The Gift - 8 - It All Ends in Fire

Razvik stood in the sunlight and let it wash all over him. He liked the subtle heat that spread through his skin and warmed his core with a golden glow. He was going to cause some mayhem, might as well enjoy the sunlight. He went back in the van that was parked some distance from the big bazaar.

"Will this end your problems?" he asked Elina.

"For some time to come. Without the bazaar, they can't send gifts out in the world. And without the gifts, strangers won't end up here."

Razvik nodded. "Hook up the keyboard. Let's do this."

The black keyboard shimmered in the dull light inside the van. One side of the van was occupied by a large screen on which a green cursor blinked with a muted urgency of waiting for something to happen.

Razvik took his place in front of the keyboard. He placed his fingers on the home keys, and started to type. The ground under the van shook and for a small moment his fingers were distracted from the keyboard. He got back on track and started to type. Outside, people were starting to scream. He had a maniac grin on his face by then. Elina looked out of the van's window and a shadow of doubt passed over her face. Had she gone too far by letting Razvik know what he was capable of? A geyser of molten lava erupted a few feet from the van and the heat made Elina shade her eyes and duck back into the van.

Wazif was looking at Razvik with a hypnotized expression on his face as the small man typed away to glory. The keystrokes grew louder in the small confines of the van and each time his finger struck the key, it jagged a ragged little nerve in Elina's brain. She knew the man had gone too far and it had to be stopped. She took out her gun and pointed it at Razvik's head. The van turned turtle in that instant. Elina fell into one of the seats and hung on as the van started to spin. Razvik sat in a floating bubble with his keyboard and the screen. Elina saw her gun float up to her face. It came closer and from the corner of her eye, she saw Razvik grin at her.

"What have I done?" she thought as the bullet sprayed her brains all over the dash of the spinning van. Razvik didn't stop typing. The van started to come apart around him and the pieces broke away. He floated there with his screen and his keyboard and he entered his final wish into the keyboard, crossed his arms and stared at the screen with a glaring anger.

The world around him started to bleed from the edges. There was a stink of sewage in the air and the wind picked up speed as it spun the broken fragments of the world that he had destroyed. There will be no more gifts. There will be no more travelers to this side. There will be no more of what once was. He took a deep breath and released it.

He was standing back in the field where he had entered the big tent. He looked at his watch. Only few minutes had passed and he could still make it back before the lunch time got over. He looked at where he had parked his car.

It was on fire.

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The End

The Gift - 7 - Home Keys

The gun to his head was less of a terror compared to the blinking cursor on the screen. He forced his mind to work. To say something. To make the fingers hit the keys and write something that will save him. And nothing appeared on the screen. The barrell of the gun pushed into his skull, sweat pored from his face and got into his eyes, but he could not take his hands off the keyboard to wipe off the sweat.

Then, something clicked, and his fingers moved.

The sweat disappeared from Razvik's face.

He felt the cool sensation of sweat taking off from his face and he smiled.

The gun is a carrot.

The gun in Elina's hand was a carrot. And this made her laugh. She laughed loud and hard, bent over double with the carrot in her hand like an obscene trophy.

"He did it!" She pointed the carrot at her brother who also had a smile on his face.

She bit into the carrot. "Look, Raz," she chomped around a piece of carrot in her mouth,"you've to help us, man."

He looked at her. How easily she had switched to asking for help when just a few seconds ago she was threatening to blow his brains out of his skull. But Razvik was a gentleman.

"Sure, what kind of help do you need?"

"You remember the fair where you first came to this side?"

Razvik nodded.

"We need to burn that shit to the ground. We can't have more people coming here. It's creating a havoc with the magical ecosystem."

"Why can't you do it?" he asked as he put his fingers on the home keys once more.

"We're not allowed. Only someone from outside and someone with the right set of skills can do something like that."

"The skills with the keys." Wazif added as he picked the dishes from the table. "We'll go there and then you can do your keyboard magic to make that place dust. Then you can go your way and we can rebuild this place the right way."

Razvik thought for a few seconds and then he nodded. This was a way to get back home for him and it'd also help these people. A voice in his head asked him, how far he was willing to go with the keyboard? He didn't know the answer.

The Gift - 6 - Moment of Truth

They ate their dinner in silence and the keyboard on the table just sat there like some animal shamed into silence. There was an animalistic glow about the keyboard and all that Razvik wanted to do was tap on its keys and write something amazing and disastrous with it. He didn't do any of that. Had Wazif not been present at the table, he might have risked a tap on the keyboard. Elina might have stopped him, but he was ready to take her on if it meant that he'd be able to spend time with the keyboard. 

He was lost in these thoughts when he realized that the other two had stopped eating and they were looking at him.

"Did you really say all that, buddy?" Wazif had a half-eaten chicken bone in his hand and now it was pointed at Razvik like it was some kind of accusatory finger. 

"No offense people, but this keyboard just looks too tempting."

"You want to type on it?" Elina asked.

"I sure as fuck do. You heard me thinking out loud."

Elina nodded as she put a piece of chicken back on her plate and wiped her hands with a table cloth.

"Fair enough. It's your gift and we are nobody to hold you back."

She got up from the table. "I'll hook up the keyboard to a screen."

"Fuck yeah!" Razvik raised his hand to Wazif but the big man still shooting him angry glances and Razvik had to make his high five into a half-hearted air pump gesture. 

Elina set up a screen on one of the walls of the hut and connected the keyboard to the screen. The screen blacked out and a blinking green cursor appeared on the screen. Razvik had a grin on his face and his fingers felt like they were going to tear off from his hands and start writing on the keyboard by themselves. 

"All yours," Elina motioned him towards the keyboard and Razvik didn't need to be told twice.

He placed his fingers on the home keys and his mind went blank. He had been looking forward to this but now when the moment of truth was in front of him, he didn't know what to type. He felt a cold circle of steel, the unmistakable shape of a gun barrel, press in the back of his neck. 

"Better start typing," Elina said, "or I'll paint the screen with your brains."

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One or two more.

The Gift - 5 - This Guy is Different

The hut was small but somehow it had ample space for a table with three chairs around it. The black man was busy at the pot, cooking the chicken he had chopped into small pieces. He told Razvik to set up the table for three. There were plates and spoons in a cupboard at the back wall and Razvik busied himself with setting up the table as he kept thinking about the girl from the market.

Elina. That was her name. As beautiful as she was. While they prepared, the black man, Wazif, told Razvik about Elina. How she was tasked with taking care of all those who came to get their gifts. There had been people before, but they all got lost in the forest. Razvik was the first one to reach the hut. And I followed only my sense of direction, thought Razvik.

There was sound of footsteps near the door of the hut and Elina walked in, silhouetted by the sun behind her, framing her hair in a golden halo. She had a package in her hand. It was the keyboard that Razvik had left somewhere back in the room.

She put the keyboard on the table where plates were arranged for dinner. She pulled a chair, sat down and held her face in her hands.

"Is everything okay?" Wazif asked her.

"This," she pointed at the keyboard, "and him, she pointed at Razvik, "are everything that is wrong."

"This guy is different, Wazif. He is not like anyone who's come through before."

"I told him that already," Wazif said as he brought a cooking pot to the table and started filling the plates with cooked chicken.

The keyboard sat in the middle of the table, unattended. The three sat around it and ate. They'd deal with the keyboard later. Razvik knew there were important things in life, but he was hungry and food never tasted any better than in this weird place.

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It ends in next part.

Been fighting a funky state of mind. But i'll finish this story before i blow my fuse.

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.

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