And Then…: An Assortment of Delectable Tea-time Stories on Amazon now.

Dear Readers,

I spent a good part of the last two years stitching myself together. A couple of days ago, I published a collection of stories that I had written during this time, on Amazon. Do check it out and if it interests you, please download, read, and review.

In this collection of 12 quick-to-read and delightful-to-savor stories:

1. Allow the Siren and the Banshee to help you discover the depths of human emotions.
2. Experience a pang of hunger the kind you’ve never felt before.
3. Join a man on his devastating quest to find the perfect costume.
4. Meet Devil to discover what has been irking him recently.
5. Feel the effort that a man must put in to retain his sanity.
6. Realize what it means to be a child-prodigy in a dystopian world.
7. Enter the heart of a woman who wants to make up with her man.
8. Recoil in horror when you meet the real KAL-UR.
9. Swing between joy and sorrow as you unravel the meaning of late-stays.
10. Learn to bite your tongue when you make your next wish.
11. Follow the Grim Reaper on a visit that leaves her content.
12. Ensconce yourself into the infiniteness of a mother’s love.

Thank you. I hope to delight you with some more works this year. Until then, stay in, stay safe, download and read books you like and leave your ratings and reviews for the authors.

One, Two…You Too? (Story)

Staying late at work had become a pattern for Bella. It had begun innocuously enough. A slipped assignment, a document that arrived late in her inbox, or an unexpected phone-call from Matt her Team-leader who wanted to discuss something urgent with her.
At first, she didn’t notice that staying back and working late was a kind of getaway for her. Her evenings that were trapped in home had already started becoming interminably long. She and Victor, had always maintained that if a person worked hard and smart enough, there wasn’t a need for her to stay back at work. She had followed her own dictum for six years and while she hadn’t slipped, Victor had. Two years into their pact, he had started arriving late.
She remembered the first time he was late as lucidly as it might have happened yesterday. He had called her up and told her that his boss wanted him to be there for an important overseas phone-call. She had eaten her dinner with the television set on, and gone to bed alone.
And then before they realized what was happening, it had become a pattern. She could vividly recall the first few times Victor had stayed back, but then the late-stays became more and more frequent, until they became a blur. Their evenings became her evening, and he spent his evenings with the “Beast,” his euphemism for his work or boss or whatever. And yet, despite working hard, and despite his daily grudge that he voiced in front of her at the time of breakfast, he appeared happier and more content.
His paradoxical behavior perplexed her, but she loved him, and it was good to see him smiling and humming, so she never complained.

Six Months Later…

Bella awoke with a smile on her face. Her dreams that had for long been a drab colorless gray and quite forgettable, had started becoming more vibrant, more lively, more exciting…and last night, staying late had acquired a different meaning altogether. Over the past few months something that had begun as a chance late-stay at work had changed into a conscious choice for Bella. Matt was obviously happy with this change in her and he quite openly acknowledged that he was thrilled that she had started staying back at work.
But last night was different. It wasn’t the regular late-stay that she had become used to; last night, both were conscious of the charged up atmosphere and both felt the under-currents that at least Bella had been trying to ignore. The attraction that existed between them subliminally had bubbled up and so when their hands had touched last night, neither he nor she had tried to pull away. After that incident, an anticipatory silence punctuated by stolen glances and a deliciously heightened awareness had stretched between them.
He had walked her to her car, but hadn’t said goodnight. She hadn’t either. They had just held each-other’s gaze.
Now, in the morning, as she stepped out of her bath, she found herself humming…
“I can’t stop the feeling
I’ve been this way before
But, with you I’ve found the key
To open any door…”
“Anticipating a promotion?” he asked. He was standing in front of the mirror, tying the knot of his tie.
A wave of guilt surged through her.
“Not really,” she said. “In fact, I wish I didn’t have to stay late…” she stopped mid-sentence.
“You too have started staying late?” he asked, his hand freezing in place.
She froze too. He always arrived late but she an hour before he did. He hadn’t known until now, but now he did.
And she did too.
They stood numbed as they heard the crash, simultaneously.

Credits:
Song: Whitesnake
Lyrics: David Coverdale

Written in response to FOWC with Fandingo Prompt: Variety

Fingers (Story)

KAL-UR was about five feet tall and it didn’t have a head. It didn’t need one, for it was a utility robot. It didn’t need to think or analyze or make decisions – it was only supposed to follow the instructions that it received from Mr. Core.

Since 2080, Mr. Core had been managing CRYORIUM, the international cryonics center. That was the time when the finger-bank, a cryogenic facility to store fingers was first built. That was also the time when fingers were harvested in thousands, and every robot found itself working round the clock. Each finger had to be detached from the body, packed in ice, and injected with heparin to prevent coagulation of the blood. Then all the water in the cells was replaced with a cryo-protectant and then the finger was cooled on dry ice until it reached the temperature of -130 degrees centigrade. Finally, it was stored in a jar of liquid nitrogen at a temperature of about –190 degrees centigrade, and then the jar was labeled with the finger-number and the name of its owner.

It was backbreaking work. Had KAL-UR been a human, he would have either resigned from the job or asked for a raise. Fortunately for Mr. Core, he was a robot and as long as it followed its charging routine, everything worked just fine.

Effort (Story)

He thought of it every morning, afternoon, evening, and night, and in all those hours in between, but every time, he came to the same conclusion.

It was too much of an effort.

Each time he opened the refrigerator to bring out the leftover ham slices, mayonnaise, and the rye bread, he thought of it, but then The Simpsons on the TV would drag him right back to his couch, where he spent the next hour devouring both the sandwich and his favorite program.

On each trip he took to the bathroom he’d see her gown hanging on the over-door hooks, and he was reminded of the chores that awaited him. They had to be done. With each passing moment, they were transforming from important into urgent. And yet it all required that he bent and bending was something that squeezed his roll of stomach fat and put undue pressure on his gut to make him fart, and he hated it.

Oh, how he hated it!

“It’s too much of an effort,” he thought as he took another bite of his sandwich and flipped the channel.

“Oh drat! Better get done with it,” he growled.

Then, for a moment, he savored the sound of his own voice.

“That felt good,” he mumbled, a smile cracking his face. “Good that she isn’t around to badger me.”

He tossed his empty plate on the table and got up.

“I’ve got to finish this chore, or the stench will bring those pesky neighbors to my door,” he grumbled aloud. To be able to say it all aloud was a cathartic experience.

Good that she was gone.

“This time is so wholly, so completely, so totally mine – just miiiine,” he crooned in a nasal singsong voice, swishing his hips sideways, trying to simulate her walk. The black bags were waiting for him in the kitchen – tied at their mouths, ready to be dispatched. They were heavy, about sixty pounds each, but he knew that the bags would hold. They were strong and scented, and he had bought them online from Target, just last week.

“Into the backyard, Tom. Move your ass,” he chided himself, like she would, if only she were around.

“Oh yes. Yes, ma’am. But you aren’t here to oversee me, are you?” he laughed, as he dumped them both into the trash can.

“And now let us do the laundrrry,” he continued in the same singsong voice, as he slammed the door behind him.

He checked the time in the kitchen clock. It was 4 PM already. He had an hour to complete the laundry and vacuum the couch and the carpet for the crumbs.

She would be back from work by five o’clock.

“Sigh!

Image Credits/Attribution: Wikimedia Commons

jeffreyw [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)%5D

 

Unparalleled. (Story)

The girl picked up the soiled and torn piece of newspaper that had streaks of gray, black, and brown – some of its text hidden under the streaks and some wiped away by the hoary finger of time, it still had quite a bit of it left. She handled it gingerly for the paper had turned brittle with age and when she had picked it up it had started to flake. A piece of newspaper, this big, with so much of the text still legible, could buy her family two full dinners, and the thought of mishandling it horrified her.

Inside, however, she struggled with another dilemma. She coveted the newspaper piece, she wanted to keep it in that little hole where she kept those other things she found – things that could each buy the family a meal or two or even five. Three mouths all waiting to be fed, all waiting for her to bring home something that could be bartered – three, and hers was fourth. She never questioned why she must be the one to worry about feeding them. This was how it had been for the last three years. It had begun when she had started accompanying Pa and Ma on their scavenges, and then, somehow, for no apparent reason, Pa and Ma stopped accompanying her on these trips.

They told her that her ability to detect things of value was unparalleled…that she was gifted, and all they did was slow her down, and so they had started staying home – first a little less, then more and more. In the beginning she liked it. She enjoyed being called unique – she loved all that adulation and praise that they heaped upon her when she returned to the fourth floor crumbling room of the dilapidated building they called home. But then after the first year, there was the baby. Ma had started to chide her gently for not doing enough for her baby brother, and Pa would only talk to her for a few minutes as he opened her tattered bag and evaluated the goodies. When the haul was good, he grunted; when it wasn’t so good, he criticized.

7 Short Stories – An Eclectic Collection of Tales that Twist and Turn.

This post is a collection of my short stories that have appeared on this blog. If you are a reader who likes variations, I have a feeling that you’ll enjoy these 🙂

Cracked Mirrors and The Grim Reaper 

When a mirror cracks, somewhere the Grim Reaper reaps a soul.

~0~

The Siren & the Banshee

When a siren and a banshee both call – whose call do you answer?

The Thaw (Story)

Marianne awoke groaning. This is how she’s been waking up this whole month – her body a tense bundle of aching muscles. He didn’t beat her, he didn’t scold her…and there were times when she hoped he would – a blow that would leave a cut on her brow or lip, or an angry avalanche of curses would be infinitely more welcome than his cold indifference.
He had stonewalled her.
Nothing reached him anymore.
When he looked in her direction, it was as if he was looking through her, like she was made of glass.
No. glass was classy.
Plastic would be a more appropriate metaphor to describe her.
Plastic, brittle with age;
plastic with stains and scratches;
plastic that would keep rotting endlessly.
He looked at her like she were made of plastic. When she tried to talk to him, he heard nothing. He wouldn’t even bother to up the volume of his headphones. When she poured her heartache on paper and left it on his table, he tore it away, and then told her that he didn’t give a damn.
Marianne was stonewalled.
And yet, she couldn’t give him up. Helplessness swirled around her, pulling her down by her ankles into the dark abyss that promised a vast emptiness. Marianne would be glad to lose herself into that deep well if only the nothingness wasn’t temporary. She had been there, and she knew well that this tempting nothingness would soon leave her in the company of despair laced with self-pity – and that it would make her cry and squirm. Her aching shoulders and stiff neck would twist and turn to the terrible music of her anguish and leave her more broken than ever. She knew that Inside that deep abyss of helplessness, she would be tossed about by self-pity, self-righteousness, self-doubt, self-castigation…
Once or twice…just once or twice, she had even considered suicide.

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.”