Short story: Escape

The whirring of the fan in the background weaves a hynoptic cast on him as he lies supine on the bed. The ceiling light seems a tad too bright tonight, he thinks to himself. His eyes hurt in the glare, and he can feel the gentle kneading of Migraine's fingers. He has tossed, turned and turmoiled in his sleep the last few nights. Lying on his bed, trying to force sleep to absorb him into its maw; he had thought of himself like a seasick sailor on the uncertain and rocking vessel that is his thousand over dollars King Koil bed. Like a sailor from one of Conrad's tomes, he had wondered whether he should heave-to and escape from this sinking boat. Cast wide adrift in the turbulent seas of this marriage heading nowhere, the vessel of his faith is rocking and wavering bit by bit. Very soon, it will be torn asunder.

She had been so nice the last few days, whispering sweet nothings in his ears, and gently nuzzling his neck whenever their heads met whilst turning on the bed. Ah, the bed - it is like a metaphor for their unravelling marriage, like a turbulent-wracked vessel on uncertain seas. So it was kind of ironic that those gentle and more pacifist moments should come while he was contemplating the toughest decision of his life.

To end this marriage once and for all. To abruptly tear off the page of this opus that they are writing with no end in sight, and getting all out of point. To jump ship. And yet, he can't find the courage to come to that decision. How could he when she had threatened suicide, when she had poured forth those threats - he, a weakling, a hostage to emotional blackmail....

As the thoughts swish and swirl around in his reverie, the bedroom door opens gently. She enters - a sylph in her diaphanous negligee - whitish and eerily ghostly. Two crimson balls seem to have sprouted on her cheeks as she crawls up onto the bed.

She whispers Honey to him, and her tongue makes its incipient foray down his stubbly chin, onto his neck. He can feel a bulge in his shorts and a frisson runs through him. It has been a while since he feels this way, and it makes him think of the halcyon days when they had just got married, and found sex to be a pivotal part in their gradual fortification of the institution that is marriage. However, since then, the walls have been crumbling, and sex has become as infrequent, in a counterpoint to the increasing bouts of insomnia assailing him. For a moment, he thinks of taking her....

Then, she drops the bombshell. She is proposing divorce. She has fallen in love with her colleague.

She has carved an escape chute for him.

His tumescent penis gradually deflates, and in the storm of his earlier emotional introspections, an abeyance signals. Like Conrad's sailor, the seas have quietened down and he lies down content on the bed.

He says yes. Let's get it done.

And they kiss - content in knowing that each has found his/her escape.

Short story: The light out there

Raj can feel a surge of blood to his head. He can barely open his eyes and his legs wobble. Knocking back three bottles of Tiger Beer and half a dozen cans of assorted beer two hours ago had seemed like partaking in heavenly manna. Now that does not seem like a wise idea. He feels terrible and the beer swishing around in his intestines is like a vice, gripping him tight. In hindsight, he regrets the binge. But what could he do? He had been trying and trying, but he just could not free himself from the thrall of alcohol.

He totters along the corridor towards the unit that he shares with his elderly parents. Visages of the crazy drinking moments ago crisscross his mind - Amrit encouraging him to down another, Sanjay already stoned and toppling over the chair, the cackle of the coffeeshop skimming his alcoholic reverie. Drink has caused him to lose his last two jobs, has caused Kareena to leave him, has caused him to lose the strength to carry the kavadi for Thaipusam; drink has wrecked him.

With great difficulty, he manages to find the right key and insert into the lock. The ethanol ether has blinded his vision and crippled his movements. He envisages the wooden door opening and swallowing him into a black hole. Suddenly, a sharp glint of light slashes across his bleary eyes. Shaking his head to rid the pounding ache, he espies his parents seated at the sofa.

His father looks stern - his face set in a stony, inscrutable look. But the slow twitching around his mouth betrays the elderly man's mounting anger. Raj sees rivulets of waterfall dribbling across his mother's leathered face. Why are ma and pa so old all of a sudden, he thinks to himself.

Suddenly, Raj can feel himself flying forward; no, no he is toppling forward onto the sofa. Strong arms grip him and steady his fall. He feels himself plonking into the seat in between his parents. A sourish feeling churns in his gullet, and before he knows it, an emetic projectile erupts from his mouth, splaying the coffee table with dregs of his dinner earlier and the sweetish-sourish pang of beer.

"Look, what you've done!" His father cries out. The elderly man's shoulders are trembling and then, he slaps Raj once on his right cheek. "Thwack" - the blow jolts Raj out of his alcoholic drowse. Images of his earlier boozing and those olden happier days when he and his parents would sit down and chat at the sofa flash across his mind's eye.

"You are a disgrace! Why are you drinking so heavily? Why???" His father screams amidst the amplifying sobs of his mother. Raj blinks his muggy eyes and tries to utter something, but no word comes from his mouth. He looks out at the open door and sees his father holding out his hand to him. His father seems to be saying something to him and exhorting the toddler Raj to come over.

Summoning all his energy, Raj pushes himself off the seat, overturns the vomit-strewn coffee table and runs out of the house. I am coming, dad. Raj pushes himself over the parapet and as the alcoholic mist slowly dissipates from his eyes like cotton wool being gingerly picked apart; he could see his father pushing him on his toddler's toy car; his father and him sharing a joke while fishing; he could see his father giving him a lift on his first day in school...the images keep coming fast like light streaming through the parted cotton wool of his intoxication, and then the light is no more.

short story: Love resurrected

There can be no doubt in his mind that it is now or never. Standing outside the door with a bouquet of freshly-watered roses in a chiaroscuro of colours, Victor allows the fingers of his free left hand to wander to an errant part of his nose where an itch is developing. His legs are like jelly, and even though it is a cool breezy evening, he can already feel the beads of perspiration forming in a ring around the back of his neck.

He has been carrying a torch for Jeannie ever since they were classmates in junior college. The gawky teenagers of yesterday have grown with the advent of Time's interminable hands to be the freshly-laundered adults of today, standing crisp on the threshold of nascent careers and emerging responsibilities.

Standing outside Jeannie's door, a myriad of thoughts crawl through Victor's mind. He could still remember the time when their fingers had touched each other while sharing a glass of iced lemon tea. A frisson of excitement had coursed through his back then. He was particularly chuffed when Jeannie withdrew her hands in an overly exaggerated gesture of embarrassment. "She must have liked me", he had thought then.

Five years ago. That was how long ago. Gauche JC kids struggling with studies, the palpitating sensations of puppy love...Looking through the glass panel as her flight wheeled down the runway, before developing wings and ascending into the thick blue azure, trailing a plume of smoke, like the last tinges of regret he had felt then. Regret that he had not told her he loved her, while both of them were standing together, a "goodbye with a five-year expiry date" hanging at the tips of their tongues. And it was all over, as she turned around and headed into the boarding area; did he detect a trifle of her shoulders hunching in disappointment as she walked away with her customary big gait?

While, the flames of passion he nursed for Jeannie were doused five years ago; today they are burning bright and evanescent. Ever since that chance meeting three weeks ago, when they had bumped into each other at the atrium of a commercial block downtown - she, there for a job interview, having just returned from Down Under; he, on a trip to meet a client - the flames were simultaneously reignited. He realised that his love for her had never flickered or burned out - rather he had stashed love away like an old photo of a bygone memory lovingly cloistered in the treasured confines of one's old wallet.

Victor stirs himself from his dip in the pool of reminiscences, and left index finger trembling, depresses the doorbell. The shrill ring punctures the early evening's quiet, and the seconds seem to tick away ever-so-slowly, before the door is yanked open.

"Victor! You are early!" Jeannie chirps. "Such beautiful flowers!" She receives the bouquet from him and grabs his left hand, pulling him into the cool living room. And then he sees him.

He gets up slowly from the sofa, his right hand holding on to the television's remote control. There is a langourous air about him as he shuffles slowly forward to shake Victor's hand.

"Victor, meet Pete. He's my fiance. Pete, this is Victor, my JC classmate and a wonderful friend of mine. We met three weeks ago after losing touch for five years. Is that right, Victor, five years?" Jeannie gushes - a deluge of sentences dousing Victor's fiery heart.

The treacle doesn't taste sweet on his tongue, and he chews through the limp tendrils of pasta abstractedly, all the while, an unhappy and unwilling witness as Jeannie's happiness writes itself on the scroll of her alabaster face, as jibes and jokes trade readily between her and Pete.

He never keeps in touch with Jeannie after dinner, and he never thinks of the past again.

Flee

Four months have passed since I last updated here. Frankly, the urge to write was never there. I mean, what's the point in writing about my miserably boring one-dimensional black-and-white life? On the cusp of reaching the big 30, relatively happily married, and a flat coming my way; life could not have been rosier.

Yet, something is wrong somewhere. I feel this invincible malaise creeping over me, seeping into every sinew and limb of my body. I feel lethargic and I resent coming to work, and being faced with yet another day to be torn off the calendar - inactive, uneventful, routine, and monitor-staringly numbing.

For the last couple of years, I think I seemed like a directionless ostrich - persistently digging holes in the ground and burying the head there. After a while, I would stick out my long neck and hunt for the next hole. If I could only cast myself off the moral high horse, and just sell myself to the money god, then perhaps I could have found this mind-numbing existence bearable and liveable. But yet, I can't.

Too many faux pas when it comes to my career choices in the last two years are not an enviable record. I am on the hunt again, and as each day goes by, my agony gets multiplied another notch. There is too much mediocrity around and the biggest mediocrity is myself.

Flee, I have to.