day that left her

Washed by another salty crest

Another salty breath

Of a certain sort of yearning

That is born only in the stormy sea.

 

Where grey hills rise and fall

And stretch to the edge of the world

In one giant circle that trembles

Beneath one giant sphere

Swirling grey – and grey – spiraling into each other.

footsteps

Blind Mrs. Mitra sat by the iron-barred window and listened to the rain. Drip, drip, it went, on the brick tiles of the roof and splash, against the aluminium frame of the window, newly installed, because the wood, a hundred years old, had been eaten away by time. She could feel the city outside – the air felt grainy, like the air in front of the grinding mills at home, a long time ago – but colder, and harsher.

The sound of the city was lulled by the rain – and the metal sounds of Pratima, her daughter-in-law, washing the dishes in the little kitchen next door. The sound of the dishes reminded her of her knitting – she felt the cold steel of the needles in her palm and sighed. Clickety-clack, they would go – with the rain – but she felt like remembering, now.

Ajay had presented her the knitting needles – Ajay, her brother’s son, orphaned as a child of four months. The same day, it was, that Ajay and Prashant, her own son, had graduated from the military academy together – two smiles, so similar, so indistinguishable – she had felt them with her old wrinkled fingers on their lips, a foot above her head. Prashant had gifted her the aluminium window frames. Pratima had laughed, but she hadn’t found it funny – cold, instead, as if Prashant didn’t know how to love.

Splash – and thump – boots in the street. Then footsteps came loudly, and slowly, up the stairs and stopped in front of the door. Mrs. Mitra turned her head towards the doorway – it was open, she knew – it was always open. She wondered who it was – those boots were heavy on the red-cemented floor – a raincoat? Or was it a jacket?

“Pratima!” she called. “Look and see – someone is here. See what they want!”

There was a clash of metal, again, from the kitchen.

“Ask them, Ma – I’ll be a minute.”

The boot stepped into the room – thud, it went, a duller, softer thud, lulled by the water it carried from the world outside. The step startled the blind woman, sitting so placidly by the window across the room.

“Ajay?” she cried, half-croaking, half-whispering – and ran across, into the man’s arms. She lifted her old worn hands up to his face – the funny lumpy cheeks and the lips – so similar, so indistinguishable.

“You’re home? From the war? Why? When? Why didn’t you write – my darling –”

She stopped suddenly. A whimper – soft and yet so unbearably loud in the room. A small wet spherical circle dropped onto her outstretched fingers. Plip – louder than the loudest whiplash of rain outside.

She tore away and looked back – “Prashant?” Her voice was steady. “Has Prashant been killed?”

The man opposite her broke into horrible heart-wrenching sobs. Pratima hurried in from the kitchen, her footsteps hard on the cold floor.

“Prashant!” she screamed – “You’re home!”

Footsteps rushed across to the man. The blind woman collapsed to the floor. A quiet thump.

“No –“ she whispered.

“What’s wrong?” Pratima was saying. “Ajay? Is he hurt?”

The man rushed blindly across to the blind woman – flaying her arms about her, searching, searching – for those cold steel needles – so full of love.

He handed them to her and hugged her, sobbing.

“I’m so sorry – Ma –”

But Mrs. Mitra raised her head, surprised. She had felt love in that embrace. The needles felt cold and distant in her fingers, like they were saying goodbye. She had felt love in those arms. In the wrong arms – but love, nevertheless – so similar, so indistinguishable.

playing pretend

            She was a little older than I was – about twelve. Her braids hung loosely over the low garden wall as she leant over it, smiling at me with a strange pair of liquid brown eyes – which dazzled red when they caught the sun.

            “How old are you?” she asked me, and I blinked, because her lips hadn’t moved.

            “Ten,” I replied and her eyes widened.

            “I think I can read minds,” she said.

            It was a funny way to begin a friendship, but she crossed the wall and entered our garden, landing on the tulip bed. I pulled her away hurriedly: my mother was extremely sensitive about the flowers.

            We were children and it was easy to believe. She spoke to me always with her mind, and projected what she read in others’ minds into mine, so that I could share. We learnt many things about the world that way, and it was frightening sometimes.

            One night my mother came home from work crying. She pretended her eyes were dry, but we could always tell.

            “How are you today?” she smiled, before she went upstairs. That wasn’t the sort of thing she usually said. She gave me a strange look before she went, a half-hungry, yearning look of despair that lasted a second before she turned away.

            My friend looked at me. Both our eyes were brimming with tears. And both of us knew why.

            “I’m sorry,” she broke down. “I didn’t want you to know.”

            And she ran out of the room.

            I stood there, unable to move. My mother was going to die. She knew – she hadn’t wanted to tell me. But I knew. And it was terrible. Every day after that was forced. I couldn’t talk to my mother – every word I said, every look I gave her was unnatural. And this made her sad. She couldn’t tell me and she didn’t know why I wasn’t myself. Every hour of everyday went by just as before – a little strained, neither of us knowing what to do, but both knowing what shouldn’t be known.

            Sometimes not knowing can be a good thing, I told my friend. Knowledge can be terrible. And sad. She never wanted to do it again. She hated her ability. Ever time I met her, there was something in the way she talked that told me that what we had discovered had affected her so much that she’d forgotten how to live. She was older and it was my mother. There are some secrets that should not come in the way of love, she told me, sounding wiser than her years. I didn’t understand. She had grown older.

            “I have to tell you something,” she began. I wasn’t listening. I was staring at the sun, just about to be covered by a massive cloud, grey and huge – like some huge hungry monster of the future. And the sunrays were struggling. It gave me peace, somehow.

            “I can’t really,” she said again.

            “Can’t what?” I asked.

            “I can’t read minds.”

            I looked around and stared at her through my eyes. Hypnotizing apple-green eyes – my mother used to say. I just found them somehow frightening in the mirror.

            “It’s true,” she said. “I have never been able to do it alone. It’s all you. You’re the one who can read minds. I was just pretending it was me.”

            I turned back towards the sun.

            “I know,” I said.

From a little bit of April

This is where I was. On a bad-worded Sunday evening in a paper-boat hat off the east end of Hebbal.

It was Easter. Almost.

But the words never went. They ran ink – in the untimely April rain. Ran ink like the open wound would never heal. Ran ink as if the summer couldn’t suck it dry in its dusty incomplete swell.

But I knew it could.

I knew it had.

But the ink still ran – into little gullets in the newly laid pitch. That swelled and bubbled where the sun’s rough touch played it into sticky tar. The kind that trapped boots. And heels. And other things that feet liked to kiss.

Like the earth beneath it. And grass that disappeared every second Thursday of the month. Magicked away by April-ness. That wouldn’t be there in May.

And the little white world of ink and things that I’d thought I’d left behind eased gently out of my fingers in the tugging wind and floated away in a gust of some more April-ness to a faraway island I couldn’t reach.

The barbed wire winked at me in the sun. Something about April flashed in the clouds overhead before disappearing over a smoke-lit horizon. And a line of cool grey cement.

The flyovers swayed in the wind – sagging in the April heat…screeching at the tug – and then almost snapping – but not quite.

Where we stood still yesterday.

It is a paper-boat hat now. Running ink in non-existent rain before it floats off in a non-existent wind over a non-existent road. It is a non-existent paper-boat hat now. Drinking it’s fill of April. Over and over and over again. Till Sunday gets lost somewhere in between all the letters that hadn’t been posted yet. In between the five-rupee stamps that tasted of burnt coffee on a foggy morning. In between cigarette-coloured socks and half-remembered tomorrows.

It is Sunday. Almost.

the brink

This is where we should fall

On high ground bristling with grass

And other things – beating

Wings in the dark

Too much to hold – and too little to not

There’s a soft glitter here

Whispering. Crashing.

Splintered wood and stone

Rippled in dense memories.

Craving and breaking and reaching.

Like us. Bound to the dust.

Bound to nothing. And everything.

Swirling together and lifting in the gale.

Where the thunderstorm rises dark and wild and free

Over the horizon

Something threatens. To begin.

Or to end.

This is where we should fall.

Riya.

Riya. She was named after my mother. Three years old and pleasantly shy – she had her eyes. Not an unusual colour, liquid brown and strangely evocative, but hauntingly beautiful. And when you looked into them, you looked into innocence, in a strange simple blend of mystery and reality, the way the world might look to a child.

Her mother’s hand rested gently on her light curls, as she stood timidly by the door, sizing me up. “Do you remember your grandfather, Riya?” Pratima said, softly.

She cocked her head to one side, her ear brushing against her needlessly elaborate collar; her frock fell in lacy swathes about her ankles. She hadn’t seen me for a year and a half.

I hesitated for a second, and then stretched my arms wide. And the girl ran into them, laughing, as if she’d known me for years.

Pratima smiled quietly and disappeared beyond my doorway.

“Do you like it here, Riya?” I asked. “Up here in the mountains?”

“Yes, Dadu.” Her voice was young – far younger than any I’d heard in years and years. And her words clear and distinct – unusual for her age. “When Ma told me about the mountains I didn’t think they’d be so pretty.”

“You don’t feel lonely?” I asked, her confident words and grown-up phrasing unsettling me. Had she been taught what to say? “I know you don’t really have anyone to play with here.”

“No,” she said, bright eyes traveling quickly to look into my own, a little perplexed. “It isn’t lonely. There’s the rose garden – the flowers. The trees – ”

And then, in the same distinct clear voice, she said – “And there’s always Adi. He plays with me. So do Ashok and the other Riya.”

I blinked. Breathing fast, I looked at her face. She was so young – so little. Was she playing with me?

“What names did you say?” I asked, gripping her arms tighter than I should have.

She looked away, a little frightened. “Ashok, Riya and… and.. Adi.”

I let go of the girl and slumped back onto my pillow. Ashok was my father’s name. And Riya – my mother. They’d died years ago – years before Riya was born. And Adi – Aditya was my son. Pratima’s older brother who’d left us at the age of…of four and a month. The house was miles away from the nearest hill station and monsoons were treacherous n the mountains.

“You… played with them? You saw them? Here?”
Little Riya laughed. “Yes, yes I did! We played pretend. And horses… and the other Riya told me stories about the moon and the stars. Adi, Ashok and I played catch in the garden.”

“How…how do they look?” I asked, weakly.

Riya turned towards the window and a smile spread across her face. “Adi’s calling me now, Dadu. To go out and play.”

She bent over and kissed my cheek. Then, in a whirl of white lace and brown curls, she skipped out of the room.

I turned slowly to look at the window. Sunlight poured through the empty archway, lighting up my little lonely room.

______________


My wife died that year. And my health failed. Always shut up in my little room overlooking her rose garden and the hill slopes beyond, I waited. Pratima came to visit in summer, she hardly had time anymore. We’d talk now and then over the telephone – and there’d be a few letters. But the post was slow in these areas. And Pratima never had much to say. Riya was growing older – she didn’t like lace anymore.

A year since I’d seen them last, Pratima and Riya stood at my door, looking uncertainly at me. Riya’s eyes were different now – older. Stronger.

I sat up, just as before, and held out my arms welcomingly to her. And just as before, she smiled – perhaps a little quieter this time – and rushed into them.

Pratima left quietly.

I waited till she was gone and leaned forward excitedly. I had been waiting so long.

“Riya – do you see them now? Ashok, Riya and little Adi?”

The girl flinched – and drew back sharply, her brows knotted.

“And Dida? Do you see Dida?” I asked, eagerly.

Riya shook her head, her eyes puzzled, and … afraid. “Dadu, what are you saying?”

I searched for that gaiety in her eyes – the confident friendly assurance that I’d seen before. And I didn’t find it.

She drew back slowly from my bed. “Who are all those people?” she whispered.
And then, even softer, leaning her head forward and drawing her feet away slowly, she said – “Dida – Dida died last year, Dadu! Don’t you remember? How can she be here?”

I stared at her – my arms going limp – my eyes clouding over. “You…don’t see them?”

She looked at the door wildly. “I think… I think Ma’s calling me, Dadu. I have to go.”

And she backed away towards the doorway, keeping her fearful gaze on me. Then she was gone.

My wife tightened her grip on my hand from her stand by the side of my bed as I watched the girl leave. And little Adi just stood at the foot of my bed and smiled mischievously at me.

when we look away

A breeze meant to blow through the woodwind rushes lost itself in step.
And thunder once awoken grew older and older till forests swayed and broke.
And today the stars fell behind to sound impure by the darkness of a lens.
A flash where the laughter was – and the rest is old magic tomorrow.
And we forget – only to remember – the glint of an eye in the dark.
And magic where it wasn’t – old songs in the old rain.
Much that was ours is the wind and the sprites play softly.
Softly. In the dark when we look away. They listen for our tears.
And they grow wiser - the notes grow wiser at the wetness if things.
At the dryness of love washed away by the hours – and the wait.
The thought is remembered and the song plays on forever.
A whistled tune in the growing silence – till only silence moves on ahead.
Much that was ours is the earth and the sprites sing softly.
Softly. Beneath the dust when we look away. They listen for our tears.
And we hold the world to account – time to account for our mistakes.
Spent and sore in remembrance – till the laughter reaches us again.
And the dulled lights return – fleetingly – for a glimpse of something left behind.
The stars rock gently, cradling them to a lulled sleep. We stay awake.
And whisper things left unsaid across worlds that never existed.
Till the waves break again on the woodworked shore. A dream wakes.
Much that was ours are the dreams and the sprites play softly.
Softly. In the memories when we look away. They listen for our tears.

A Fable of Fools, Part 3

read part 1

read part2

Then the stars came up.
And the intellectual tried very hard
To trace out the constellations.
“That’s the Dancing Palmyra,” he said at last,
Pointing at a smudge of stars directly overhead.
“It means we’re in the southern hemisphere.”
“It means you’re making things up now.” I said.
The D#s were more frequent at night.
But no one asked the piper to stop.
Something was washed ashore in the dark.
But no one got down to find out what.
I noticed the plumber hardly slept
Or maybe it’s a little hard sleeping on a shared palmyra palm branch.
He wasn’t counting the stars and yet
His eyes followed their cycle all the way.
Dawn was shriek from the racehorse rider
Who had no memory of dawn.
And a loud swear from the intellectual
Followed immediately by a poetic description
Of the dazzle on the wet waves
And how the refracted rays reach us early.
This time I’m sure he knew but none of us were listening.
The piper had been playing through the night.
And now he began the morning with a major progression.
The D#s screeched in our heads.
As I joined the racehorse rider on the sand.
The something was a little black flag.
It didn’t have the skull and cross bones we were expecting.
But the painting of a small dog
With a pink ribbon on her head.
And a pink coat below it.
And a pink tongue hanging out of it.
And presumably a pink brain inside of it.
Since it had succeeded in washing up
Onto a five-foot diameter island
In the middle of the Pacific
With five people on a palmyra palm.
Which was hanging noticeably lower than yesterday.
And wrapped in the flag was an egg.
A bright pink egg with a small crack across it.

Since there are always cracks on eggs that turn up suddenly.
The intellectual was all for eating it up immediately.
And we guessed the piper agreed.
Because we heard an accelerando.
The racehorse rider was wearing the flag as a cape
When the plumber suddenly came out of his trance
And demanded the egg.
“I eat one-fifth!” the intellectual was saying –
“Not to eat – to hatch,” he said.

Chinese tea.

Chinese tea?
He looks up, confused.
At least his movements are confused…dazed…like he’s forgotten his glasses and just realized they weren’t on his nose.
But behind those shades…blind? Is he blind?…it’s impossible to tell.
There is a silver chain dangling out of his breastpocket.
A pocket watch? Vintage?
He slips his hand out of his coat pocket.
A handkerchief.
Laced…it’s laced?
White and laced.
And he wipes the sweat off his brows.
Only there wasn’t any sweat to begin with.
The swing doors glide apart and a blast of hot afternoon Kolkata air storms into the air-conditioned room.
Chinese tea?
No…er…what was that?
Chinese…
He waves his hand.
Not now.
His shoes…look for his shoes.
Kolapuri sandals.
And a bloodstain.
Blood.
Dull dark black gory magic.
Run away.
Is he hurt?
Are you hurt?
Just the market? Chicken? Fresh meat...?
He stands up.
Heavily.
The loo?
And sits down again.
Not sits…falls. Into the plush seats. Cheap plush seats. Beautiful cheap plush seats.
That way.
Which…what?
Drunk?
There’s a scent of aftershave. Cheap aftershave. But aftershave. Subtle.
Not drunk.
He’s breathing fast. Suddenly.
A doctor? No. Water? No.
There’s a shout outside. Traffic. Crowds. Heatwave.
April. Kolkata April afternoon sun.
A doctor.
Another shout outside.
The swing doors screech.
He’s standing up.
The loo?
They’re running. He’s running. The swing doors screech in the tension.
Kolkata April afternoon sun.
Traffic. Crowds. Heatwave.
They’re rushing in. Everything’s exploding. Fire?
Just the sun. And the crowds rushing in.
There’s been an accident.
He falls over.
On the floor.
Shiny polished marble. Kolapuri sandals. A bloodstain.
He’s run over someone.
A little girl coming home from school.
Two little pigtails.
Kolapuri sandles. And a bloodstain.
A shiny polished marbled floor.
A white ambassador. A red ambassador. An orange and yellow ambassador. A black ambassador. Dust. Rust. Dust. Rust.
In the wind.
Kolkata April afternoon sun wind.
A trail of sweat on the polished marble floor. Where they dragged him out.
Into the Kolkata April afternoon sun.
A white laced handkerchief. A red laced handkerchief. An orange and yellow laced handkerchief. A black laced handkerchief. Dust. Rust.
Shattered glass.
Not inside.
The temperature levels as the air-conditioner restores the cool.
Fresh meat.
Chinese tea?

...and a memory.

This is the story of a song.
It is a song that grew –
Running around the flowers
Bitter-sweet dewy mornings.
A song that tried
So hard – to break out
Into the world.
A song that hummed
Inane unheard fantasies
In a tousled head
Behind lost eyes.

This is the story of a song –
A song that found a tune
Among half-lit stubs
Of glowing cigarettes
And little toppling stacks of ash –
Dust grey and yellowing.
Among baby green blades
Of new grass – underfoot.
A song that flitted around
Untuned guitars –
Laying to dust in a sunlit corner
By a cracked window
And a misfit curtain
Canvas and the paints
Were lost somewhere in between
With the fifth string.

Between the broken semitones
Of an old piano
With a croak.
And lay to rest
In the folds of the draperies
Magic and coffee
On a winter morning.

A song that trembled
On drunk fingers
Yellowing skin and uneven nails
Resting against the keys
Jerking to life –
And then laying down again
Withered and wearied.
A song that died
On an empty gravestone
With a voice –
And a memory.

Tamu.

Tamalika. Running to the camera. As usual. The yelp at the beginning is bhoda, who she used to sing 'my bonnie lies over the ocean' for. You can see him at the door. Googli at the camera.

sketch. thing.

paint again.

just thinking

There’s always a word in my head.
It’s usually a shade of deep deep green.
Like when you stand at the foot of a christmas tree
When it isn’t christmas
And look up.
Then a little wind blows around you.
It starts at your feet
And reaches your fingers
Then your hair
Which, often as not, gets into your eye,
Then it plays with the leaves.
The darker ones first.
And then the softer ones.
Where the light doesn’t reach.
And everything is waving.
Waving like it was forever.
Right then.
There’s always a word in my head.

Behind a red light.

The car was a yellowing white sumo – with blackened windows. The left window of the back seat was rolled half down – and inside was complete darkness except a confusing extension of the dazed orange spill from the streetlight a little way ahead. A hand – an immaculate white kurta sleeve and a brown set of fingers – moved up and down, up and down, lifting a cigarette to a hidden mouth. The tip glowed momentarily red like a laser spotter as the smoke was drawn in and the swirls of darkened shifting haziness that followed from behind the glossy paint of the car body drifted across the street and merged, scattering, into the shimmering floodlight outside.
The glaring sounds of an early night were dulled and insignificant – a small picture – an image, clichéd and predictable, had lent a sharp direction to the moment, as confused and meaningless as the reel it was a part of. And a hidden face, the most mysterious and exhausted fantasy in misplaced detached thought, had lent different brushstrokes of possibilities to that direction. A sharp aquiline nose or a straight marble-cut face, eyes still shrouded beneath a hood of simple impenetrable darkness, descriptions from the printed pages, read and reread over and over again, but never really and completely imagined – something from a story, an adventure, waited behind that window, behind the glowing stub of that exhausted cigarette that dimmed and fell and rose again to be lit up and smoke.
And then some fluorescent bar ahead beyond the jammed piles of directionless metal parts waved, or some red ominous light turned to envious green, and the image was lost in another cliché of time taking off again from where it had stopped, with the sounds glaring full volume again in sudden frenzied early night activity. The face, a last and shattering anticlimax, leant forward and looked out the window – a round small nose and stupid but happy ordinary eyes and a mouth that pursed up to say “finally” in a most normal and final tone.
Perhaps the face was never meant to be seen, but to stay that ‘hidden’ face of a half-priced paperback bestseller in toppling piles by the stacks of magazines – each just a little different from the next like jarring semitones. Or maybe the moment wasn’t in the face – but in the life behind it. And those behind all the other people in all the other cars, walking down the road, waiting under the streetlamps, all those who shared – however unknowingly and ignorantly – that single still picture that lost to the traffic signal. A detached, directed but at the same time meaningless infinity of little pockets of personal thoughts.

Fireflies.

Fireflies. For the fireflies.
Dreams and stranded gold dust.
For candy-floss and monsters.
Sweet draughts of trembling whispers.
Tomorrow and day-after. Forever.
Horse-shoe bootstraps.
Upside-down pineapple cake.
Destiny. Desire. Thimbles.
Light. Rippling dappled stretches.
Pine forests. Frosted glass.
Hoods and XXX. Catches of songs.
Forgotten confusion.
Another Simon. Another story.
Another tear in winter. Frozen.
Amen. From the third-floor terraces and water-tank.
Yodelling yesterdays again.
Amen.

the writer

I can build a story out of anything and everything.

A girl said that to me once. Her hair was long and dark. Dark like a clear summer night sky and the stars I think I imagined. The darkness faded into the dull steamy lights behind without any definite edge. Maybe that was because I was a little bit drunk.

She was, too. I’d seen her do away with five. And judging by the number of empty glasses in front of her, she’d been there for a long long time.

She said she’d been telling stories all her life. She had two kids waiting at home to hear them before they fell asleep, a guy waiting at home who’d heard them all his life. And she was sick of it. Everytime she finished a drink she’d smile and say she’d never tell another story. Then she’d break down and ask for another one.

I remember telling her I wrote stories too. That’s all I remember saying.

“Yeah. But not like me. No one does them like me. Not every goddamned day of your goddamned life.”

If I met her again, I’d tell her how wrong she was.

When I walk down the street, my feet falling in turns between the tiny cracks on the sidewalk that no one else can see, I build up my own story. Brick by brick, crack by crack, till the brilliant red-gold monsters that step out suddenly from behind the parking meters and scare me almost into putting my feet right on the cracks blend into the everyday grey-blue of the city and everything – the strange reptilian flying live machine wearing pince-nez, the old lady staring at vacation posters of “YOU GO TOO – TO PERU!!”, the vanilla ice cream dancing with a mad impish toothy grin on the child’s chin by the ice-cream van – swirls into one crazy mesh of abstract forgotten meanings that are so random that I can’t put them together.

By the time I reach my apartment, all that is one screaming chaotic mess of whimsical nonsense in a corner of my brain.

I heave my type writer over to the table by the window – it grinds against the uneven unpolished grains on the wooden surface – nails on a blackboard? I see Mrs. Eckle the preschool English teacher leering at me from behind her thick distorted lenses and I know that she’s really a black witch from the north who plays with black magic and satanic rites, often managing to summon a giant smoky THING that enters your dreams and stays there. Then she, too, joins the screaming chaos in my brain.

I sit in front of the black shiny machine , roll a sheet of empty inviting paper into it and place my hands on the keys, the tips of my fingers fitting satisfyingly into the depressions in them where the letters are painted in bold white.

And I wait.
And I wait.
And I wait.

Like I’ve never tried before. Willing it all to come through. It’s not a long way. Not really. Just out from the corner into the front, down through my neck, my shoulder, into my arms and out…OUT… through my fingertips. Like I’ve imagined and pushed and pushed and pushed so many times.

The ghost in the broom cupboard peeps out a head and stares at me with those horrible sympathetic circled eyes.

The winged gargoyle hunches up to fit into the small window frame and grins, its tail waving at me from behind its stone back.

The little wisps of fire-creatures – tiny little things that breathe and feed fire leap out like forgotten embers in the dead empty fireplace.

Oh, I can too. Make up stories out of everything and anything. But I wish sometimes I could tell them. For real. Not just that fading dull scream tucked somewhere into the back of my brain. They only come alive for me. Only for me.

So I close my eyes and imagine my editor’s fingers drumming incessantly on his polished mahogany desk. Like horse hoofs. And I think of people. Men, women and drinks. Lots and lots of drinks – making them happy, sad, angry or just bored.

Their hair is usually almost always black and their eyes almost always dull brown – like they were fake cartoons drawn by the illustrator of the evening weekly – no life. But my editor never notices that. He never will.

This time I have no problem moving my fingers over the keys.

Mr. Jack

“Mr. Jack” said the brass nameplate on the door. Not “Jack the Giant Killer.” Or even “Jack the Terrible.” Or even just plain “Jack”.
I looked up at the house. It was beautiful. Like something out of a magazine cover. A magazine called “Modern Architecture and Comfort” or something even more boring. Because the house didn’t breathe. It was plastic. Like the nameplate.
All built out of some poor giant’s millions that he’d counted over his dinner table. Towering columns of toppling gold. Gold. Gold. Gold.
I rang the doorbell. It was just a plain old doorbell. Not very plain. Probably the most expensive money can buy. But not shaped like a decapitated giant head or a single bloody thumb or even a butcher’s knife, as you would have expected.
An electronic voice called out from somewhere overhead: “Welcome. State your name and your reasons for visit. The door will be opening shortly.”
And this was supposed to be not only a house, but also a home.
“An old friend planning a surprise.” I said and the machine kept shut. A moment later, the door was opened by a smart little man in white who looked over me in a superior kind of way which I didn’t quite like and led me into the house.
The staircase shone. The ceiling shone. The floor shone. The carpet shone. The walls shone. The doors shone. The windows shone. Even the bald patch on the butler’s head shone as immaculately as Jack’s old hand axe… before each kill. He led me into a huge airy room and made me sit on a giant sofa as red as Bolster’s blood. A huge painting hung on the opposite wall. The cliffs of Cornwall.
I was gazing whimsically at the painting when a tiny cough made me spin around. It was a little girl with Jack’s green eyes. About four years old and tall for her age. A determined little chin and a funny little nose.
I smiled. “Hallo. We haven’t met before. I’m an uncle. Your father’s friend.”
The girl grinned suddenly, a wide smile wrinkling up her face and touching the green of her eyes with a bright twinkle. “No you’re not. You’re Peter Pen Person.”
I stared at her for a bit and then broke into a laugh. “Not quite. Peter Pan I’ve met. He looks nothing like me. We both specialize in broadsword and have killed a pirate or two in our day. But apart from that, we’re chalk and cheese, really.”
She shrugged. “You don’t understand.” Then she gave another quick grin and shouted: “Catch me if you can!” and slipped away.
I chased her around the sofa and across the width of the room around the doorway – and bumped into softness.
“Taylor. Good to see you after all these years.”
I stood back and surveyed my old friend and barely stopped myself from screaming, “Good God, man, what have you done to yourself??”
It was Jack. But he was old. And he was stooping. And he was FAT. Not fat. Obese. Jack the Giant Killer – the tall broad man shouldering his mighty axe – was Jack the Giant Killer no more. The nameplate was right. Jack was dead. And this was Mr. Jack.
“I’ve changed a lot, haven’t I?” He smiled. “And look at you. You’re still the same. Still wearing that stupid belt, I see. I wonder that still fits you. Last I heard from you was when you sent a letter saying you’d changed your name. From ‘i’ to ‘y’. We’re all of us having to keep up with the times, haven’t we?”
I looked around at the electric fittings and the central air-conditioning slits. “Yes, we have.”
“So what’s the news, Taylor? Cormoran still grumbling ‘neath his grave?”
“As usual.”
“And seven’s still your lucky number?”
“Seven in one.”
The girl had been peeping in around the doorframe, trying to catch my eye. Jack turned and caught sight of her and smiled, calling her in with a wave of his arm.
“Met my little girl, Taylor?”
“Fairy Princess of the Green Isle. Yes.”
The child tossed her brown curls back and laughed. “Uncle Peter played catch with me.”
Jack frowned. “Uncle Taylor, darling.”
“That’s a joke between us, Jack. You won’t understand.” I didn’t understand either, but that didn’t matter. I winked at her.
Jack patted her on the head and sent her upstairs. “So what are you really here for?”
I lay back on the sofa and crossed my legs. “Work.”
“What kind?”
“The big kind. This one’s got five entire villages under his thumb.”
“Taylor – ”
“I know what you’re going to say, Jack. You’re too old. But don’t you see, you’re the only one. I can’t do it alone – ”
“Taylor – ”
“Remember the Creature of the Thyrian Isle? The first time we worked together. We’d both be under some old grey nameless tombstone if we hadn’t.”
“The point is, man, I can’t do it any more. I’ve lost the touch. I’ve got a family now.” He gestured vaguely around the living room, the posh sofa set and the shimmer of the marble floor.
I sighed. “Very well then, Jack. I guess I’ll be seeing you around.”
Jack didn’t see me to the door. He sat back on his sofa, a dreamy lazy complacent smile on his lips. As the door closed behind me I caught a brief glimpse of a pair of green eyes behind the shrubbery. They followed me up the drive and out into the street. Maybe I’d get that partner in crime of mine yet. It was just a matter of waiting another few years. And what’s another few years to your average immortal?

Nothing at all.

Someone once told me that there was a word that could fix everything. “Jellywurbleponkyboo... at least, that’s not it, but it’s quite close,” he said. “And when you find it, all your troubles are over.”
The doctor said he had something that sounded like ‘asparagus’. Asparagus. I always confuse it with broccoli somehow. I think I mixed them up in a recipe once. It tasted funny, but I think that was because the person I was talking about emptied a packet of baking powder in it when I wasn’t looking.
Anyway, that was a long time ago.
And the coffee was getting cold. I hate black coffee. But another person I once knew used to say it was about the only thing that wasn’t killing you slowly in this world. Turned out he was lying. But I still walk all the way to The White Swan and take my old seat by the window and order a cup every third Saturday of the month at six. It helps keep the monsoons away.
And when the rains come down anyway, little sparkling crystals of fire sprayed across the cracked frosted glass that used to have two painted swans arching their fragile necks across the frame of the doorway once and is now as empty as the old hat stand beside it, I ask for an ash tray and pour the last little bit of the coffee into the ashes, watching it swirl around the grey lumps that wither away at its touch.
I’ve always hated the rain. Ever since I was little and my sister would run into the fields shrieking with laughter at the first sight of those huge grey masses of clouds rumbling in, over the green horizon. Her hair would fly out, jet black swinging braids, behind her and catch the first few invisible drops of rain that fell from the heavens before she reached the scarecrow that stood in the middle of the cotton fields.
My hair was always an aching dull brown.
And the skies are always grey now. Even when everyone else says they’re blue. I can always tell. If you look through the clear glass of a window or at a silvery mirror opposite your window, the blue fades to dull grey and that’s the real colour of the sky. Not what you see. Grey like the smoke that used to rise up from the jute mill that they built over our farmland.
I’ve always loved that colour. It used to mean ‘change’ before but now it means ‘life’. Because I don’t want any change anymore. That used to be all my life was about once. When I woke up in the morning and looked out the little circular window at the last dull stars and before I fell asleep on the damp little pillow that always smelt of mustard oil, I used to pray, not to God because I didn’t think that was allowed, but to the world, in general, “let everything change… change… change.”
And one day everything did.
And I thanked someone and set out to find the perfect word that would fix everything. Only, I haven’t found it yet. I used to think it didn’t really exist. Not for real. But now I know it’s out there somewhere. Waiting for someone who really needs it. I don’t.
Because I’ve never really loved the rain.
And “jellywurbleponkyboo” will always be that perfect word for me. Because it didn’t change anything either. It only made change something I didn’t need anymore. Like my old wooden rocking horse. One day I’d got up and chopped it up for firewood because suddenly I knew that I had no need for it.
It made me realize the same thing about change. My father did, I mean. When he died a few hours after saying that to me.
It was just another of those things you like holding on to. That I liked holding on to. Only they don’t really mean anything. Nothing does, really.
Nothing at all.

For tomorrow.

Remember Destiny?
She brushed past you yesterday in an orange raincoat.
You stopped her by the hand and pulled her back.
She smiled and you let her go.
Her eyes were crimson in the dappled sunlight through the frosted branches.
She didn’t speak.
But you heard the whisper hanging in the air eternities after the snow thawed.
And the rain swirled over the dying streetlight.
And you waited…
For yesterday.