In the grey of the morning, when the sky is saturated with thick clouds stained with carbon, when the sun’s rays labor to penetrate the dense cover of pollution, and the sky glows grey gold, when one looks to the east for hope, for respite, yet the gods above cease to exist. On such a morning devoid of hope; in a room little larger than a prison cell, sat one forsaken by the world. He did not exist to them, (them that is the world utopia and those that live in it ignoring the oddities shunned by society) an invisible enigma was he; his path never crossed with theirs, and all was good. He draws a deep strained breath, a thought passes his mind, like sparks of a cigarette lighter -“We both owe death a life.”
The ceiling was low, it was damp and the ever widening cracks crisscrossed each other like the tiny, seemingly unimportant paths of ants; a palmist would have had a field day unlocking the coded future of the ceiling, telling us of the inevitable and obvious cave-in.
This room had a rich history to it, yet so few knew- it was built during the raj. Was intended to be a storage area for the building, which in turn was meant to store Indian mill workers, but as fate would have it, in those days it was used to store stolen cotton, but ever so often it sheltered nubile couples exploring the pleasures of skin in the guise of clandestine romance. All that remained of those days was a mattress made of the stolen cotton.
This building in the oldest part of town, was so old and dilapidated that it was forgotten by all but drug addicts, alcoholics, cheapest of cheap and most randy prostitutes and the rest of the refuse of society.
Anyway back to the ceiling it was no more than six feet high and was adorned by a single fan and light bulb. The only window the room possessed was above the door it was a sad sorry excuse for a window, yet a window it was. Its glass was frosted and one might deduct that it was tinted green, yet it was hard to tell after the years of dust painted it black, the once white wood panel, was alive with dark mould, and in the best of light resembled velvet. Obviously this was not a room designed for human habitation yet it adapted to its use, it too bent to
The three bladed fan which hung along with the bulb from a rusted ceiling hook, was once pure white but had aged to a dark color of creamy custard yellow, its blades were rimmed with rust and lavishly coated with slime which fused to the rust creating a greasy armor on the dorsal side of the blades; against the cold hearted person bellow, who really didn’t care for the monotonous rotations- churning out a plea for death. If it had a mind of its own it would wonder how to ends its life, it was already hanging, but not strangled tight enough to die. It was a slow painful death like a smoker’s last nicotine laced moments upon the earth. Imagine (if you can) the last nicotine filled breath of a smoker, squeezing through a clogged pipe blocked with a dark black gooey tar like mucus, it finally enters his lungs, but the effort has drained him of his strength, his lungs spasm, he gets into a coughing fit; its the body’s last effort to fight but it’s a loosing battle, it was long lost, this is but- the rape of its towns. His lungs collapse, like a deflated hot air balloon, he tries to gulp in air, his lungs refuse to labor on, he is not yet dead, but knows death is inevitable, he realizes that he has passed the point of no return, he remembers hearing that as one passes into the after life, ones’ entire life flashes before their eyes like a old flicker film from the 1950’s.
He waits for the feature presentation to start, but in his last moments of agony his pupils contract, the black gets darker and the lights begin to fade, finally his world is painted black and he is no more. The last few moments of the fan stretched for over years, and it was yet not over. Hours went by at the speed of weeks, and weeks took months. It was an eternity of suffering the transcendence from life to death. It, however was not alone in its suffering.
The essentials of human habitation and necessity consist of a sliver of light (no not the spiritual kind) in this world god has truly forsaken us. We educated fools live under a moral and spiritual darkness. The giver of light in this abode happened to be a 60 watt bulb once as bright as the sun, but some how the darkness seemed to have even crept into the light its self. But what use of such an artificial light on one so morally dark? For one trapped in his own dark thoughts, has little need for a 60 watt bulb hanging orb-like over his head.. But none the less it burned from day into night. No night after night, sunlight never made it pass the dark moldy curtains blessed with maroon specks, thus day never dawned in this here gloomy room.
Back to the bulb any way, I wonder, why I tend to drift to the theological so much must be the bliss of intoxication is weaning, maybe I need an other, maybe I don’t; who cares but I?.....where were we again? Yes the bulb! It too had aged in this desolate room, the silver lettering in bold gothic which stated it was an approved and tested 60 watt bulb had corroded into brown. It gave as much light as would a match stick being struck, to light a cigarette in the dark of a moonless night.
The tungsten filament tired of the constant hell of electric fury pulsing through its being, longed for a quick death, a lightning bolt of electricity which would blast all its bonds to this world. Yet it burns its self to illuminate the dark paths upon which my conscious threads.
The fan and bulb were obviously not a marriage made in heaven; their fates were joined by an unwitting electrician. The fan hung to the ceiling on a rusty ceiling hook, which seemed to be the epicenter of the cracks around it. The bulb’s wire too was tied to that suicidal hook, they were (happily or unhappily who can say) shackled to their wedding by the rusty ring of fate. But like in most human marriages they were not only married on paper, but their spirits too were linked, in the true christian way till death do them apart; they shared the same power source, their positive and negative wires were twisted together like a knot tied over the sacred fire, thus truly were they soul mates made by default by an arranged marriage.
The dim light which the bulb cast upon this here desolate room was filtered through by the chopping wings of the fan, rendering a scene out of a 1950’s
Half a mirror hung above a non functioning cardamom green sink, the taps were missing, a few of the shards of mirror clogged the basin’s drain slicing and shredding any refuse that was let in to it as it slid down to its watery grave. Dried blood had stained a few of the glass shards, which shone like rubies in a drain, the others reflected the yellow light of the bulb flickering up on the ceiling, rarely did those shards reflect the rage gored face of the one sitting in the darkness of his thoughts. But when they did he could see in those shards memories of a life bygone each terminating at the sharp edge of glass, in rubies he saw crystallized memories of a lost love.
The above life is structured upon a pale floor impregnated by chips of granite and marble, and another green stone; thought by now his darkness has over taken it too, over the years the off white stone turned a pale yellow of sour milk, the white marble was no more pure, the black remained unchanged. Though certain tiles seemed to have been dyed maroon, others turned into little farms of light green algae.
Most of his sober hours he spent staring at the floor and watched the stones shift shapes to form faces, and sinister scenes of death. He thus came to call them the Rorschach tiles. And upon that filthy Rorschach tilled floor, lay a misshapen mattress resembling a mutilated corpse, it was the last remnant of the raj, stuffed with the same stolen cotton which was once stored here memory its self forgot who it was that once gathered the leftovers’ of numerous grey market sales and stuffed them in to a mattress made out of a large patch work quilt.
Though now it was stained by sweat and other bodily fluids, he could not tell between the varying patterns on the cloth nor did he want to; he was content with the shifting scenes in the floor. The cotton had lost all of its comforting softness and was baked in to a hard coarse bug infested raised platform. And now the protagonist, and narrator sit on that very mutilated sorry excuse of a bed which bore the brunt of our shared rage.
I must confess we are one and the same two identities of the same person, living a symbiotic incomplete life, and now when we feel our time is up I decide to leave this memoir to who ever chances upon it. Thought I do not believe in ghost I would like to linger on as a sprit, haunting this world to avenge the sin wrought upon me, yet I know I shall fade but more than this memoir, a more lasting bit of immortality I leave in this humble abode.
I have grown upon it, it has become one with me, and I shall live on in its depths, for it too is just another identity of me. A final smile dawns upon my face as I remember a fraction of a phrase ‘homes often start to look like their inhabitants’
I look at the wall, upon it encrypted a tale of rage, of revenge of rape and murder, of corruption, arrows pointing to one man, one sorry excuse of a human being, no he is not human he is parasite, living upon the blood of the poor, the one who bled the one I loved. I did what honor demanded the code so set in my mind the monster unleashed and as was sown thus was reaped, he got what he deserved so did the rest of them, five years it has been and the poison tree have grown, its fruit I must eat, its taste- sweet, sweet as sin, yet it satisfies me not that I let his blood run down into the drain, death was a blessing to him, he deserved it not. Here I fester trapped in limbo neither dead nor alive, a corpse in waiting, with no stairway to heaven or valley of death. There your honor I confess I did it! And would do it again, and repeat it over and over, for it is I who lost that which can’t be found. My confession is on the wall, and dare you call me unsound, it is I who destroyed him, and 5 years later I sit here praying to be caught. My time up now, I am done waiting for your judgment, my doom has fallen and I walk the path to death door.
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