The Perfect Costume (Story)

Mark tipped the valet and got behind the wheel of his Mercedes. As his car shot out of the porch and glided down the incline, he glanced at the digital clock. It was 6 AM. It would take him an hour to reach his destination, and then another hour to prepare himself for his day’s work. If he missed the peak rush hour of 8 to 9, his entire day would be wasted.

—()—

The dilapidated cottage was a portal into his parallel universe. He would pass through it every morning on his way to work, and return through it every evening – six days a week. He parked his Mercedes in the garage, and went up the steps that led into the living room. The living room connected to a small bedroom upstairs, one in which he had never once spent the night – a few afternoons may be, when business had been good in the mornings.

There he changed into his costume. He had about a dozen of these, each tailored to a particular locality and designed to appeal to a specific gentry, and each improved and enhanced over the years. He loved to

A Mother’s Soul (Story)

He was her only son. Her only child.
It wasn’t any wonder then that she had always been a concerned mother, and she did what concerned mothers always do. She kept an eye on him. No, she wouldn’t want you to get her wrong. She didn’t smother him with her motherly love, nor did she harass him continually by demanding to know what he had been doing and why. She didn’t take the whole credit for it anyway, because her son, she believed, was a model child.
At least until three days ago. It was Christmas eve when she had first noticed something amiss in his behavior. He didn’t even look at all the Christmas decorations that she had so painstakingly done. The first thing she noticed about him was that his eyes were red and puffed. It was clear that he wasn’t getting enough sleep. Then she started noticing a few other things – he would lock himself into his room for hours, and then he would stagger out, make himself a pathetic sandwich, grab a coke, and return to his room.
At first, she thought that he was suffering from his first heartbreak, and that talking to him would help. So she had tried, but he had ignored her completely. Like she wasn’t there.
All her attempts to talk to him failed.
And then the party was the last straw.
Her son, who couldn’t be bothered to go to parties, had thrown one! Without telling her about it.
She was heartbroken. The boy who was her world had stopped talking to her, and now…
It was an odd gathering. She had expected only her son’s friends to be there. She wanted to talk to them – perhaps they could help her understand what was going on in his life, and help her deny or confirm her suspicions. But the guests were an odd assortment – their relatives, his friends, and even some of the neighbors.
Perhaps her son was growing up and learning the ways of the world.
Her chest filled with pride, when her son began speaking…

The Mist Maiden (Story)

For a fleeting moment, he saw her, and then there was just the mist that rose from the Nile and hovered over the calm surface of the water. She had disappeared. Just like that. Was she a wisp of memory rolled so thin by time that it had transformed into a shimmering film of nothingness? Or was she someone his tired imagination had conjured?
“No, she wasn’t a figment of your imagination,” said the old man who had once been a priest of Amun.
“A memory then?” he asked, anxious that the man might confirm it.
“No. She was something else,” replied his old hunchback companion whose eyes were nearly hidden under the lose folds of his lids, and who appeared to be as ancient as the necropolis at Saqqara.
“Then who?”
“She was a woman,” he answered.
“A real woman?” he queried, confused. “Where did she go?”
“She didn’t go anywhere,” replied the old man. “She is still there, on the bank of Nile.”
“But then, why can’t I see her anymore? Does she still live?”
The old man chortled. “Oh, she is. But you can’t, because you don’t.”

Honor and Murder in Ancient Egypt: The Price of Nofret’s Nose.

 

Imba’s hands began slipping down caressing her neck and chest…a token of gratitude – or servitude?

The similarity between Imba’s situation and hers made her cringe. Imba and she were both slaves. They did things because they had to, not because they wanted to.

“Imba, I don’t need you anymore,” Nofret said. The girl’s relief was evident in her alacrity to run and find her faience belt. Nofret passively lay in her bath and watched Imba’s perfect young body as she twisted and turned to clip the belt around her waist.

In two years, I’ll be thirty. The age at which some women become grandmothers!

She slipped back into the water, caressing her own body, trying to discover a wrinkle or a loose fold, but her skin was still supple.

There still is time, she thought.

As Imba walk out of the door, Nofret closed her eyes and allowed her to fall into her private abyss of reflection.

Her life so far had been a rapidly growing collection of regrets.

Twelve years worth of regrets!

Her twelve years of marriage had transformed into a decade of longing and a myriad lost hopes.

If only she had run away with the poet who she had been infatuated with.

If only her father was an Egyptian and not a Philistine on the run.

If only her mother had been of noble birth.

If only Idut had been more considerate and loving.

If only the flame of her desire not singed her wisdom.

If only…if only…if only…

 

The Price of Nofret’s Nose: Honor & Murder in Ancient Egypt is arriving on March 01, 2018. It is currently available for Pre-order on Amazon.

 

Dante’s Second Circle of Hell and #MeToo (Story)

Devil sat with his accountant, his knit brows and balled fists clearly giving away his anxious state of mind.

“Why aren’t they enrolling anymore?” he hissed, his long tongue flicked out like a snake’s, to wet his parched lips.

He had been noticing a steady drop in the number of people who registered themselves for the lust workshops they would organize to tempt the future entrants.

These promotional activities were the hallmark of hell, quite the opposite of what heaven did – they screened people to provide or deny entry in heaven. It was easier for God as everyone wanted to get there anyway. Fortunately, being god-fearing and remaining forever righteous was a lot more difficult than giving in to temptations, or hell would have lost its significance a long time ago. Hell wasn’t a place that people would throng to get in, and this was why they had to run these temptation workshops 24×7, all 365 days a year.

The Price of Nofret’s Nose – A Murder Mystery set in Ancient Egypt.

I’m glad to announce that “The Price of Nofret’s Nose” can now be pre-ordered on Amazon 🙂

Please click the following link to book your copy.

The Price of Nofret’s Nose: Honor & Murder in Ancient Egypt

Apparently everything is well in the Amaat Household.

The elder brother Idut is favored by Pharaoh and has been appointed administrator of the Net-uri quarry in the Bekhen valley. His wife Nofret is a lovely young woman who stays home with his blind mother, and his bright young brother Lumeri has now joined him at the quarry.

But when Idut falls to his death at the quarry, cracks begin to surface. Lumeri knows that his brother’s fall wasn’t an accident. In his quest to find justice for his brother, Lumeri discovers a truth that devastates him; and yet nothing can prepare him for the unexpected face of evil that awaits him at home.

In this tale of love & loyalty, greed & lust, and life & death, walk the streets of Qift and Memphis and stay in a noble’s house, where the price of a nose would be paid with lives, and the only thing standing between good and evil would be the loyalty of a slave.

A thrilling murder-mystery, “The Price of Nofret’s Nose,” is set in the New Kingdom, and it opens an intriguing window into the lives of the Ancient Egyptian nobility. As you turn its pages and lose yourself into it, it makes you recoil in horror, smile with hope, blush in anticipation, and sigh with satisfaction.

Thanks.

I wish all my friends in the virtual world and my dear visitors, a great year ahead 🙂

Telling a Story vs. Writing a Story – The Killing Floor

“Killing Floor” by Lee Child is my first book by this author. I wanted to read this book to understand Jack Reacher. Half way through the book, I realized that the book was an education. It made me ask a very important question and discover its rather delightful answer.

The question was:

Why Killing Floor remains such a readable book despite breaking two basic rules of good writing?

1. The sentences are clipped incredibly short. So short, that sometimes they are just about two or three words long. They dwindle into phrases, snatched and thrown at the reader – like the writer is in a tearing hurry to tell his story and begone.

Here’s a sample page:

2. Most of the times, the writer doesn’t bother himself with finding the right verb to convey the feeling or the emotion. He just uses whatever he can find – mostly, “said,” and “ask.”

Necrophilia in Ancient Egypt

Possibly the only thing that has remained unchanged throughout our history is human nature. The dark recesses of the human brain have continually goaded a few to seek goals that repulse most of us. Time and again a few who walk and breathe among us have allowed their perversion to reach beyond the grave and indulged in necrophilia.

Instances of necrophilia abound in the modern world, and while most cases aren’t discussed openly, a few have made the world sit up and take notice. The possible desecration of Eva Peron’s corpse by one or more officers who were supposed to guard her embalmed body, had attracted the attention of the whole world to the case. Thirty-two-year old Eva Peron was the wife of Argentina’s then President Juan Peron, when she had died of cervical cancer in 1952, and was embalmed on the request of her husband.

Lesser known instances of Necrophilia  can be found in the historical records from the nineteenth century, where some men of noble birth were found to be necrophiles. Evidence of Necrophilia has been found around the world and throughout history, including in Ancient Egypt.

And yet, what makes Ancient Egypt different is the way not only necrophilia but rape and incest too is

Be Careful What you Wish For – Cumaean Sibyl & Apollo (Story)

The boy was here again and today he had brought his friends along.

“Wait,” he held out a hand to stop his friends from rushing in and spoiling his show. The other kids stopped. They were agog with curiosity.

She knew why. They were here to witness the empty basket speak. It was a game that had gone on for almost three hundred years, and she, who knew everything, didn’t know when it would end. Oh…the games they played with her…they ravaged whatever remained of her pride. Her pride? Oh, how she hated her pride, for it was her pride that had brought her to this.

The boy approached the basket gingerly, ready to pull back if the basket sprung to life and pounced upon him. After all, If it could talk, it could attack too.

“What do you want?” he asked, like he expected the basket to answer. But he was right. Sibyl was bound to answer every question she was asked, and she was bound to answer it truthfully. So was her destiny for she was the prophetess and the seer. She was Sibyl.

“Death,” she croaked. Her voice was the only part of her that hadn’t aged. It still was the smooth, sweet voice of a seventeen-year-old.

Why Adults Read Fantasy?

What exactly is fantasy?

The unreal, the abstract, a flight of imagination, the attempt of a writer to stretch the limits of human potential and create beings similar to humans but who have super-strengths and places, the kind that don’t physically exist in this world…

And what does it inspire in its readers?

A dream, a hope, a possibility however improbable, that for a while they could exist in a different world and experience feelings that they don’t get to experience in this world.

When we pick up a fantasy novel/novella through which we consciously step into a world that is different enough to be safe, yet similar enough to hold up the suspension-of-disbelief, we enjoy it – for through its characters we experience a whole range of the experiences – most which fall out of our normal everyday range.