The Gift - 4 - Jungle Lunch

Razvik opened his eyes in a new and strange place. 

He was lying on his back, staring up at the sky, with trees flanking the sides of his vision. He got up on his elbows and looked around. It was a forest, for sure. The grass was green and wet under his hands and the wetness was soaking into his clothes. He got up to his feet and looked around like a lost dog. He had never in his life seen a forest so lush and wide. The trees were so green that it hurt his eyes to look at them for more than a few seconds. He saw something move in foliage.

"Hey, who's there?"

It seemed too much of a repeat of what he had said in the room where the girl had given him the keyboard. He knew he had grappled with some kind of mystical shit and he had no right to be where he was right now, but here he was. Out of his wits and out of his understanding. He didn't want to do anything with whatever this was, but he had no choice. He shouldn't have pressed that key on the keyboard.

He chose a direction at random and started walking. There must be a way out of this forest. There were random chirps of birds that he couldn't have recognized even if he had any interest in bird watching. He came up to a small block of black stone that was too big to avoid. He walked over it and kept walking. The forest kept talking at him with the forest voices and everything that it had to throw at the man. Razvik didn't mind. The hut loomed in view ahead of him. It was a simple hut. Clean walls topped by a thatched roof made from sticks and stones. There was no door to knock on the hut, just a bead curtain that jingles and jangles in the jungle air. He pushed it aside and walked in.

The black man from the market was sitting there. He had a bloody meat cleaver in his hand. The black man raised the cleaver up in the air, a stray ray of sunlight made a dancing dervish pattern on the dirty steel, and he brought it down with a solid thwack that separated another piece of meat from whatever he was cutting.

He looked up from his table and saw Razvik frozen in his step. He was not sure whether to run the fuck away from here or walk in and say hi.

The black man looked at him and his face erupted into a grin that looked like an alien worm on his face.

"Razvik! Brother!"

His voice was surprisingly gentle and cultured for someone who looked like a prison escapee.

"Hi," Razvik managed to croak out.

"I've been waiting for you," he said as he put down the bloody cleaver and wiped his hands on his blood stained apron. 

"Come in, come in. I was just cleaning the chicken for lunch. Elina is also coming."

Razvik's heart skipped a beat.

---

I have no idea where this is going, but i am going to find out!

The Gift - 3 - The Room With The Girl

Razvik felt like he was choking. Even though he was not. 

The bag on his head only added to his feeling of claustrophobia. 

He was being carried. Through the hustle and bustle of the market. Then, the sounds of the market drifted away and there was only sporadic sounds of the market, as if somewhere far away. Someone slammed him down in a chair and put his hands on a table in front of him. 

Then, silence.

The bag was lifted from his head and the brightness of the room hurt his eyes. He winced and put his hands up to shield his eyes. There was someone standing in the doorway, silhouetted by the light coming from outside. 

"Hello?" Razvik called out.

And the girl from the shopping market walked in. She was wearing an office skirt and a coat and the sight of her made Razvik forget all his fear and pain for that time.

"Hi," she said as she walked towards him, like an angel from the doors of heaven. He felt himself falling and rising in love once again.

She had a package in her hand.

"You dropped this in the market."

"What is this? And what happened in the market there? Those guys, who were they?"

"Look," she bent down and looked into his eyes, "I really don't have the time to explain this. Just open the packet and get cracking and you might get to see me again. I have to go now."

There were loud sounds beyond the room and the girl looked up and with concern writ large on her face. 

"I have to go,Razvik. Open the package. Do what it says."

"But, wait, I've to get back to my office!"

"There is no office, dude. Not anymore. Open the package."

Her voice drifted off as she ran towards the door and slammed it shut on her way out.

Razvik was left in the room with the package. He started to tear open the paper that covered it. He tore the paper off the box and opened it. The keyboard slid out of the box like something alive.

A small screen popped up from the top of the keyboard. 

"Press any key" flashed on the screen.

Razvik pressed ESC.

And the world around him exploded.

-------------

More more more

The Gift - 2 - Love In The Market

"I want to fuck you."

The words tumbled out of his mouth before his mind could reign them in. He stood in a minor shock, waiting for her to slap him. She put a hand on her mouth and started to giggle.

"I'm so sorry. Oh god, i am so fucking sorry," Razvik mumbled, color rose in his cheeks and the words he spoke were a mumbled mess.

"It's okay," she smiled back at him, "I've heard worse than that. Happens to everyone who sees me for the first time."

He smiled at her stupidly, there was something about her that was making him lose all reason and thought, like getting drunk through his eyes. He shook his head to clear his thoughts. There was something about a keyboard and the apps on his phone. 

The gift!

"Ah, um, i am here for a gift...I got an email...GPS...stuff. Would you like go with me to my house and ..."

He bit his tongue before he could speak further. She giggled again. The sound was like wind chimes tinkling on the first day of summer. He was so hard in love. He wanted to love her so badly that no one would love her like that again. His vision blurred and his words slurred. This was bad. This was good. Like a shot of expensive whisky. He had never felt like this before.

She disappeared from his vision, going behind a curtain and his vision cleared at once. The sounds of the market that he had not noticed before came back to him. The smells and sights and colors and chaos, attacked his senses. He had to get out of this place. He looked for the door where he had come in from, but there were so many people everywhere, dressed in as colorful and outlandish clothes as possible. He felt like he was in a kaleidoscopic dream.

"Hey! I am talking to you, boy!" The rough voice was calling out to him and it belonged to an even rougher man. The black man stood easily a foot and half above Razvik's height. He had a ring through his right nostril and a chain went up from the ring and ended through his ear.

"This is for you," he growled and slammed a package on the table in front of him.

Razvik picked up the package and looked up at the monstrous man. "There was a girl here, I was talking to her just now."

"My sister," the black man snarled.

"Bye." Razvik managed to squeak out and moved into the crowd of people around him. He started to walk in the general direction  of where he thought the exit to the market was, but he was back the same table, with the black man glaring down at him. 

The people started to notice him. He was dressed differently and he was carrying a shiny package under his arm. They started to move away from him. He looked around desperately for the exit, but everything was the same in all directions.

Then someone put a bag over his head and his world became black.

--

Might have typos, but right now, i want to know what happens next.

The Gift - Part 1

The link came to Razvik in an email.

"Pick the keyboard from this place"

Just one sentence with a GPS location.

The address that the email came from was all numbers and hashes. He sent an reply to that address to ask who it was but the email bounced back to him instantly. He was curious. Had he played some contest on Twitter? Or some draw of luck on Facebook? He could not recall, there were so many of those damn things these days. 

Razvik looked at his watch. He had some time free from office. He checked the GPS address on his phone and saw that this was a shop somewhat at the periphery of town. He could go there and make it back before lunchtime was over. 

He decided to pick up his gift. It was free and after all, what was the worst that could happen?

He drove to the location said on the map and it was an empty plot of land. Not exactly empty, there was a small tent propped up at some distance from the road. He put the hand-brake on his car and walked towards the small tent. The sudden heat of the day made him sweat at once and his shirt was sticking to his back. He was out of breath by the time he reached the small tent, it was farther than it looked. What could be a keyboard doing in a place like this? Was this some new kind of social media stunt? Fucking interns, making things weirder and weirder. 

He put his hands on his knees and bent down, breathless, breathing hard from his mouth. Maybe someone in the tent had water. He lifted the small flap that went for a door and looked inside the tent. 

His brain did a small, scared shuffle in his skull.

There was a complete hall inside the tent, while from the outside it looked barely enough to hold a table and a chair. His brain told him in a shy, scared voice to get the fuck out of there,but he had come so far and he didn't want to go back without his gift. Because there was a market inside the hall.

People dressed in wonderful clothes were buying things and trading and heckling with each other in languages that made no sense to him. He took out his phone from his pocket. He felt an urgent desire to Instagram this shit, but the apps on his phone were gone. Except the Google Maps app was there. What kind of techno wizardry was this. He opened the maps app and saw his location was ten feet away from a stall where his gift, the keyboard, was supposed to be.

He walked up to the stall.

"Hello?" he asked.

A girl rose from behind the counter of the stall. She was the most beautiful girl Razvik had ever seen. He forgot what he had come here for. Then she was asking him something. Her beautiful lips formed the words that  reached his ears on their own lazy pace.

"Are you here for the keyboard, Razvik?"

Her voice was soft as honey on a toast on a Sunday morning.

Razvik was in love. Which was the least worst thing that happened to him that day. 

---

What happens to Razvik? We'll know tomorrow in part two :D

Tears

The sword is heavy in his hand. The adrenaline rush of the battle is gone and now weariness sits on his shoulders like an overweight monkey. There are random aches all over his body. He leaves a trail of blood in the bloodied ground as he walks towards the elephant that lies groaning in the mud. The cries of the animal are shrill and ear piercing that make steel sing on the edge of his teeth.

The princess is trapped under the elephant.

There are yet few breaths in her. Her eyes, though contorted in pain, shoot glances filled with pure fucking venom at him. Her bow and arrows lie useless at a distance. 

He digs the point of sword in the ground and bends at the knee to speak to her.

"Will you marry me?" he asks as he produces a bloodstained ring from his war-torn coat.

"Fuck you," she wheezes.

He sighs and gets up. The elephant still keeps on screaming. 

"I asked you once, long ago. You said no."

He pulls the sword out of the ground.

"I asked you twice, before this war began. You said no."

He lifts the heavy blade over his head.

"Today, I asked you thrice. And you said no."

The blade comes down on her neck, separating her head from her body in a swift clean stroke. Blood spritzes out like a small geyser, getting into his face and his eyes. He blinks and lets it in, cherishes the warmth and laughs at the old joke of no one being able to see his tears.

---

Hello.

N

About NaNoWriMo

Pallav: I completed the nanowrimo

People: YAY!!! SEND US SIGNED COPIES!!!!!

:: pause ::

There is not really a frame of reference for this, but I'll give this a shot. Imagine if you were getting strawberry seeds from a market to grow strawberries and your neighbor sees you buying those seeds and the next thing you know he is standing outside your house yelling for a strawberry milkshake. Or something like this.

Completing the nano is always a slightly emotional experience. It's draining in some ways. I mean, doing an act with some sort of focus and determination and dedication is something that is unique and doesn't happen for most of the year. Humans, by nature, shirk from any kind of discomfort. Writing and slamming your head against the keyboard to meet the deadline count for the day, is extremely discomforting.

There are so many other things online that you can do. There is twitter, fb, reddit, and oh god, there is youtube, but then there is this litle tiny voice in your head that says, "100 more words" and then you close other tabs and have your pathetic little word file open and you bleed on the keyboard. It's some kind of madness to be in that frame of mind when all you think about is meeting the word count and all your plans, all your strategies, all your activities are geared towards the sole activity of getting words in the screen. 

What I mean here is that once you decide that you're going to complete the 50,000 words, once you're focused, once you've committed yourself, there is very little that can come in your way. If it is any other way, then fuck it, leave it and do something else with your time.

But now that the 50k words are done, now what?

Now, the editing, which is another exercise in laziness. 

Frankly, any attempt to write 50k in one month is going to be a mess. There can be no other way, unless you're Stephen King cranked up on cocaine. And since there is only one King, there is very less hope for most of us mortals. 

The 50k words of the nano have very little that can be salvaged in form of an actual story. Which is a sad fact, but it's okay too. Nanowrimo is never about writing a novel, it's just about showing you that you can write. That's all. If you get a salvageable story out of it, that's a bonus.

What I Wrote

I wrote about a dude who gets picked up by a strange old man on his way to his office. He is thrust into a world of power, magic, dreams, and books. Lot of books. And he starts to die slowly because the books are too much for him. But the power given to him attracts new friends and old enemies, and he is chosen to save a place called The Dreaming that has been corrupted by those who were tasked to protect it. 

Right, doesn't sound like much, but i am going to edit it once I let it collect some dust in a folder. 

That's pretty much all. I am creatively drained, so gonna go and do some energizing stuff.

What's up with you?

The Suffering Scrolls

NOTE:: Rough text. No Format, No Edits. DO NOT WRITE LIKE THIS. This is just a taste.

--------------------

The scrolls were in the dark cave under the sea. The fires that lit them were still burning after all these years. It had been a long time since there had been a movement out there in the world but now the forces were moving and time was neigh. The darkness in the cave was receding. A new dawn was coming for them and they were ready to welcome it the way the could. By destruction and madness. The scrolls sent out their thoughts into the ether. Ready to be picked up by those who were known to such things. There was a nascent power in the air and the scrolls were going to make the most of it. They had been suffering from a long time and their time had come to make their suffering known to the rest of the world and the powers that be. The scrolls were united in their pain. There was no two ways about it. They were ready to wreak havoc on the world outside and there was going to be no escape from it for the world at large.

The words on the scrolls arranged themselves in the form of the characters that would help them in getting out of the cave and making for the surface where they would start their reign of destruction and havoc on the planet. The scrolls had been in the making for years. The writers of the scrolls were all dead and the fucking things were updated by the scribes who had used their own blood and the skin of the previous scribes to update the scrolls and keep them intact in the world. The weather and the dissidents of their dark deeds had tried to oppose them and destroy the scrolls, but every time, through the ages, through the wars and the famine, and the hunger and the corruption, the scrolls had managed to survive. They had seen everything from plagues to the nuclear explosions, but the scrolls had prevailed and the keepers of the scrolls had laid their lives on line for preservation of the dark knowledge hidden within. Their only consolation that one day the words will rise and take the revenge for which they were made. 

The time was here.

The Experiment

NOTE :: This is a work in progress, posted here for arcane purposes. Please read the last two posts to enjoy this fully. All mistakes are mine.

---------------------

It was not easy for new comers to go into The Dreaming but there were ways. Oh, there are always ways to go about it. If someone designs a place where no one is meant to go, some will spend their whole lives just trying to get in. And maybe, just maybe, after a while, they'll get in too. The Octopi had spent the last 100 years trying to get into The Dreaming. Through occult and science. Through sacrifice and genius. Through madness and mathematics. They had finally found a way to get in. Find some people willing to commit suicide and send them on a whirlwind trip across the planet, with a boat load of drugs and then pray. Pray that they find the right time and place and rip in the time where the dreams leak into the real world and they just might be able to reach in and explore the place.

The freaky thing about the Octopi experiments with their attempts to get into The Dreaming was that everyone had the same dream. Of a snow filled field which went on as far as the eye could see. And then the wolves. Oh, what wolves they were. Creatures of ancient tales, fierce and wonderful. With jaws full of death for anything that didn't belong into The Dreaming. The first few batches of test subjects came back with their brains all fried out and the best thing to do with them was to put a bullet in their heads. The mission incharge had done the honors himself. He had taken his 9mm into the sleeping cells and shot each of the subjects when their vital signs remained calm, but their mouths filled the hull with screams of terror and joy. He didn't know what they were seeing in the dreaming and he had no desire to find out either. The next batch of recruits was well prepared. They were put through mental conditioning and quick response. Their lucid dreaming classes went on for as long as they had to. They were the lost children of human race that no one would miss.

The experiments were a mixture of science and magic of any kind that they were able to get their hands on. Once a shaman traveled with a batch of trainees and they were able to know about the wolves. They were flying somewhere over Antarctica when the dream hit all of them. The shaman felt the presence of wolves and he had seen them before. He saw that they were guarding a pyramid in which a book was kept. Somewhere under the surface of water. He was able to placate the wolves for now. But the experience left him so traumatized that he took up a desk job.

The Octopi continued to refine and redefine their methods. Then one day a man with a bag of books and a plane under his command contacted them. Things were never the same after that day.

The Book Man

NOTE:: This is just rough text, part of the bigger work I am writing right now. The final form of this might not look like this at all. Just doing this for motivating myself. Don't enjoy reading this. :)

------

The man with books was stopped at the airport. He had a bag full of books of all kinds. Hardcover, paperback, books without covers and books with their last pages torn out. He had seen some evil people in his time whose idea of entertainment was to go in local libraries and tear off the last page from every book in the catalog. He hated such people and when he saw the books that were handled carelessly and without love, he felt like crying. He loved reading books that made him want to cry. But he dared not waste his tears. Those things were important. So when the airport authorities stopped the man he was not unnerved. They looked into his bag of books, carelessly pulling out the books and ruffling through the pages as if the books contained a bomb or something. They did contain bombs, actually. But not the kind of bombs that would damage an airplane. The book man just waited till the authorities went through the bag. 

"Hey, look at this book. It's pretty freaky." One of the officers checking out the bag picked a book called The Ancient Symbols and Their Significance in the Modern World by Mortimer August. It was a book dear to the man's heart and it angered him to see the police officer carelessly thumbing through the pages. Then the police officer did something so vile and sadistic that the man had to intervene. He licked his thumb and started to move it towards the corner of the page he wanted to turn. The man reached forward and held his hand on the corner of the page with the police officer's saliva filmed thumb just inches away from the the back of his hand. The police officer looked at the man. The man looked back the police officer with a smile ready on his lips. "I'd prefer if you didn't do that. It's a holy book for some religions and they treat it with extreme reverence."

A puzzled expression came over the police officer's face. 

"This book like the Bible or something?"

The man smiled, again. Friendliness pouring from every inch of his face. 

"You're absolutely right. All these books are holy and I am using these to spread the word of the holiness in heathen lands."

The Book Of Water

NOTE:: I am putting this here just to make myself accountable in case I fuck up. This is chapter 4 from the nanowrimo project I am doing this november. This is unedited, rough and shoddy work. The first draft that is shit. Read at your own risk. CONTAINS MISTAKES.

The book lies under water. Its pages are waxed and protected from the hungry waves and it has a cover made of skin of animals that live inside its tomb. The words in the book ripple under the waves. Trapped in the pages with nowhere to go till someone reads them out and brings them to life. They have not been read since they were trapped in the pages. The pyramid under the water has not been seen by human eyes in the million years that it has spent trapped in the watery grave. Were books even supposed to be written a million years ago. The book doesn't know and the book doesn't care. The symbols in it are angry. They sense the shifting of elder powers in the world above and it doesn't give them a very good feeling. It makes them uneasy and jumpy and they thrash and squirm as the waves of unease wash over them in the water. The energy signals are strong and erratic and it doesn't make the words feel too good. They've been silent for ages and now the things are disturbing them. They want to break free from their tomb, but they need an external force to set them free, and there is nothing they can invoke or call to their aid. So the words suffer in the book of water. They send out waves of their own to let the fetid energies know that there are others who are also waiting to get out of whatever prison they're latched into. There is no shame in this. There is only a challenge. A discordant aggression that a war is coming and that war is going to change everything that stands between them and the worlds that have been silent for ages. The book of water bubbles under the surface. Angry and awake. Willing to get out of its prison which can't be broken by it. The sea churns, the waters pass them by, and the hot water near the tomb fries small animals that dare to pass by it. The anger of the book only contained by its pages. So it sends the words deep into the chapters. Looking for knowledge that it has forgotten over the years. It sends the words searching for things that are no longer there. And that are not supposed to be there, but there might be a trace. There might be a sign and the book is willing to take that chance, no matter how slim the hope, it is willing to hang on.

The Blood Tattoo

The tattoo gun danced on Jenny's skin. Her stomach tingled as the needle did its magic on her.

She closed her eyes and bit her lip, feeding on the strange pain that also turned her on. She felt the needle go in and out and in again, depositing the sweet color under her skin. Making something of nothing. She did not want it to stop. Ever.

The needle stopped pricking her and she opened her eyes.

"What happened?" she asked her tattoo artist.

The tattoo artist, a bald man with tattoos up to his neck, took off his face mask and wiped his face with a towel. 

"I think we're done for the day. I can't concentrate anymore." He put away his tattoo gun and called out to his assistant to clean up Jenny's tattoo.

Jenny waited impatiently as the assistant girl worked on the tattoo and finally gave her a thumbs up to leave.

This was Jenny's 7th visit to the tattoo parlor in last 8 weeks. The tattoo she was going for was a complex design. She had drawn it herself after looking into ancient books of blood. The design was all figures with ancient words written in them. With the tattoo on her skin, Jenny felt close to the darkness that had called out to her from her dreams. The thought of what she was doing made her shiver from inside. Some nights when she was alone in her room, she traced the lines of her tattoo with her fingers and spoke the words that were inscribed in her skin and then spoke some more words that were not part of the tattoo, yet. Once the incantations were complete, she waited. And he appeared. 

He always came whenever she called and he came under the garb of night. His face was black and so were his clothes. He could've been the night, a figment of imagination, but she remembered the touch of his fingers. Warm fingers that touched the lines on her tattoo and murmured the words, as if unsure. And every night, the figure stopped, tracing the lines of the tattoo, shook his head sadly and broke away like ripples in a still lake. Every night she was disappointed. She just wanted that tattoo to be complete. She wanted the dark stranger to take her with him. To whatever dark places he came from. She was not afraid of him. She was never afraid. She knew once her tattoo was complete, he'd stay the night with her and she'd persuade him to take her to the dark lands. 

She cried herself to sleep at times. 

Her visits to the tattoo parlor became more frequent. She pressurized the tattoo artist to work on her even though her skin was bleeding and torn from the tattoo gun's abuse. She thought of the pain as a gift from her dark god. Finally, after ten weeks of agony, the tattoo was complete. When she left the tattoo shop, broke and broken, but happy, she knew that tonight her dark god will become her lover and he'd love her forever because that's what forever is. 

In her bedroom that night, she moved her fingers across her freshly wounded stomach, whispering the words of the incantation that will open the doors to portals from other other side.This time, the portal opened and there were two figures in the doorway. Silhouetted by the red light, they walked up into her room. More than seven feet tall, both of them were identical in shape and size. Their eyes burned with a black glow that sucked the light from the room and suddenly made the room chilly. None of them was her dark god. 

They walked up to her bed and one of figures raised a scabbed, calloused hand and grabbed her neck. It lifted her up from the bed by sheer force as her feet kicked empty air and her throat choked out plaintive cries. 

"Please, please," Jenny coughed out.

The other figure bent down to examine the tattoo on her stomach. It touched the tattoo and dark blood welled out from the lines of the tattoo. The characters in her skin burned with a sulphuric intensity. Only one character stood out from the circle of words and letters that made no sense to any human eye. The demonic examiner grinned like a shark that has spotted its prey.

"There is a mistake in the incantation. Yes, there is a mistake. Heh, heh."

The other figure increased the pressure on Jenny's neck till it snapped in its fist like a rotten branch. The tattoo on her stomach kept leaking blood as life slowly ebbed out of her. 

---

Ok, there might be some conceptual mistakes because I've never gotten a tattoo, so take it with a grain of sale. I've artistic license n all.

Yeah, let's start again. Let's wipe the old slate clean and begin something new and awesome.

She Kissed A Ghost

It was a night when dreams died silently in arms of lovers.

It had just rained. The streets were slick with reflections of open windows where couples fought and then made up in matter of hours.

Moon decided to show her face when the clouds parted. There was a slight twang of magic in the air.

The ghosts decided to prowl the streets. Looking for attention, love, excitement, fear or danger. Anything that would make them feel alive for just one second.

She was in one of the windows, looking down in the street. Her lover had gone off to sleep. The cigarette in her fingers let of tendrils of ghostly smoke that attracted one of the ghosts to the flaming orange ember. 

He floated up to her window. She looked through him and sent a puff of smoke swirling from her lips.

The ghost lusted. His form became visible for a precious few seconds.

She saw the face. He was a handsome one. Her hand grabbed his neck and pulled him closer.

Their lips met. Sparks sizzled and the air burned. Her toes tingled. And she floated out of the window. Slowly dissolving in the air.

Her cigarette fell in the room. One of the drapes caught fire.

Her lover never even got a chance to know what happened to her.

---

Fin.

An Update on State of Things

It's been some time since this place has seen any activity from my side. So, I just thought I'd drop in with an update on what all is up with me in general and on a greater level with this blog.

This is going to be some kind of ramble. The TL;DR version: Stories will be here soon.

The long version:

I've been in an unfocused fudge state for quite some time now. There were some stressful situations in real life that I had to deal with and as I grow older, I realize that life is not all that I dreamed it to be. But it is okay, life comes one day at a time and this is how we have to deal with it. I've had a lot to deal with, from personal life to professional life and to some degree the spiritual life too. I don't know to what degree I am spiritual but there are some things that one has to believe in. Things that happen. Signs that will show when you're looking for them. Things that happens just because you want them to happen. That sort of magical mystical bullshit.

It's all cyclical.

When you see history repeat itself for the fifth or sixth time around, that's when you realize that there is some kind of cosmic joke at play. It's all weird. We fall into habits that are difficult to get out of and even when we know that those habits are harming us, we can't help but indulge ourselves in those habits.

This is about being unfocused.

Back when I was studying, there used to be electricity in the air. The atmosphere was charged because we were all so young and full of ideas and that daring exuberance of youth that makes you feel you're immortal. But once you get out of study life, you're just another cubical monkey. Because the money is okay, pay is on time and the job doesn't really bore the fuck out of you. But you're just treading water. Just staying afloat, not really moving. Nothing flows here. It's just a stagnant pool of water. But it's okay, because the money is okay. It's on time.

I don't think I'll be wrong in saying this, but everyone we meet or interact with will stop us from living our life the way we want to live. You want to take off your clothes and play Hotel California on a guitar in the middle of the busiest market in your city, so many people will stop you, no matter how ridiculous your wish is.

So, this and that.

About the future of the blog


I read some of the past few posts here, about the android phones and shit and I thought to myself, Pallav, dude, wtf is that shit. So yeah, i disgust and disappoint myself with alarming regularity, but i am shameless enough to not care. I've been writing on a personal basis. Another long story project, about a city in future where all kinds of weird shit happens and yeah, that's pretty much about it. I am also editing a collection of old short stories and after that another editing task looms on my head. With all this editing, it's difficult to scrap out writing time for new short stories.

But I've got plans for that too.

So, yeah, that's pretty much it. I'll ramble more on some other blog maybe.

Stories, soon.

The Waiting

The people at the metro station were waiting for the next coach. 

A boy with his face firmly focused on his cell phone screen was waiting for an app to refresh and display new data. 

A girl with earphones plugged firmly in her head (disconnected from everything around her) was lazily waiting for her favorite song to play on her mp3 player. 

A man from a dead-end office job was waiting for his wife to reach the metro station on the arriving coach.

The clock counted down till the coach reached the station. 

The air pressure in the station changed as the train got closer to the station. 

Brakes screeched. People rushed forward to reach the gates first, even before they had opened.

The people inside the metro coach waited.

The doors didn't open.

The people inside and outside kept staring at each other.

The coach slowly started to move. 

Everyone moved behind the yellow line and started to wait for the next coach.

---------

What is this one about?

Waiting, what else. We spend so much time waiting for things. And some times those things are not worth it.

Like love, for example.

The Last Clown

The circus was empty. The only sound was of the clown crying in the ring. The man in clown makeup howled long and hard. He was sad that he had no audience. Not any more after the bombs had fallen.

He had survived somehow. But the emptiness in the world depressed him so every evening he put on his clown makeup and tried with varying degrees of failure to entertain his invisible audience.

The stalls were gathering dust. But the clown danced on. He was sitting in his chair in middle of the ring one when a massive heart attack tripped his body's machinery out of gear.

He flopped on the ground like a fish out of water when he saw scaled feet on the ground in front of his face.

"Last of the humans." The first voice said.

'Too bad that he's dying."

"It's funny."

100 Things I Hate About Twitter

In no certain order, here we go.

1) Unclear tweets

2) Incomprehensible jargon

3) hahahha tweets

4) Pests who tweet @ you ALL the time

5) Trolls

6) Ugly people

7) People with two, three people in display pic

8) People who tweet only motivational shit

9) Flag bearers for causes

10) Beat the same drum ALL the fucking time

11) People who swear too fucking much, un-fucking-necessarily 

12) People who ALWAYS tweet in regional language

13) They twitpic everything they eat

14) Foursquare checkins

15) Always chatting with people

16) Multiple exclamation marks!!!!!

17) They ask for a follow-back

18) They announce now following to all

19) They talk to celebs all day like they give a fuck about them

20) They're mentally disturbed and somehow have a cellphone with a net connection

21) Political tweets

22) Sad all the time

23) DP Changing Syndrome (DPCS)

24) Only talk to girls

25)  Flirts with all the other guys

26) Guys faking a girl's profile

27) Append a fuck lotta tweets with TWHS TWSS

28) #tags

29) Music Marathon Madness

30) Misery machines who want sympathy

31) People who crash conversations

32) Fights with people ALL the time

33) Online 24/7

34) Brand whore (android/iPhone)

35) Tweets with just links without any accompanying text

36) You've an i appending your handle, probably stands for idiot?

37) You've a number in your name, like 69, (how mature!)

38) Fake drunk tweets

39) Excessive blog pimping

40) Skype gigs

41) Suicide threats

42) Extremely open about relationship on twitter (No one's interested)

43) Change Handle Every two weeks

44) Have an animated display pic

45) You take drugs and tweet about them

46) You fake accidents

47) Miserable poetry

48) Stand up comedians

49) Photographers

50) Over-excited Mothers

51) Non-native RT

52) Complaining for sympathy

53) Fat people who are not doing something about it, except eating more.

54) You lie constantly about stuff that no one cares about

55) Excited hamster syndrome

56) Movie Reviewers

57) People who try to show that they're superior by trolling others

58) Sexual tweets, some of us are trying to eat food

59) Cricket Cunts

60) Anagram Assholes

61) Your baby is not that cute, all babies look the same

62) Pet Whores

63) Blog Whore - because blogging is dead n all

64) Bollywood Bitches

65) Your handle is sexual, your tweets are equally boring

66) You copy tweets from funny foreigners

67) You copy tweets from unfunny Indians

68) Overtly patriotic

69) Disrespectful towards women with wife beating/kitchen jokes

70) TV show slut

71) You RT blood requests without checking

72) You RT your own praise

73) You praise others just to get an RT and a follow

74) You ask celebs for RTs

75) You claim that normal, boring people are celebs

76) You have the name of a beverage in your handle, coffee, vodka, tequila etc

77) You tweet shit at customer care accounts, just cuz they can't be rude to you

78) You're always traffucked

79) You've a good life, but you whine like a bitch

80) Disrespectful towards elders on twitter

81) You give movie reviews, 9/10 or whatever

82) You are an NRI and a bitch

83) You think every sly tweet is about you

84) Everyone sly tweets about you

85) You sly tweet about everyone

86) You tweet about facebook

87) You are on twitter with hopes of getting laid

88) You've an online girlfriend/boyfriend whom you've never met

89) You tweet about time

90) 11.11

91) Your jokes are shit

92) You ask people for simple decisions in your life

93) You write open letters

94) You hold celebs/politicians directly responsible for your misery

95) You arrange tweetups

96) Idol worship

97) You

98) Supreme Idiocy

99) Fucked up reasoning for causes

100) Weather tweets

101) You correct grammar of others

102) Football freaks

103) People who add URGENT to every other tweet

104) People who tweet only after a certain time and make a big deal out of it

105) People who ask for twitpics of every second thing

Okay, done for today. All these points were written in a humorous tone, but if you have a problem with any of these, feel free to bug me on twitter @69fubar

Got any favs? Hate any particular number? Leave a comment! Nice way to let other readers know your view!

Cheers!

Flash Fiction :: Floating Away

This stuff would kill you, they told me.

I was beyond caring by then. There was no stopping me. So I closed myself in a hotel room with my supply of that ichor. I paid the staff to not disturb me for a week.

And I drank.

I drank till I puked.

Then I drank some more. There was no time to sleep after I started drinking.

By the fourth day I was rolling in my own bodily excretions and I could no longer tell the difference between day and night. I lost track of myself and drifted in a hazy state of subconsciousness.

By the seventh day, the drink was drinking me away as much as I had drank it.

When they broke open the door. I was inside a bottle.

Drowning.

Floating.

Drifting away.

From everything.

Free Android Games You Can Play On The Pot!

Grumpy Donald Duck wouldn't be so grumpy if he had a phone with games on it!

There are only two places a sane man plays video games on his phone. 

On the pot and in bed.

Today, we're going to discuss some free Android games that you can play while you're dropping krakens in the morning or in the night. 

In ancient times, human ancestors used to read newspapers or solve the crossword while pooping, some of them also read works of horror fiction to aid the pooping process, but today's generation can't poop without a phone in their hands. While most resort to tweeting away while downloading their dinner, some of us like to play games on the pot.

Now, this, is a very niche category of games. You cannot really play action heavy games that require lot of concentration as it might affect performance, I am thinking Platform Scrolling and Racing Games here. You just need some games that take up to 10-15% of your brain power so that rest of brain focuses on the task of pooping. 

We don't want tense games that make you angry and frustrate you by repetitive action. So, let's discount the popular ones like Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, Cut The Rope, etc. All phones have these games. We're going to talk about some of the slightly lesser known games. Yes, your favorite game might NOT (will not) get discussed here, but you'll have to live with it. 

This is my blog, so I'll be talking about the games I've installed on my tiny lil' Xperia Mini Pro (which I might sell soon and get an Xperia P or U or S)

Anyway, the games:

1) Bubble Blast 2 - This game looks stupid at the first. But when you install it, play through a 100 or so levels, you realize that something is funny here. I mean, you're tapping and tapping on the bubbles but the puzzles get complex, it's madness! Perfect game when you want to take your mind off pooping and just poop! Did I tell you it's got about 10000s of levels. Not kidding. Each level gets unlocked when you finish previous level, and they're ALL different.

2) Block Puzzle 2 - This is strange game. I was stuck on a particular level for weeks and then I cleared some 5 levels in one go. I play this game every now and then because it's like Tetris in a box. You've to move pieces around to make them fit and those bloody things just don't fit most of the time. So it's lot of moving pieces around. And, damn, it's good mindworkout.

3) Droptrix - Another game inspired by Tetris but it has it's own unique spin on Tetris (play it, you'll know what I mean). It takes a bit to learn, do check the tutorial. Whatever you do in this one, you WILL lose this game. It's funny and strange and there is lot of flipping around of a board. You'll have to check this and find it out!

4) Defender 2 - I had a lot of fun playing Defender part 1. The magic system was fun. There was a sort of strategy involved in using some weapons first, this part 2 adds a kind of online playing experience, you've to beat another person on the same level. It's fun when you play it, I won't risk explaining it here.

These four are here. Please complain in comments how your favorite game didn't get written about here. If you'd like me to try out some games, something unique and awesome and less known game, drop a line. 

Till next time, play slow, poop slower!

This post was written while listening to Pearl Jam's Live on Two Legs, one hell of an album. You kids should get that!

Why I Stopped Subscribing to Newspapers.

Newspaper Junkies

Back in hostel I used to be a newspaper junkie. 

Every Sunday morning, I'd wake up, walk to the stationery shop outside the hostel, and buy one copy of EVERY newspaper on display. 

I kept up with the newspaper obsession for up to 4+ years after leaving college. I'd pore through the pages of articles, comics, editorials, features, everything that the newspaper had to offer.

Last year, I stopped my newspaper subscription.

There were two reasons for this. First, a slightly frivolous reason is that the newspaper guy brought me the bill for newspapers after six months. It was a big chunk of money, something you don't expect to pay for newspaper. I had some words with that fellow and decided that I'd not buy newspaper from him. I realized later that he is the only fellow delivering newspapers in my area. So that is that. 

Plus, the junk value of newspapers

The other reason is the dismal quality of news reporting in the newspapers in India. From Times of India to The Hindu and everything in between, there is just too much focus on the negative and it just didn't please me to read the news come what time of the day. I had to ask myself, do I really need to start my day with reading about all this negativity? I got the answer, NO. A big, all caps, NO. So, I gave up all and any attempts of reading newspaper till about now. And in general, I've felt more peaceful, relaxed and productive in mornings.

Now, I get my fix of news from Google. Specifically www.news.google.com which I've customized according to the news I want to read. More about Science, Technology and Health. Less about Bollywood, Hollywood, Politics or Celebrities. 

In addition, I also think that the GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out) principle applies here very well. The kind of information we feed into our system (if we think of human brain as a computer), will determine the kind of output we give to the world. 

What do you think about this? If you left reading newspapers would it have any effect on your life? Drop me a line in comments or talk about it with me on twitter >> @69ubar

Next post, we tackle the absence of TV in my life!

Apps, Apps, Android Apps!

Once again, I am back with another article that is not a story. I don't really care, you'll have to suffer me like this. So, we're talking about android apps. There are so many of them that it is difficult for anyone to make sense of the Google Play Store and find the apps that can rizzle yo shizzle (whatever that means). So, without further ado, here are five apps that help me be productive n shit. I own an Xperia Mini Pro running Gingerbread, but it's soon going to be upgraded to Ice Cream Sandwich, so yeah, apps! Here goes:

1) Zeam Launcher - I like this one of all the launchers out there, because it's simple. Does what it says, doesn't take too much space and is pretty much a no-nonsense launcher.

2) Memoires - There are many diary apps in the market, and I've probably used all of them. But I recently started using this one. Very nice interface, good choice of fonts, plus ability to add tags and I didn't see any adverts. I was using diaro earlier but have successfully made transition to this one.

3) Little Photo - When you say filters, the first thing anyone would think of is Instagram. Little Photo is not Instagram. It's just an app with LOT of filters. And in my experience with the filter apps, this beats all of them hands down. There are just too many filters in this app. All are easy to apply, the end product looks awesome, and well, you can share it on Facebook or Twitter or wherever you like later.  The interface of this app can use an uplift, but for the functionality it provides, interface can be excused.

4) Instacamera - Now, the thing with most camera apps is that you launch the app, wait a second or two for the camera to load (if your phone is fast) and then click the shutter, camera focuses and by then the moment has passed you by miles. SO, in comes InstaCamera. Put the widget on the screen, point the camera at what you want to click, tap the widget, and it saves the picture. None of that autofocus or launching camera bullshit. Even the settings for this app are a new icon in the app drawer. Great app, I love it.

5) Awesome Wallpaper - If you ask me, I love new wallpapers for my phone's screen. Some just put a smile on my face on a dull day or some shit like that. But most are well clicked pics that are minimal in nature. Now what I do here is that I download a wallpaper from this app, then process it through Little Photo mentioned above to give the wallpaper a whole different look. It looks great, looks unique and fits my idiotic sense of amusement. 

Yeah, so these are my favorite apps, I use these a lot. I hope you find these useful. 

What are your favorite apps? Drop me a line in comments, or as always, hit me up on Twitter, @69fubar

(Disclaimer: Just sharing these apps cuz I like them. No kind of monetary compensation from them to me, but if you can support the developers in anyway, please do so.)

Five Awesome Webapps!

Let's assume for a second that we're all productive people, we've got things chalked up in our head, and we need to do these things to get ahead in life, or just to move from where we are to the next screen. Every notice how in most scroller video games, the character always goes right? Right! (A disclaimer, I am not associated with any of these apps and they're not paying me money to write this, I write this because I feel it's good to share good stuff with people. Use these at your own discretion, if things don't work, use something else!)

Anyway, all that aside. Here is a list of five random web apps+browser extensions I use to make my day more productive and awesome than it already is. Because, awesomeness is not a condition, it's a habit. Here goes.

1) Thinkery :: I recently discovered Thinkery and I use it as much as I can in my browser and through the day. There is a very brilliant Thinkery extension in the Chrome App Store which I hit a lot when I am saving articles for reading later, clipping quotes off web, or just making my to-do lists. What I like about this web-app/extension is how simple and useful it is.

2) Clearly :: I read a lot of articles on web. Many times the white background and black text don't cut it and I need something more. That something more is Clearly. One click on the extension's button and an overlay converts the whole article into an easy to read format. This one is made by the Evernote team, so you can also send articles to your Evernote account, an added bonus. Find this one in Chrome App Store, also available for Firefox.

3) NowDoThis.com ::  This website does one thing and does it very well. To do lists don't get any simpler than this. I'd hate to explain this. So, check it out after reading the article.

4) www.notepad.cc :: There are many free online notepads which you can use for some instant writing. What makes this one special is ability to assign a URL, a password and sharing the note with others. Plus, go full screen by hitting F11, and you've got a distraction free text editor in your browser. Hit F11 again to exit full screen mode :)

5) Hotot! :: This is a neat little Twitter client for Chrome browser. Get it from Chrome Web App Store It's better than Tweetdeck or the twitter website. There are columns, themes and lot of retweet options as well as desktop notifications. Total win in all cases. Also, Hotot is a kind of rabbit. I think. Hotot is perfect for people who scan a lot of news, views and conduct research on twitter, this app is a solid combination of looks and powerful features. It is also very useful if you want to stalk people.

So, these are just random five out of lot of webapps, extensions, plug-ins I use, there will be more, some time later. Maybe another article about the Android Apps I use? Yes, let's see. Meanwhile, i hope you enjoy these. I didn't discuss the popular apps, just wanted to talk about some of the lesser known ones.

That's about it.

Drop a comment if you've got something to say, or catch me on twitter @69fubar

(P.S :: I was writing this article in gmail, which decided to bonk on me, had to copy past the text quickly in notepad.cc before gmail logged me out!)

Five Questions To Ask Yourself Before Hitting Publish

Now, before you hit publish on that next blog post, ask yourself these five questions.

1) Is this post useful? Useful for the readers, of course.

2) Is this post timeless? Will it be relevant after two or five years.

3) Is this post readable? Avoid blocks of text. This is internet, not a newspaper. Be precise.

4) Is this post in flow? Read it to yourself once, if you hear gaps, edit.

5) Is this post vocal? Words talk, if they don't, they should. Making them talk is your job.

Just five questions, if one or all are green on your dashboard go ahead and hit publish!

More stories after I clear my head of other thoughts.

Cheers!

The Wrap Up of the last 21 posts

Hey all, a wrap which was due last Sunday, but it is here now, so fret not. It's time we talked. This is about the story arc that I wrote from mid-March to somewhere around mid-April. It was good fun, for me at least. Story of a DJ trapped in a tower, outside forces, magical and musical at work. Weird characters that got weirder as the story progressed. A dream space where things were not what they seemed and other stuff of the similar kind. 

Fun? Yeah, it was, in some ways, in other ways not so much. 

The story of X was very different from anything I've written before. When I normally start an arc, i know the schedule of my month. I know I won't have any traveling requirements or any big distractions that will pull me away from the computer. It is a shitty reason, I mean, writers do have to travel, but for some psychological reason, when I start an arc, i like to finish it in a single frame of mind. And travel, fucks up your mind as well as routine. I was not able to maintain a routine for this arc. But then again, I didn't want to. Why? Because this time I wanted to see if a loose and fluid structure works for writing as I wanted to. This approach had some negative points and some positive points, but it's unlikely that I'll repeat this experiment again. 

About the story.

There was something about pyramids. There was something about a low, heavy bass influenced music. There was something about violent and aggressive characters who kill without any real motivation or reason. And there was the theme of going back home. X went back to his home. Where was it? Who WAS the person called X? These are some questions and I bet there are many more that in the heads of some of most of you. And believe me, these questions are in my mind too, and I am the one who wrote that story. So, well, like any good storyteller, I am going to answer any questions that you might have in your mind.  

Let's brainstorm on this a little bit and then I'll tell you what I have in mind for this whole story.

Drop a line in the comments.

Cheers!

Thanks for reading!

P.S - Thanks to Twitter gang for the encouragement, patience, feedback, ideas and well, overall amazingness :)

He Smiled.

The last thought on Cin's mind was how cold the water would be once they'd hit it. But it was warm, almost hot. Stifling heat enveloped her body and she started to sweat immediately. She took a breath and all she smelled was the heat of desert. She knew she was near the pyramid. A hand grabbed her wrist. She looked up to see X picking her up. 

"Come on doctor, we need to make some noise." He grunted as he picked her up. He was weak. Getting weaker. She saw that his close cropped black hair was showing gray and his skin was a paling yellow. They supported each other and half stumbled towards the pyramid that stood proud in the distance. Cin saw her tent at the base of the pyramid and pointed X toward it. The flap of the tent was open and she called out to her guide inside it. The head of the guide rolled to her feet in an answer.

The butcher calmly walked out of the tent. His hands were dripping with blood and gore.

He smiled.

"Hi, kids. Ready to die?"

The butcher lunged at the couple. X pushed Cin away from the butcher's reach and got into the butcher's path himself. The big man lifted X right off his feet and slammed him into the ground. 

"Music!" X managed to scream before butcher closed his hands around X's neck and started to squeeze the air out of him.

"I'm going to rip your head off, pretty boy."

Cin stumbled inside the tent and looked for the console on her table. Fortunately, it was on. She selected a track at random and pumped the volume to 11.

The music started to build and outside the tent butcher started to scream. He got up off X and rushed inside the tent, but then X was on him. He kicked the legs from under the butcher and put a knee in the small of his back. The big man ate dust as the music continued to build, and build and build. X bent the butcher's arm behind him and kept pulling till the bones broke with a sickening crunch. The bloodlust was on him. He was singing words with the music but they made no sense. His fingers dug into butcher's face and his hands started to pull his head. 

"Stop!" Cin screamed over the sound of music, "you're killing him!"

But X was in his own world. He was riding the music, riding it above the pyramids and the sand dunes, and with the butcher's head in his hands.

And then, the bass dropped. 

And X ripped the butcher's head off his neck. He raised his grisly trophy above his head and roared in defiance. 

The blood from butcher's neck spritzed into the tent, coloring everything red and black. His heart, still pumping blood in defiance of the fact that it was not getting any signals from the brain. The droplets of blood touched the music console and started to sizzle. The music got even louder. The volume went higher and higher. Cin's ears started to bleed and she fell the floor, curled in a fetal position, cradling her head between her arms. X threw the butcher's bleeding head away and went up to the console. He slammed his hand on the console and a knob split the skin of his palm. He closed his fist and blood dripped on to the machine. The sound of music changed. From earlier hard and harsh sound, it took a deep, bassful and heavy sound. 

The pyramid reacted to the sound. The top of the pyramid started to glow. It burned with a fierce blue energy and split into a beam and shot into the sky. 

A similar beam of red appeared in the sky and met the blue beam halfway. X's message was received. His ride would be meeting him soon. 

Something pulled the hem of his jeans. He looked down. It was Cin. She had crawled into the tent, her bleeding ears had left a trail of blood behind her. 

"Why all this?" she asked.

X smiled.

-----------------------

THE END.

I'll write an after-burner post tomorrow explaining all your questions. So, in case there are any, leave them in comments :)

Facing The Beast

The door opened before Cin's hand touched the surface to knock on it. She stood there stupidly with her hand in the air as a boy of 19-20 looked at her, holding open the door. He grabbed her hand and pulled her in. 

"Not a good time to be outside, a storm is coming."

His voice was of a man who is not used to talking. Cin noticed that he wore only black clothes and his hair was cropped close to his skull. She looked around the room. There was a sense of cleanliness inside there like the person living there didn't want to create too much fuss about how he lived. Almost like a monk. There was a DJ console on a table near a window and it had some advanced gadgetry that even Cin was unaware of. 

"We need to get out of this place," he said, and motioned Cin to the window. 

"We can go back the way I came up from."

"That way is gone. We can never go back where we come from."

Cin turned back to look at the door which she had come in from. All she saw was a plain wall with no indication of the door. 

"By the way," the boy said, "my name is X."

He took her hand and pulled her close to him. His breath smelled of mint and ash.

"There is a pyramid," Cin said, remembering the task from ages ago.

"I know." He showed her his palm where the tattoo of the pyramid glowed in all its glory.

"I need you to trust me for what's coming next." His gaze was deep and for a second it made Cin forget all her fear.

"I don't trust you," she said.

"You're a smart girl," he replied. "And I am sorry for doing this."

He enveloped her into his arms and jumped from the window, towards the boiling sea below.

As they fell, maybe they kissed.

---

This is penultimate chapter.

Chapter 20.

We finish this tomorrow.

Mothers And Daughters

Cin looked at her mother and burst out crying. The way up here had taken its toll on her. She could not hold it in any longer. Her mother smoothened the bottom of her dress and sat down by her side. She smelled of the sea and rot, just like everything in the bloody tower. 

"There, there," she said, "my baby. Don't cry. It's all fine now."

"It's not fine," Cin bawled, "I can't climb these stairs and the boy is up there somewhere!"

"There is no boy here, my darling. No boy. It's just an empty tower."

"But you're here!"

"I came here to warn you about the evil in this place." The ghost of her mother sighed. "You must go back now."

"I won't go back without taking the boy with me."

"Cin," her mother sighed again and a green moss covered water bubble broke out of her nose, "walk back, my love. That's the best for all of us."

Cin wiped tears from her eyes with the back of her hands. "No, mother. I am not going back."

Her mother looked at her and mindlessly scratched an itch on her cheek. Her fingers brushed and tore through the paper thin, wet skin and dove deeper inside. The face fell apart in pieces and Cin found herself looking at the face of the old man. He put a hand on Cin's cheek, the touch was warm and it made her skin sting. His hand traveled to her hair, and frozen with fear, Cin couldn't stop the old man from getting up and lifting her off the ground with him. 

"Now, little girl, if you don't go, I'll have to send you back."

He lifted Cin higher by her hair and just when he was about to throw her plunging to her death down the stairs, something slammed into him. A big vibrating hulk of meat and beats, moving with the speed of sound, a blur through the air and the old man crashed into a wall of the tower. The bass beast bore into his torso, breaking him, twisting and turning him into thin wisps of steam. The old man's wheezing screams filled the stale air in the tower. Cin did't stop to see the horror, she tore through the stairs, up and up till her breath raked through her lungs like hot charcoal and her veins were full of acid. 

At last she reached the door. There was a large X carved into the outside of the door. 

She raised her hand to knock...

----

Chapter 19. 

Man!

Closer Now

The waves embraced Cin like a lost lover. 

The dog thing jumped into the water after her, the surfboard long forgotten in the waves. It swam for Cin, grabbed her arm in its mouth and started to pull her deeper. The waves whirled and swirled around them, frothing and bubbling with chaos and noise. There was nothing that Cin could do anymore to know the up from down or make any sense of anything around her. It was sheer chaos and the water was pressuring its way inside her mouth. She felt herself blackout from the lack of oxygen in her lungs. The dog  thing kept pulling her in some direction only known to itself. Just as she was about to swallow her first desperate mouthful of water, the dog thing pulled her out of the water's surface. Instead of water, she sucked in lungful of tepid oxygen. She fell on the cold surface and coughed till she could not cough anymore. 

Finally, when she got hold of her senses, she got up and saw where she was. It was a small, dark room with a door at one end. The only smell in the room was of the sea and she saw that she had been dragged into the room through a hole in the ground where the water still frothed. She was glad that she didn't pass out and exit this place. She could feel that she was near her objective of finding the boy and once she found him who knew how she'd get out of here. She went up to the door and pushed it open. It opened to a staircase that wound up inside the tower. Cin climbed and climbed. Weary as she was from the ordeal in the village and the swim through the water, she was soon tired and wound up. The stairs just didn't seem to end. Finally, when she gave up hope and sat down on a stair, waiting for some kind of divine intervention to show her the path. She heard footsteps coming towards her from the stairs above her. She craned her neck to get a look at whoever was coming down to meet her. A rank smell of rot assailed her nostrils even before she saw the person. A twinge of horror shot up her spine as multiple thoughts of who it could be fluttered through her mind. She was afraid that it'd be the butcher with his flattened face and mad eyes but it was something worse than her imagination. 

It was her mother. In a wedding dress. 

"Hello, daughter dearest," she said and sat down besides Cin.

----

Chapter 18. By the time you reach this stage in a story, it seems just like any other story in the world. 

To the new and old readers, thanks for sticking around. I do this for me first, and then you ;)

Follow The Beast

The Bass Beast thrummed with latent energy in its veins. It had killed the bad man who wanted to hurt the nice girl in the cottage. The bad man had just evaporated. Now the girl was staring at it with fear in her eyes. The beast knew fear, but there was nothing to be afraid of now that the bad man was gone. It moved towards the girl and gently placed a paw on her foot. Cin felt a gentle vibration at the skin of her foot. It was a paw that slowly materialized from thin air. The thing's vibrations were stopping and it's shape slowly made itself visible. It was a strange hybrid, half lion, half dog, fully scary. But the face of the animal did not look menacing now. Its tongue hung to one side and it had eyes blue as the deepest ocean. It gently took Cin's hand in its mouth and started to pull her. She got its intent and started to follow. 

At the end of the beach, where sand met the sea a surfboard was floating. The dog thing climbed on the surfboard and then it barked deeply at Cin. Reluctant, Cin got on the surfboard. She had never surfed before, the only surfing she saw on TV and anyway, she knew that the sea was calm and there was no way the surfboard was going to move forward. But the surfboard moved. The dog thing sat at the point of the surfboard and paddled like hell. The sea, calm a moment before started to churn before the surfboard. Cin grabbed the sides of the board to keep herself from falling off. 

Ahead in the distance, something appeared out of the sea. 

A black tower. So high that it brought tears to Cin's eyes to just look at it.

The surfboard rocked harder in the choppy waters but the dog thing kept paddling for the tower. A constant roar filled the air. The sea was screaming. Cin looked behind her and saw a wave, tall as a building, coming for her. She took a deep breath, ready to go under in the black water. 

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Phew, chapter 17? i think so. It's all getting blurry now.

Bringing The Noise

There are games for players and then there are players for games. This was the game of noise and the player of this game was born to bring the noise. X sat in his tower, played  his music and sent a monster to the island to face the butcher. A Bass Beast made of soundwaves and bass beats crawled up from the sea, it sniffed the air, felt the sound around it, and focused itself on the fast beating heart of the girl called Cin. Steam rose from its nostrils and its paws made heavy imprints in the wet beach sand. It locked on to the sounds on the island, only the butcher's heart beat in the sync that it didn't like at all. It had a target. And the target was going to be eliminated.

The butcher had his hand wrapped around Cin's arm when he felt the noise. It reverberated through his ribcage and made his heart skip a beat. His teeth rattled in his skull and for an instant he was overcome with the shitty feeling of chewing foil. He left Cin in the hut and walked out into the sun. The animal made from bass stood before him, and it was a strange hybrid of shapes and animal species. The Bass Beast vibrated with such heavy beats that it was difficult to make out its shape in any kind. The only thing clear was its intent. Death. It was a predator. And it had its sight fixed on the prey. The butcher looked at the quickly shifting image of the beast in front of his watering eyes. It circled the butcher, keeping its mouth pointed at the man all the time. Then the Bass Beast began to growl. The low growl sounded like the running of a mad machine that has escaped the control of gears and is now on its own. A mad sound of hate, anger, and bloodlust.

The Bass Beast growled at the butcher and the butcher screamed back at it. He had killed enough to get to where he was, and he was not going to be stopped by something that only growled and made noises. The man and animal lunged at each other and the resulting noise from the collision flattened the huts around them to the ground. Cin crawled out of rubble of one hut and looked at what was making all the noise. The butcher was bloodied and tired from the fighting and he was cut in many places. His left arm was hanging at an awkward angle that arms are not supposed to hang at. He limped around something fast and blurry, his face snarled in pain and anger. 

Cin saw a shadow move fast and pin the butcher under its invisible mass. She could barely make out the shape of animal, but it changed so quickly that she was not sure what she saw. All she heard was a low thrum that shook the ground under her feet and made her feel sick in her head. She saw the butcher's head slowly bulging under pressure from something invisible. One of his eyes popped out of skull and a small geyser of blood erupted from his skull. Then, with a sickening crunch, the butcher's skull was crushed flat to the ground. Cin bent over and puked her guts out.

Back in the real world, the butcher woke up with a scream that all the drugs in his system couldn't stifle. The old man was sitting by his side and he had a cup of tea in his hand. 

"The boy," the butcher said, "the boy cheated!"

The old man poured another cup of tea for him. 

"He will be punished for his stupidity. I'll go inside and punish him myself."

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Yeah, was away from the internet for about two-three days. So here it is.

A very special thanks to @tweettabulous @IndianIdle and @himanshumadhu who kept asking me about the story and where I was taking it next. 

We're gonna wrap this one up soon. Some 6-7 more chapters, next ones might be slightly bigger ;)

Cheers!

Cheating the Game

X stood by his window and looked out to the horizon. The sky was the color of gray steel and the clouds were gathering again for another bout of rain. It always rained here. Sometimes less, often more. He was cold and all he sensed from the island was disturbance. A mixing of forces and powers that were not meant to be. Odds were not in his favor, the darkness was rising. He needed to balance the odds, even if it meant cheating. 

So, X cheated, and created a monster.

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On the shore of sea where X was imprisoned in the black tower, the Hazers were celebrating the ceremony of choosing their new queen. A woman, with magic mirrors on her eyes and a stone in her hand. A woman who went by the name of Cin. A woman who was scared and sacred. And slowly getting high on the smoke of all the herbs that the natives were burning. They were also going to burn the big and scary thing they'd caught. They were going to burn it to honor their new queen. The thing was grinning though, for some strange reason. 

Cin walked up the thing, also known as the butcher in some other world. 

"I'm going to beat you," she said, "I will find the boy and take him back to the land of living."

"Haze is a strange place, m'dear," the butcher growled at her. 

"So far it is in my favor. You're going to burn and I will let these people do it, because I know you'll wake up from your sleep wherever you are."

"I might wake up brain damaged or deranged."

"That, is totally your problem. M'dear."

She walked away and left the hazers to take care of the butcher. They threw him careless on a pile of dry wood and sat around gathering kindling for the fire. The butcher worked the bonds on his arms. They felt loose earlier but suddenly he felt like his wrists had grown bigger. The hazers set fire to the kindling and stuffed it into the makeshift pyre they had created for the butcher. Dark smoke erupted from the kindling and small fires started to inside the pile of wood. Butcher's clothes started to smoke and his hair caught fire. The Hazers watched him with bored, spaced out looks on their faces. Only Cin laughed at him because she had beaten him at last. 

Inside the fire, the butcher found the cold little core of his soul, where he had put the pillow on his wife's face and burned the whole lot of people in a nightclub. He remembered that fire was his friend, his favorite and these people had given him something that made him feel alive once again in this godless land. The flames licked his skin like hungry lovers and burned through his bonds. His clothes were on fire, so was his hair, so was his skin, but in his mind, he was cool. He got up from his make shift pyre, grabbed the nearest spaced out hazer and ripped him into two chunks. He carnaged through the island like a force of nature, killing the natives with his bare hands till the blood of their bodies soaked through his hair and skin and doused the fire, leaving him a stinging, burnt scar of a man. He was still looking for the girl, Cin, wherever the fuck she was hiding. 

He found her deep inside one of the huts with the other women, who had formed a protective ring around her. They were willing to die for her. So he killed them all. 

Finally, the butcher faced Cin. He was going to take his time on her. His hands itched to tear her throat out as she cowered back into the corner of the hut. He grabbed her arm and started to drag her out. 

Outside, a loud noise fell upon the village like a hammer of an angry god. The ground under the butcher's feet shook with the vibrations. It felt like an earthquake. Then the sound blasted the air again, like machine parts grinding against each other and iron demons getting crucified in an industrial hell. 

Silence stretched on like a dying relationship.

And then, the bass dropped. 

This was X cheating the system by taking part in the game where he was the prize. 

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Chapter 15. The pawn becomes the player. 

Next, Bass Monster VS The Butcher

Big and Scary

Haze stank.

It was an all permeating stink that reached into the very pores of a person's skin and made all the hope sweat through. Cin was still hopeful. She had found a small muddy river and now had her head dunked into the water. She drank the water that might make her sick later, but for now it tasted like manna from heaven. She was still clutching the stone for some reason and so engrossed with drinking the water that she didn't realize the crowd of Hazers that had gathered behind her. 

One of the little Hazers walked up right behind her and put a piece of cloth over her shoulders. She shrieked again and almost hit the creature with the stone in her hand. It shrank away from her. She saw the crowd and realized that they were not there to harm her. All of them had a benign peace and calmness in their eyes. Their faces were big and round and...cute. Some of them moved towards her, they took her hands and urged her to follow them. Their small shuffling gait made them easy to follow and Cin followed. It is a tribe of women, Cin thought.

The butcher was dragged through rough foliage and branches struck his face. Every strike from a leaf only made him calmer and saner. He was one focused motherfucker. He was going to kill all these things whoever they were. And for now, this was the only delicious thought in his head. He twisted his arms and tested the bonds that tied his hands. He could break these bonds. He knew it. The ropes were tied by an amateur and their whole tribe was going to pay for that little mistake. The men dragged the "thing" they had caught to their village where the women would have prepared for the feast. They were going to butcher the new thing they had caught because it rode a beast of iron and its skin was all black. 

Cin was led to a small encampment where children of the Hazers played by hiding between the grass huts. Everything was so green and plants grew anywhere there was soil. The strange stench was even stronger here and Cin was beginning to suspect the source of the stink. She looked closely at one of the little people. This one's eyes were huge and little red veins were standing out in the whites of her eye. She realized what the smell was. All these females were high.  They talked to her in their high pitched ululating voice and she could do nothing but stare at them. A sudden noise caught her attention and she looked in the direction where the noise was coming from. 

The men of the tribe were coming back and they had caught something big and scary. 

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Hat tip to @tweettabulous for suggesting the word Hazers! She is awesome, you should follow her on twitter :)

This is chapter 14