by Chamber Four
Willie watched the blob, its panicked arms flailing. He put the stone back by the door and regarded the blob some more. It was over at the wall now, pounding, pressing, jumping, looking for some means of escape.
Willie stood transfixed. He had never seen anything so pathetically desperate and frantic. Frankly, it freaked him out and made him want to eat pudding or ice cream. He’d even settle for stale, store-bought cookies. Didn’t he have some stale, store-bought cookies? Hadn’t he seen some in the cupboard? He would check it out. He would look for the cookies, eat them all, and then come back and kill the blob. Or maybe he would just kill the blob in the morning when it had calmed down. Absolutely. That was a much better plan. He would kill the blob in the morning. Decided, he turned off the basement light and left the screaming blob in the dark.
* * * *
Willie did not kill the blob in the morning. He slept in and his mom woke him yelling, “Hurry up! You’ll be late! Blah, blah, blah.” After school he had marching band and homework. Plus, he had a couple of big tests to study for. So it was three days before he had time to deal with the blob. Even then, it was sort of an afterthought. He was looking for his gym shoes and went down to the basement to see if they were there.
They weren’t. It almost seemed like the blob had been waiting for him. It fell down on its knees and started rocking back and forth. Willie bent his face toward the blob. The blob fell prostrate onto the sand.
“At least you’ve calmed down,” said Willie.
Willie almost had to laugh. These carbon-based life forms. Too funny.
“Ok, little guy,” said Willie. “If it’s that important to you. But you can’t be this pathetic. That’s just sad.”
Willie looked at the blob and thought. “How about this?” he said. He put his hand on the blob and pinched off a bit of clay. He rolled it in his hand, spit on it, added some more clay, and worked with it until he had another blob. This time, when the new blob began to leak salt water, Willie put the new blob down right next to the first blob and stroked its head, gently.
When the first blob lifted its stubby arms to attack the new blob, Willie made a barrier with his hand. Then he stroked both blobs on the top of their heads. The old blob made another move to attack. Willie made another barrier with his hand and then stroked both heads.
The new blob toddled over to the old blob. It put its hand on the old blob’s head and stroked it. The old blob froze. Little bumps popped up from its skin. It stepped back, confused. Then, tentatively, it took small, crouching steps toward the new blob. It ran a stubby hand on the new blob’s waist. It brought its stubby nose close to the new blob and smelled. It ran its nose over the surface of the blob and something seemed to click in the old blob, something seemed to happen, and the blob ran faster and faster in circles around the new blob, touching and smelling it, until, suddenly, the old blob fell to its knees and wrapped its arms around the new blob, contented.
“All right,” said Willie with satisfaction. “There you go.” And he turned off the light and went in search of his shoes.
* * * *
A week later, Willie checked in on the blobs. A third blob was now in the box.
“Cool,” whispered Willie.
“No way,” said Martin when Willie told him. “You made a reproducible carbon-based life form? That’s, like, really hard. You should have done that for your science fair project.”
“I know,” said Willie. “Even Bello would have to give me an A for that.”
“Bello’s head would explode for that.”
By lunch, Willie was a god. Everybody knew about his reproducing blobs. Everybody knew what an amazing thing he had done and what a usual genius he actually was. Everybody wanted to come see the reproducing blobs, but Willie’s mother would have none of it.
“I don’t want a bunch of kids, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah...” she said.
Still, Martin came, and then a few other kids came, so at least people knew that Willie wasn’t making things up. He really had done something cool. He really did deserve everyone’s praise.
Well, everyone’s praise but Mary Ellen Dilbeck’s. Mary Ellen did not praise Willie. Mary Ellen wouldn’t even talk to Willie.
“She still thinks you’re mean,” said Martin. “She’s telling everyone that it’s bad enough to give one blob self awareness and knowledge of its own impermanence, but to give it to a whole species is just evil.”
“Species? It’s three blobs.”
Within weeks, however, it wasn’t three blobs. It was seventy-five blobs. Then ninety-two blobs. Then one hundred and twenty blobs. With each passing day there were more and more blobs. Blobs filled the box. More than that, they wrecked havoc on the box—on each other. They fought over water. They fought over corn. They fought over blobs, over even the fricking sand, which was everywhere, which was worthless.
Willie would enter the room. He’d turn on the light. His shadow would pass over them. Only then would they stop their reproducing, their fighting, their weeping of salty tears and gnashing of tiny teeth. Only then would they still themselves and begin to tremble and bow, tremble and bow. Only then would there be peace. But then Willie would turn around, his shadow would lift, and—and wham!—and blobs would go fricking nuts all over again.
“Unpredictable.” That’s what Mrs. Kleeve had called them, and that’s what they were. That’s exactly what they were. But that was just the beginning. The blobs were dangerous. They were greedy and selfish. Yes, true, sometimes Willie witnessed intimate gestures of love and kindness. Mothers cradled babies. Strangers shared food, but that was nothing, that was incomparable to the constant grief they bestowed on one another. They beat each other for corn. They murdered for sand—fricking sand! They were obsessed with their own survival. It was as if they thought they were some valuable commodity, some precious gift, when they were a fricking science project. And not even a good science project: a B- science project.
It was enough to make Willie want to destroy the lot of them. “I mean, I don’t even like them anymore,” Willie told Martin. “They’re totally annoying, and they take so much time. Every day I’m in there building onto the box, throwing them loaves of bread that they just fight over.”
“Then get rid of them. There just blobs.”
Willie sighed. He knew. He knew they were just blobs. He knew they were just ephemeral short-lived whispers. But they depended on him. “If I adopt a dog,” said Willie. “I can’t just take it back to the pound if it pees on my carpet.”
“Sure you can,” said Martin. “People do it all the time.”
“I made the blobs,” said Willie. “I’m responsible for the blobs.”
Martin shrugged. “Whatever.”
Willie’s mother was less easygoing. “Those blobs have to go,” she told him. “They are stinking up the basement. I’m telling you, they smell. It’s disgusting down there.”
“Carbon-based life forms have simple excretory systems. It’s their physiology,” explained Willie.
“There are excretory systems and there is putrescence. Those blobs are putrescent. I want them out of the basement.”
“They’ve got to live somewhere.”
“Why? Why do they have to live somewhere? This was a science fair project. The science fair is over. And—since we are on the subject—let me say this. They take too much time. Do you think Howard Kleeve is spending all his hours babysitting carbon-based life forms? No. Howard Kleeve is studying math. Blobs are not going to get you into a good college, Willie.”
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Just fricking shut up already, thought Willie.
“Out of the basement, Willie. Out of the house.”
“Ok. Ok.” Jeez. Like he needed this too.
He went down to the basement. He stared down at the blobs. He watched as they stopped what they were doing. He watched as they trembled and bowed.
“What am I going to do with you?” he said. “You’re a lot a trouble, you know that?�
�� Then he picked up some screaming baby blob covered in sand and shit and handed it to its screaming mother looking for it in the cornfield.
At school now, Willie did nothing but worry about the blobs. He couldn’t kill them, but he couldn’t just let them spread their nasty pink blood everywhere either. And now he had to get them out of the basement too. Where the hell was he going to put these stupid blobs? What the hell was he going to do? It was too much. It was too much for one boy to deal with. At lunch, he dropped his head onto his lunch bag and kept it there even when his neck began to hurt.
The smell of Red Hots made him look up. There sat Mary Ellen. Right next to him. She didn’t look at him. Instead, she stared across the lunchroom. With a placid face that belied her biting voice, she said, “I hear you’ve got over three hundred of those blobs now. It’s not right, you know.”
He dropped his head back onto his lunch bag and felt his stomach sink down to his knees. “I know.”
“You should do something.”
He looked up to find her green eyes locked on his. “I don’t know what to do.”
“You’ve got to destroy them. That’s all you can do. With the knowledge you’ve given them, they must be constantly suffering. They must be constantly miserable. No primitive life form can live like that. They’ll go mad. They’ll kill each other.”
Willie gave her a shifty-eyed glance and looked back down.
“Oh. So they’ve gone mad already. Well, you really messed up, didn’t you?”
Willie nodded. “I can’t destroy them,” he said. “They want to live. They’re so scared. They’re so afraid. All the time they’re afraid.”
“That’s why you have to destroy them.”
“No,” said Willie. “There has to be another way.”
Mary Ellen stared out across the lunchroom again. “I used to like you.”
The stomach in Willie’s knees dropped down to his toes, leaving an enormous black void in his entire body. “I’ll fix it,” he muttered.
Mary Ellen walked away.
If only there were a way to fix it, he thought.
* * * *
When Willie got home the blobs were in full-scale revolt. The ones by the pool of water were throwing stones at a group wearing corn-silk necklaces. They didn’t even stop when Willie looked down at them. They didn’t even stop when he bent so close that he could see the blush on their cheeks and the gleam of their gnashing teeth. “Stop,” he said. But they didn’t stop. “Stop,” he said again, this time shaking the box with his hands so that the blobs all fell over. And they did stop. They stopped and looked up at Willie. They stopped and started to tremble and bow, but then one of the blobs stabbed a sharp stick into another. Blood squirted like water from a toy gun. It splattered the blob with the stick, and the blobs raged and screamed and attacked one another once more.
Willie fell back. He shook his head. He squinted and rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. “I don’t know what to do,” he whimpered. “Someone tell me what to do.”
* * * *
Willie’s mother found him in the basement, slouched in a corner staring up at the box, his fingers pulling hard on his hair.
“What’s this about?” she asked in a voice she didn’t use much anymore, a voice she’d used more when Willie was small, when everything she said didn’t sound like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
He nodded at the blobs. “I don’t know what to do with them. I created them. I owe them, but they’re so...unpredictable.”
“It’s not like they have real feelings,” she said gently.
He twisted his neck back and forth and his face contorted in pain. “They have feelings,” he said. “They suffer. They want to live.”
She went and peered into the box. Her nose twitched and the corners of her mouth pulled down in revulsion. She looked at Willie. “Do you want me to take care of this for you?”
He looked closely at his mother. He remembered when she did things for him. He remembered when he trusted her for everything. “Don’t kill them,” he whispered.
She straightened her back and crossed her arms. “Leave it to me.”
He tilted his head. Not sure he wanted an answer, he stuttered, “Wh-what will you do?”
“Remember the farm we took Blackie to when we couldn’t take care of him anymore? They take mistakes like this too. It’s a nice place. They’ll be happy there. Like Blackie.”
Willie felt his soul shrink inside him, and he nodded.
* * * *
He was watching television and eating his second bowl of ice cream when she came home. She had a sort of sweaty, windblown look about her, and her shoes were covered in mud. He watched her pull them off one by one and drop them by the front door. Then he looked back at the TV, which was showing people in a house. The people, he couldn’t place them, but they were talking and their words seemed hollow, far away, like in a fever.
She came and sat next to him, and when she did, she reached over, gave his thigh two quick pats, and then started laughing and nodding at the TV. He heard her, but he didn’t. It was like the TV. So far away. He felt tears collect around his eyes, and he was so afraid they would leak out, so he blinked them back and stared hard at the people. Yes. He recognized them now. They were the funny people. The people he liked. The people who made him laugh. He took a bite of ice cream. Of course. He could tell now. He could tell what the funny people were saying. They were saying funny things. Very funny things. He would think about the funny things. He would laugh at the funny things. Like her. He would laugh, and she would laugh, and he would eat another bowl of ice cream. And that’s how he would do this. For as long as it took. And he would never go into the basement again.
Ramadan, Jihad, and Azad
by Bilal Ibne Rasheed
After having translated a short story of Manto's into English, Azad relaxed for a while and then took out an English translation of Chekhov’s short stories. He adjusted his posture, made some room for his feet on the study table by pushing the heap of books aside and busied himself with reading Chekhov. Immersed in reading, he didn’t notice the sound of a blowing horn outside his room.
By the door of Azad’s faculty-hostel room sat a brand-new Land Cruiser. Its CD player recited the Holy Quran and on the driving seat sat Haji Sharif-ud-Din Sahib blowing the horn. Haji sahib,a colleague of Azad's, thought he was not in the room when he did not turn up after his blowing of horn for two complete minutes. Just about to leave, Haji sahib thought of leaving a note for Azad to register his visit. So he locked the vehicle, crossed the ten-meter footpath, and pushed the door open only to see Azad adsorbed in reading.
Haji sahib had never imagined anyone so lost in reading that they could ignore the sound of the horn of his SUV.
“Assalam o Alaikum,” a frustrated Haji sahib said in an Arabic accent.
Azad turned to the left where Haji sahib stood dressed in an exquisite white shalwar-suit, a dark black waist-coat and an equally black turban. His shalwar was well above his ankles. Smelling of an imported fragrance Haji sahib was holding a Tasbeeh in his right hand.
“Wa-alaikum assalam, Haji sahib...” replied Azad. He was about to continue but Haji sahib cut him off.
“I’ve blown the hell out of the horn of my car but you seem to take no damn notice.”
“Oh, I’m really sorry Haji sahib,” continued Azad after a slight pause. “Actually, I was reading Chekhov and was trying to analyze his influence on Manto as he had translated Chekhov into Urdu. And Haji sahib, you know, all those who come to see me are mostly students of English language and literature who come on foot. That’s why, probably, I’m not used to responding to horns. Anyways, I’m sorry once again.” Azad was all apologies.
“Astaghfirullah, astaghfirullah. So you’ve read this provocative pornographer and boozer, Manto?” Haji sahib asked, sitting on Azad’s bed.
“Of course Haji sahib, ignoring Manto would be a huge mistake for any student of literature. He was a great s
hort story writer and I think no writer is provocative. They just try to portray the society and...”
“One doesn’t become a great writer boozing all life and talking about prostitutes.” Haji sahib continued, “Forget about this bullshit. Actually I have come to tell you that tomorrow is the first of Ramadan and, as always, we’ve arranged for the recitation of the Holy Quran in Taraweeh in the university mosque. I want you to come and join us in...”
Haji sahib would have continued but was interrupted by his mobile phone’s beep.
“Yes, what happened now?” Haji sahib answered in a sharp tone. ”Yar, I’ve told this asshole to hold the flour. It will go up, but this motherfucker doesn’t understand. The government is keeping flour at 30 and we are selling at 35. Do you think this is profit?” Haji sahib scolded but the caller persisted.
“Ghani, you bloody well tell Rahim to lock the forty thousand tons of flour in godowns and go to the village for a week. In some days it will, inshallah, go up.”
Once more the caller tried in vain to convince Haji sahib whose temper was about to cross the threshold.
“You tell Rahim that his American MBA won’t work in Pakistan. I’ve been in this business for the last ten years and there hadn’t been even a single Ramadan when rates have not gone up. Our abba jan marhoom did the same whole his life. One of the first lessons he taught me was to hold the flour at the start of Ramadan and then wait for Allah’s blessings.”
But this is damn profiteering and hoarding, and why would Allah bless such an evil deed? Azad thought. And then why would anyone like Haji sahib do this? After all, he is a wealthy businessman, a lecturer in Islamiat, and also the head of a religious organization comprising youth of the university which preaches Islamic teachings to the students. But Azad’s mind didn’t help him. Probably, he was too busy locating Chekhovian shades in Manto’s writings.
“Oh yar, I would’ve come myself but this year I’ve to listen to the recitation of the Quran in Taraweeh as a Saame. And you better tell Rahim to keep his damn mouth shut and don’t try to impress me with his American accented English. You lock the godowns and go for Taraweeh. Tomorrow is the first of Ramadan. Moon has been sighted.”
