Off The Edge

by Rahul Sharma

  The crown was kept in a niche above the rishi’s bed. And the rishi rarely left his bed except for his baths and to pluck his meals. As it was his last day, the South African bathed in the creek with the rishi and the other three disciples. I, faking a stomach upset, stayed behind. While the four disciples and the rishi bathed in the holy creek, I did something holier-I stole from my teacher. It took less than three minutes- walk into the rishi’s room, steal the crown, walk out. I slipped the crown into the African’s suitcase and went back to bed, victorious.

  The four men saw off the African (and his suitcase) and went to the orchard to pluck out lunch. Victorious, I fell asleep. By evening, the whole scenario had changed.

  The South African had been caught in the woods with the crown in his hand-he was checking if it was real since he couldn’t trust me. The rishi’s CCTV camera picked him up and the rishi quickly texted the local police, who arrested him. He named the three disciples, other than me, were also arrested for scheming. Thankfully, nobody named me since I was a key stakeholder in all four men’s businesses.

  The day I, the only disciple, left, the rishi gave me a small package. In it was the king of Nepal’s crown. The rishi dramatically confided in me that the crown would never be safe with a simple man like him, thus it was ideal for him to give it to me, a dear disciple of his.

  Trying my best not to whoop with joy or faint with irony, I accepted the package, keeping in mind that silence is golden.

  The rich don’t feel guilt.

  ~~~

  To Avoid Pain

  Footsteps and grunts echoed loudly in the night as an old, ragged man tottered down the empty street. With a loud hiccup, he grabbed a lamp post to steady himself and hummed a few bars of Mozart under his breath. In the strong light of the lamp, one could see his bloodshot eyes had dark circles below them. His hair was a tangled grey mass and he hadn’t shaved, giving his already ash coloured face a rougher look.

  Tiny white clouds erupted from his nose and mouth every time he exhaled. But the man seemed oblivious of the near zeros temperature, and he continued humming and whistling. He swayed from side to side as he continued down the street, trying and failing to walk in a straight line. He paused, and took a large gulp from the opaque, unmarked bottle he held in his right hand. He shuddered violently, coughed softly and carried on down the road.

  His breathing was in loud rasps that carried easily through the cold, quiet air of the night. His appearance seemed like he was once a rich man who had fallen upon bad times. His olive green button down shirt clung on to his thin body with sweat. His designer jacket lay in a dumpster a few blocks away, discarded by him for some obscure purpose. His, once well pressed, grey trousers were ragged around the ankles. Several bead necklaces hung around his neck, rattling whenever he shuddered too violently.

  With a final moan of resignation, the man collapsed on the footpath, face first. The bottle in his hand broke with a sharp crack as it fell on the pavement and an amber fluid flowed down the sidewalk, into the drain. The man adjusted his face, making himself feel more comfortable on the hard, cold pavement, mumbled something, and fell into a deep slumber.

  **********

  Loud noise. A continuous chatter, harsh and unpleasant to his ears. He opened his eyes, realizing that the air he breathed was no longer the fresh and pleasant air of the outdoors, but rather stale and musty. The floor beneath him felt harder than the pavement did the last night. Harsh daylight flooded into the little room through a barred window. He could see bright colours and vigorous movement on the other side of the vertical bars that blocked the entrance to his room.

  He rubbed his eyes and hoisted himself up with a grunt. He groaned, his head felt horrible, his mouth tasted bitter. For several minutes, he passively stood behind the bars and watched the goings on on the other side of the bars. Men in uniform marched in and out of the room, often leading people behind them. Phones were constantly ringing and the hubbub of voices hurt his head even more.

  With the wave of his hand, he caught the attention of a plump officer who was idling near his cell. On seeing the elderly inmate waving, the officer waddled over.

  “You can’t arrest a man just for taking a nap, I can sue you for it”

  “I’m sorry sir, in these troubled times everybody is treated as a potential security threat unless proved otherwise”

  “I see. And how do I get myself OUT of this hell hole?”

  “We need identification proof and we’ll run it through the sys-”

  The officer was cut short as the man rudely shoved a driver’s license into his face.

  “Can I leave now?”

  **********

  Half an hour later, he found himself standing outside the police station, in the fresh, yet polluted, air of the morning. The sun had risen and the traffic was steadily piling up on the streets of the city. Briskly walking down the sidewalk, he began to reflect. He kind of regretted doing what he did last night. And now it continued to haunt him. He had even dreamed about it in his slumber. He doubted he’d ever stop thinking about it.

  He wasn’t particularly bothered about being holed up in the police department for the night-it was just bad publicity, which he could deal with quite easily. He had other, more serious things on his mind than bad publicity.

  He knew, even last night, that it was a reckless decision to drink the tonic. But, after what he had witnessed, it was almost necessary to do something reckless just to distract himself. He resolved to find and talk to the man he had met last night, the man who had showed him everything-the one who called himself “the mystic”.

  He was sipping a decaf at a street side café, watching the cars honk at each other, when he realized that the tonic facilitated the perfect cover up, he did not remember where he had met the mystic, or where the man had taken him. Heck, he didn’t even remember how and where the police had found him. The only thing that he COULD remember from the last night was the face of the “mystic”-long, hairless and deathly pale. With tiny, piercing, black eyes.

  With a flash of recollection, he remembered that something happened in his apartment last night. It all started in his apartment uptown. Perhaps he could get a clue of the mystic’s identity from there. Seized with a grim purpose, he downed the last of the decaf, left a generous tip and sprinted off towards his apartment, a few blocks away.

  He arrived at his doorstep a few minutes later, completely breathless. His age was catching up with him. He doubled over, panting heavily, for a few minutes before throwing the door open and bursting into his spacious and luxurious apartment.

  He was in the middle of a forest. Few pillars of yellow sunlight streamed through the dense green canopy above. He was completely lost and had no idea how to leave the mossy clearing he found himself in. strange cries echoed from the depths of the forest. He looked around frantically, trying to find a way out, but he was stuck.

  A harsh, inhuman cry pierced the air as a sharpened spear whizzed over his head, ruffling his grey hair, and embedded itself into a tree trunk with a loud thud. Instinctively, he dropped to his knees, with his hands over his head, in an attempt to protect himself. But he heard the footfalls of the tribal, and he knew that his end was approaching rapidly.

  He looked up and saw the dark skinned native staring it him. Its eyes were bright white, contrasting against its jet black skin. The eyes shone with an evil hatred, from beneath a broad forehead which was painted in war paint. He still wasn’t sure what he had done to earn the native’s hate, but he knew he was going to suffer regardless.

  The tribal lifted a hand over his head, his eyes wide, and hooted shrilly-some sort of war cry. In his hand was a wickedly sharp, glistening white fang. The fang glinted in the half light, covered in some unknown fluid-poisonous, no doubt.

  With a final cry, the small native brought his arm down, and instantaneously, he could feel horrible pain in his chest as the six inch long fang penetrated right through his sternum.

  He choked- the
fang had pierced his wind pipe. Pain tore through every nerve in his body like a wildfire. The venom began to spread through his blood. His breathing turned into a low wheeze, as he collapsed on the ground. He looked up and saw the native, dressed only in a loincloth, settle himself down on the ground, watching his victim die with a calm patience.

  He looked into the pitiless black eyes of his murderer and saw an infinite abyss-one he was soon going to plummet down. He coughed, and spat out a glob of blood. His vision began to turn red, and the noises of the jungle began to die down…

  Pain was his universe now, and even using his mind pained him. He stopped trying to pull the fang out of his chest, and his hand fell pathetically by his side, useless. He stopped struggling and tried to wait out the pain. The pain flooded every pore of his body. He took one last gasp of air, which gave him infinite pain, and then he died.

  His face shone with sweat as he collapsed on the leather sofa. His breathing was fast and shallow. He could feel his heart beating against his rib cage. Desperately, he called out to his butler for a glass of water, and he was shocked by how weak his voice sounded. He waited for the water, trying to calm himself down, and held his head in his hands, trying to stop his mind from spinning out of control once again.

  The mystic had warned him of flashbacks-random bursts of the vision he had experienced last night. He held on to the sofa, trying to assure himself that he was not dead yet, but deep down inside, he knew that visions of his own death-what he had experienced last night-were going to haunt him until the moment actually presented itself.

  James, the balding butler, delivered the man’s glass of water and left him to his thoughts, as he always did. As he gulped down the cool, refreshing water, he heard the words of the mystic echoing in his head, and nearly choked.

  “No matter WHAT you do to avoid it, you CAN’T change the way you die.”

  Despite this warning, the old man had asked the mystic to show him his own death. And he had. He had KILLED the old man-made him experience the pain and horror of his own death. In the middle of a rainforest, murdered by a native. His inevitable death.

  No. he would not die that way. Not with such pain. The materialistic hedonist that he was, he could not tolerate such pain. Still unable to calm his racing heart, he tried to work it out logically. If he wanted to avoid that death, he would have to avoid the rainforest. And he could avoid the rainforest if……

  He made up his mind on the spot. He had little to lose. His affairs were in order and he had achieved everything in life that he had wanted to.

  With a grim determination, he stomped into his large bedroom and locked the door. How could he fail? He pulled open a drawer and picked up a tiny pistol. With shaking fingers, he loaded the gun and held it to his temple-there was no way he would live through this. Now way he’d go to a jungle and get stabbed.

  He winced as he heard the click of the little gun cocking. He took one final look at himself in the enormous mirror in the bedroom-his grey hair, his grey skin, his grey eyes, his well toned physique- took a deep, deep breath, and pulled the trigger.

  **********

  In the shade of a big oak tree in the park, an extraordinarily thin, pale, bald man smiled at his newspaper. He folded the newspaper carefully, tucked it under his arm, and set off briskly towards his home.

  All it had taken was one simple hallucination. One projection, and he was a million bucks richer. His equipment was doing him proud. he had built it himself and it hadn’t yet failed to produce a lifelike hallucination.

  He reached his tiny little apartment in the middle of the city and walked in. he hated the people who showed off their wealth by living in large, luxurious and impractical houses. This was an added benefit, seeing that most of his victims were of that sort.

  Once inside his home, he meticulously cut out the article that had made his day(much sooner than he had expected)-“millionaire kills self after being found drunk on the streets”. He used his printer/scanner/copier to make a copy of it. He slipped his pale, slender hands into padded gloves before picking up the warm sheet, folding it into thirds and placing it in a thick white envelope. Before he put it in, however, he wrote “one million pounds” followed by a bank account number on the back of the sheet. He sealed the envelope, addressed it, and left it on the table, making a mental note to send it as soon as possible.

  The original article was carefully placed in a thick file labelled “portfolio”

  He switched on the radio and found himself a carton of apple juice from the refrigerator- he never touched liquor. He stood on the balcony of his apartment and sipped his juice as he watched the world go by below, enjoying its lunch hour. He chuckled and nodded to himself when he heard the song playing on the radio:

  “Another one bites the dust”

  ~~~

  A world of chaos: My mind

  An untidy scrawl littered the page as I began to write. The “Scritch scratch” of the led pencil was almost inaudible over the gentle strumming of the guitar from my iPod(Paul McCartney’s guitar if I’m not much mistaken) as the Beatles play for my ears.

  Finding an object or theme to write about can often be quite a challenge. Most of my stories till now have been derived from news items or just random things. Often, a single sentence(uttered by me) sparks off an entire story.

  A gentle rumble occasionally rocked my hand as the cell phone on the table vibrated with an incoming text. I snatched up the phone and replied- a purposeless conversation held just to pass our time. The sender of the message is in another part of the country-a city I have visited only once.

  My stories are rarely very complex-to me. They may be short and unexplained, but never too complex. There are few references to history (except when I have created that history) and even fewer secret organizations. My stories may seem quite un-happenable, but quite possible (in my opinion)

  If I had the resources and/or guts and/or motive, I would definitely carry out 6’s tasks. I would also converse in 143 languages and build a space shuttle out of paper clips. I would climb Mount Everest on my hands and sacrifice a goat on the summit.

  If you(the eager but dull reader) have found no trace of sarcasm in the above paragraph, you are a superb….DOLT!

  As I sharpen my pencil to continue writing, pencil shavings form a strata to cover my study table. The table is supposed to be a work station. Its more like a miniature junkyard. A fine, even layer of dust is omnipresent on my table surface. I believe it protects the beautiful surface of the table from any physical damage. I say “physical” damage because the table’s MORALE has probably gone below zero.

  My stories, I reflect, are very morose in nature: They often regard killing, bombing, fighting, drugs and murder. This, I feel, is because of the world I was brought up in. 9/11 took place when I was around seven years old. I’ve always hated bloodshed and violence. And through some ironic bit of psychology, I write mainly about the said topics. The human mind is strange.

  The maracas, pianos and “ooh oooh”s of the Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” enter my ears. I always loved that song. The Devil is portrayed as a man with class, not some brute who gobbles men. I would love to star in a music video of the song. In a tuxedo. It was the WORDS of the song that appealed to me, more than the music, which is also good!

  I often yearn to write a story about time travel, but it is the “How” that often escapes me. Time travel results in status quo for the present-no change at all. Whatever you do in the past is what makes THIS situation in the present. Confusing, isn’t it? That’s time travel for you. Travelling to the future is one option I still should consider…

  My thoughts often make me question things. Some things I question are: The purpose of life, the concept of a “word”, the inspiration for a song(often answered by my trusty friend called the internet), and of course, the most questioned concept, my sanity. All these questions and pondering thoughts disillusion me. Reality and Dream merge as on e. I unfurl my leathery wings
and fly to the roof. The passing birds tell me about Einstein’s hair stylist. I sit atop the moon’s tallest mountain and write this…..passage. Like I said, Dream and reality merge into one. After all, this is only a dream.

  ###