Storieo

Author: Antra Fuloria

  • The Killer Kleptomaniac

    The Killer Kleptomaniac

    The shiny bright body of hers invited him in, he tried to look away but it was almost like he had no control over himself, “May I?” he asked in that perfect British accent of his, the one that no woman could resist. “Of course, go ahead”, as he continued the inspection in a more intimate manner, it was almost like a different version of Pavlov experiment in practice there.

    The body sheathed in red with those delicate curves, the gold embellishments were just at the right places too, he stood no chance against her beauty.

    He had to have her.

    He could not see beyond the red, he had to have her,“ You have a treasure madam, guard it well.” He turned away to his previous engagement reluctantly,with the thoughts of what he just held, at the back of his mind.

    The feel of it was imprinted in the memory of his hands, his palm twitching just at the thought of having her again.

    He held many in his coarse hands later but none of them gave him the satisfaction that she did. It was like his secret siren call, manufactured just to entice him.

    He was eager for the party to end, he wanted to be alone with her.

    He saw the lady in red climb up the grand staircase and went after her.

    She watched him over her shoulders and silently beckoned him with her eyes, little known to her, he needed no invitation, he came on his own accord.

    Closing the door behind him, he began the quotidian slow dance.

    “Give it to me”, he purred in the red lady’s ears. Two subtle blinks of her eyelids and he knew she was onto his game. He moved his hands from her hips to her back, twirling her in the direction of her clutch, which he sighted on the bedside table. She askance, twisted his fingers mid air. Not betraying his male chauvinistic tendencies, he didn’t humph at all  and  indulged her in her own style of salsa as he grabbed her hands and bent her all the way back.

    Unimpressed by her lack of strength, he waited to hear the satisfying crunch of her vertebrae as Supermassive black hole reverberated his mind. He took out a pocket knife and designed a matching intricate choker across her neck and dumped her unceremoniously at the foot of the bed and took the final strides that would help him possess what he had waited so long to get his hands on.

    He put the pen in his mouth like a cigar, enjoying the cognac smell of it’s body. He wanted it for so long. Now that he had it, he could feel his heart fluttering like a humming bird’s wings.

    He sunk onto the satin sheets and lay admiring his latest addition to his covetable collection as the pristine white carpet camouflaged the lady in red.

  • Chime of the doom

    Chime of the doom

    *tip ………tip* two drops of red were glistening on the shiny dark bald patch of the professor’s head as he continued to read, oblivious to his audience’s apathy. He considered himself to be quite a head turner, with his soap opera like voice modulations while reading his lectures, he believed that he was doing well. The mental chatter was loud enough for him not to notice the thuds on his bare skin.

    *tip* the red soaked the paper he just turned. The dark curling ferns emerged from the pristine white ceiling, once abode only to the spiders.

    Unnoticed by the apathetic humans, there was a flurry of activity in their humble abode today, a quick dissipation to the west, towards the closed windows.

    The black ominous gurgling clouds brought much joy to the students as well as respite for the unknown.

    The dark mooned bald head mmoved as he felt something moist beneath his shirt collar, as the students sneakily tried to enjoy the view outside.

    The professor had taken this job fter many had refused, it was quick easy money too, he just had to teach for a few hours and they were paying for his accomodation, meals etc.

    Looking back at t, it was just a small compromise that the school was located in the middle of nowhere with big coniferous trees making a bow over this slightly dilapidated  enchanting castle. Curiously, no professor worked here for more than six months, he had been here for an year now, true he took many leaves but still his chest puffed out with pride that he still got it in him, he outdid the others.

    “ There are many differences between a plant and animal cehhhhhhhh……”, his words go stuck in his throat as the lights went out , leaving the castle in enchanted darkness.

    “Kya hua?” shouted the man to nobody, his voice boming across the halls and penetrating the peon’s ears.

    A quick check on the circuit board and the peon found out that nothing as wrong “it must be that time of the year again’, he thought quietly to himself and  grabbed two candlesticks and made a quick dash towards the occupied classroom.

    Huffing and puffing he made a grand entry, banging the door to the wall as there was a collective “aaaah” of surprise from the students, their necks following to witness the hero like entry to the set stage, just to notice him staring dumbstruck towards the direction of the blackboard.

    Their necks swivelled to follow the act that pulled such a funny face on the old peon’s face.

    The wall seemed to be fighting with itself, until it tore apart accompanied with a roar of the feral lion.

    Blood showered from the ceiling as an arthritic professor tried hs best to rise as fast as he could from his cushiony seat, his clothes soaked red and sticking to his frail figure.

    “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrggghhhhhhhh” his gurgling voice was directed towards the now attentive, statued audience as a feral man, head like a lion, hands like man, swung upside down from the ceiling,  grabbed him and swallowed him whole, headfirst.

    It looked much like a scene from a discovery documentary, the snake swallowing his prey whole, it’s legs swinging, like the man’s, to the now flickering tubelights.

    All the while, the young audience sat in rapt attention with a feeling of déjà vu but sadistic as the doomed bell rung in the distance, chiming away the end of another era.

     

  • Sound Of Silence

    Sound Of Silence

     

    You know that feeling when you can see red under your eyelids? And then if you rub your eyes hard enough you can see the stars in your eyes. It’s like a small glimpse into the universe for just a few seconds.

    Indra turned and tried to pull the bed sheet up in her sleep. Small beads of perspiration beaded up o her neck. Amma must have switched off the air conditioner and pulled off the curtains.

    She knew it was time to wake up or she would be so late for college but she wanted to complete her sweet sweet dream where she was spending her day lazing around on the beach. But Amma had now started to resort to her last measure in the arsenal for waking her up:

    The pulling of the bed sheet. “Amma!” she opened her eyes groggily and they were filled up with tears so Amma now seemed like an angel with her curly white hair flying around her head appearing like a halo, only this angel had a spoon I her one hand and an annoyed look on her face and was babbling “What use is of the alarm clock anyway, I do every job around this house, including the alarm’s”. Indra very gently just get up close and tried to kiss the annoyed angel but she instead shooed her away to the bathroom.

    Quickly showering and rushing her teeth, she got dressed and ran out of her house as fast as possible. It was only when she had boarded the metro did she heave a sigh of relief. Indra was good in her studies and she had joined a course that would eventually help her to become a sound engineer.

    She loved mixing the sounds, she loved to leave her touch on the music, her strings. In the metro, she took out her earphones and religiously plugged her ears. And clicked on the last played soundtrack on her phone to get the music started. It had become much more of a habit now than anything else.

    She wanted to drown out the noise of people chattering loudly on their phones, of aunties chattering the latest gossip, it was a tad hard to resist the gossip, even of people she didn’t know, it was fun to eavesdrop, the conversation as almost always hilarious, but it was the lover’s quarrel or otherwise talks she was most afraid of, it was unbearable really to hear people talk about their supposedly cute love names out in public and then the giggling of the girls, argh!

    She got down on her station and then started a boring day of lectures where again the professor’s voice just touched her ears and moved away like a tangent on a circle. She received some messages from Hitesh in the middle of the class and jumped up because she had forgotten to put her phone on silence  the ping of the whatsapp messages got her blushing because it was a notification she had put up  for him only.

    After a long day at college, she began her pilgrimage of going back to home, for which she hoped she better got rewarded sometime in her life. She knew the announcements in the train by heart now and could recite them in that same tone and accent flawlessly.

    When her metro emerged from the underground during the duration of her two hour pilgrimage to home, she was surprised to see that the sky had darkened and here were rumbling clouds ready to pour in the distance. When the time came for her to take an auto to reach home, it started to rain cats and dogs. Nevertheless, she managed to convince an auto driver to take her home in the downpour. No thinking he was overcharging her too but her mom had already called her once and had urged her to come home early. She hopped in the rickshaw and an involuntary shiver ran down her spine at the crack of the clouds. The situation appeared to be a perfect imitation of one of the scenes from her beloved Scooby doo cartoon.

    Her auto reached an intersection and like it was his birth right, the auto driver began to crawl towards the middle of the intersection despite the red light otherwise asking him to stay put. Indra was busy scrolling through her phone for the lack of something to do when the meaningless rap of an Indian singer reached her ears and she tried to ignore the hideous piece of what people nowadays called ‘music’ but couldn’t resist looking up

     

    Blackness everywhere, she tried to move but she didn’t feel anything and there was sharp pain on the side of her head which was beginning to radiate with time. She sensed some pressure on her fingers and again slipped into the soothing blackness.

    She found herself in bed, again muted light filtering in through the windows and rotates her eyeballs to find her Amma next to her, bleary eyed, she tries to reach for her before darkness claims her again.

     

    White walls, white fan and white hair,”amma” she tried to call out but her throat was too parched. Her mother suddenly looked up from her slumber position and was startled for a minute. She saw her mother’s mouth move but couldn’t hear anything. Maybe it was because she felt something heavy and padded covering up her ears. 

    She tried to lift her arms but she couldn’t as Amma almost launched herself on her and hugged her in her spread eagled position.

    She tried to speak but she couldn’t even after Amma fed her some ice chips. She was starting to feel trapped as she began to realize that she couldn’t hear the fan whirring above her head, she couldn’t hear the sound of the beeping heart monitoring or what her Amma was saying to her. She tries to speak but the vision of Amma blurred as a nurse came into her room and injected something in her IV drip. 

    When she wakes up again, she calls for her Amma but she can only feel her facial muscles moving and couldn’t hear the sound of her own voice, thinking that her ears now needed to be popped or something, surely she should hear something despite the bandages and she tried again, again but no sound reaches her ears. She came to the realization that like a typical Bollywood movie she can’t hear anything beeping despite being attached to so many devices.

    She reached for her mother, calls out to her again but again she realizes that she can’t hear her own voice and in desperation tries repeatedly until she sees her mother’s tear stained face .Her mother gave her a letter and she started to cry, silent tears at first when she read that her auditory nerve got damaged in the accident and she won’t be able to hear again, and then the horror dawns when she can’t even hear her awful soul sucking sounds one releases when someone is crying as hard as she was and she realises that she can now only hear the thoughts bouncing around in the in her head which is now like the surface of a lake with no ripple in sight.