One short story...
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This is something I dug up.Sent it in for the 2002 BBC Short Story Competition but it didn't win anything.Just sharing with you guys.Feel free to comment
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Life Through A Small Crack
Mike's SoliloquyÂ…Â…
It was so cool and bright twenty minutes before. Twenty, huh? More like bang-now!, I thought out loud. My closest friends share the same sentiments, the small pile of aggregate two cm from my left eye . Oh yeah, and that little dwindling patch of murky liquid beyond my cheek, looking like water but yet shimmering like the warm life-liquid that pours from my lips, a steady ebb and flow of the oral cavity that was my personal Normandy. My mind wants my arms to move just a teeny weensy bit but I presume the autobahns crisscrossing the Confederation of Spinal Republics are simply too caught up with the backlog of dead cells that nothing gets through. Ah well, since I can't move my arms, and my legs are trapped under some smoking ruin of metal stamped with 'Boeing' all over it, at least that's what I see; I shall just focus on that small hole near that dry wall, which looked pretty much like some giant pita bread and kebab set meal right now.
I have fond memories of that dry wall, once festooned with industrial stick-it notepaper, listing power lunches and high-flying hot dates from firms in TriBeCa and the Lower East Side. It had a life of its own, which is something I am going to be soon, a 'had' as opposed to a 'have'. But enough of the morbid shit. Okay, as I was saying, my personal trophy board was lined with JC Penney's gift paper that was reincarnated from its past life as a wrapper of a gift from Julia. GOD! Is Julia alright? OhÂ… I forgot, I'm a paraplegic, that's what Dr Ang would say, if he was still alive. I donÂ’t know anyone who would be alive except me, secured from imminent death by a temporary permit for future historians to use their fancy time-travel thingamajigs to peer at me and skin any goddamn residue of dignity off me. Bleedin' suckers for instantaneous historical gratificationÂ…..bunch of softies not thinking about the past but merely looking at it like goggle box addicts. God forgive me but I have this really bad feeling that the sonsofbitches that did this will do it again. Am I right, you complacent future ninnies??? Still, I suppose I should get back to my dry wall instead of haranguing my descendants' peers about any bearded/clean-shaven mud/moon rock -slinging terrorist that might steal nutty Doc Chen's particle beam and shave a few kilometers off the top of Clarke's space elevators.
Speaking of elevators, my dry wall and the elevators had an intimate relationship going on. I remember when they wheeled my dry wall partition thingy in, the lifts were so full that six VIPs from upstate had to be offloaded and made to wait in the lobby before they could inspect our operations. I am so sure that the drywall had actually violated the basic principle of polite behavior amongst non-sentient wall furnishings when it was wheeled in and out a few times cuz the crew in loading wasn't quite sure who should go up first, a Ben Franklin lookalike or a off-white cork/chipboard combi drywall. I still think it was a ploy for us to clear up the junk on out tables before the head honchos could flick their cultured noses at our cheap cigarettes and stale pilsners. Those were the days, when you felt that you could make the big smackeroos, buy a Corvette with the works from ol'Jake, live the fast life, a filching hand in the betting kitty and never worry about religion till you were two hours past your expiry date. My life was a huge motif that was smeared across the drywall. Mr. Morishita from Japan placed a Mt.Fuji pin there as a sign of friendship, and I was driving a Lexus, go figure. Ah, the LexusÂ…Never was there a more silent mode of transport for all humanity unless you were talking about dead Toumei being dragged away by a saber-toothed tiger. Come to think of it, isn't it strange that you don't feel any pain in your teeth even though you have the rear engine nozzle of a Boeing triple seven plowed through where your supervisor once sat?
Something tangy sloshes through my dentures. I recognise the taste, it is the taste ebbing life. Keeling to one side, I gaze into the far corner of what was the office. The fuselage of the grey UA plane split open in the middle, and limp bodies hung like macabre manikins, attached to the smoldering seats by heat-resistant seat belts. SeatÂ…..beltsÂ…. ChrissyÂ…Tessa..my God what have I done!!?? It was 1979, summer. One interstate. Three people. One creaky Chevy Impala. Pot and Led Zep blasting from the stereo. Tessa and Christina, Chrissy for short, were my soulmates. Almost fell in love with Tessa, her smile and bright eyes. Three of us, CalTech natives in a cut-price Mustang, a Hemi450 short of flying into the warm summer sky. The sky was our frontier, cirrus clouds dreamily gliding past as we looked up at the setting sun on the Big Sur. I was always like one of those clouds, bright and wistful on the outside but often a seething rage and dark on the inside. My darkness seeped outwards after seeing Tessa's mangled corpse in the sterile, detached atmosphere of the morgue. Chris and I had lifted the covers , wanting to tear our eyes away but steely adjusted them back for the last duty that we could do for her, attaching a name to Jane Doe. Her eyes, they were alwaysÂ….soÂ…blue. Now, they were speckled with Â…..Noooo! I shake myself , maybe I didnÂ’t actually , due to severed nerve endings. Perhaps it is just a phantom sensation, shaped by decades of stretching my head in mid-witching hour marathon work sessions just three feet away.
This was simply endlessÂ….where was everyone? The rheumy eyes that now perched on my blistered and hemoglobin-stained face is presently becoming encrusted with the hot and wet residue that frequently threatens to burst forth likes a dam. Tears. That's what they are. Granddad used to blow up dams in Southern Europe for the resistance. A hero , well-loved and respected by the people around him, grateful for his blood-letting that washed the sins of Hitler off Europe's map. My blood, well, it merely congeals on the carpet , pooling into a kaleidoscope of Grandad's heroism, ol'Dad's callused hands which built our house back in the Appalachian Mountains, and my miniscule output of any real contribution to anyone, except as a corporate vulture that lived a sinful and commercial life. The planets of Money, Influence, and Pleasure had revolved around the Sol of my mind. Sweet ironyÂ… the things I would die for now seem to be the direct cause of my ebbing life. The agony is more or less a part of my landscape, like an irritating surgeon's scalpel that lies inside my churning stomach. I feel a familiar and reassuring vibration from my shirt pocket, which I think has been so for a while already. It's almost a blasphemy to sneak a glance at the small device which links me to the world while looking at my immediate world which I am slowly losing my connections to. I have tried too hard to look beyond and afar while forgetting that the smallest pleasures of life are to be found around the corner. Have I failed in this life or is my guilt derived from holier-than-thou concepts which I am trying to squeeze into my soul's schedule in the eleventh hour of my life? I yielded my chin to mouth the hallowed words of global western communication .The sloshing feeling in my mouth is getting heavier. The crack of light expands, heavenly air rushes in, sunlight too. It washes over me. The angels are hereÂ….
" Hello? "
Julia's SoliloquyÂ…Â…
I have to admitÂ….Mike was sort of an on-off person. Someone who does not really know the status of his relationship with me. Six years. Greensboro to Manhattan, platonic to romanticÂ….and last week, back to plain old platonic again. The dust seems to swirl around me like a maelstrom of unfinished business and vacillating words which cluttered the air around us. My arms ache from the frantic finger-tapping on my cellphone. WHY?! WHY?! Is life meant to be a series of goddamn half-baked crumpets? Yeah, darn crumpets. Mine is now three blocks away buried under a soft mound of asbestos and cement aggregate, never to see the light of day and innocently marvel at the livery of its own being. Seems to me that the sooty stoop which my ass is parked on feels reassuringly solid and comforting. Life is such a dichotomy, the ragged looking, filled-with-dubious-stains stoop is a honest-to-goodness refuge from the crumbling steel and glass edifice of modern-day capitalism and global unity. From the corner of my eyes, I see people fleeing from a citadel of hope into an anonymous side alley whose dank, dark corners become lighthouses for the desperate. The light burns and the darkness soothes, our world hath become a paradise for satire on a global and a micro scale.
Have you ever seen the futility of life? I am looking at it right now. I see tumbling bodies, starkly disengaged from their surroundings, as alien to the morning air as the image of a burning skyscraper in downtown NYC, You look at the surreal motion of a body tumbling over and over and you feel that somehow for one instant ,anonymity and stardom, ..sob…., converge. It's like you don't even know who these people are yet the mere sight is likely to etch itself on your consciousness for a long time to come, akin to these poor souls taking up residence in you mind. I stare at them dumbfounded, scarcely noticing that I'm trembling heavily and that others are also like me, living statues lining the boulevard like a scene out of any penny comic, you know, when pesky Martians blast everyone with freeze-rays. Whap! Was that a punch? I'm too jaded to turn, body stiffened by fear. Somehow, I manage to twist my eyes from the smoky edifice and realize that the portly Arabic café owner is being assaulted vehemently by the stocky men that were just sitting across my table. Fists streaming with blood, these men hammered hurricane-like blows on the poor genial man who always had a kind word for every customer. He looks at me with eyes that accuse me and all of my white brethren with betrayal. The men look up at me, eyes burning with hate and vengeance. Vengeance…I remember that very well. Mike was the lead actor in that episode. He was at his competitive best, a keen master of Machiavellian principles. God.. I can’t continue….. it's too painful.
The phone still rings but no one picks it up. It must be all overÂ….my last chance to speak to Mike. I can't believe it's been 3 weeks since we spoke. Somehow our relationship was characterized by ambiguity. I would give anything to listen to that voice once more, but not even the Fates would grant me that. I cradle the phone to my ear, like a baby, the dust that encrusts its frame rubs against my ear, causing irritation, but I ignore the prickly feeling. If anyone is to see me know, they would see a hunched figure by the curb, solitary and slightly wacko, babbling and being very possessive of a well-used cellphone. It ringsÂ…ringsÂ…God Almighty! Mike,.. WHY DON'T YOU PICK IT UP?!!! .A click- "Hello?"
I swear the next thing I hear will forever be engraved in my psyche.
"JuliaÂ…is that you?" my phone crackled. I hear the rich and warm voice which was Mike.
There is a loud crack that reverberates in the smoky morning air. It gets smokier. Oh God..NO!
"Julia..it's Mike. Just Â…zztzzt..want..zzt.. to tell ya..I'll see you aroundÂ…."
I blubber and stare at the collapsing towers, unable to comprehend that I can reach out to Mike on a level consisting of radio waves and witness the 'live' and grotesque snuffing out of a life. It is too heart-wrenching. I mouth off a silent prayer for Mike and stand gape-mouthed , a living example of such intense sorrow and pain that paralyses you and keeps you in its thrall. -
I think u post is too long. Let me help you to post it into two parts.
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This is something I dug up.Sent it in for the 2002 BBC Short Story Competition but it didn't win anything.Just sharing with you guys.Feel free to comment.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Life Through A Small Crack
Mike's SoliloquyÂ…Â…
It was so cool and bright twenty minutes before. Twenty, huh? More like bang-now!, I thought out loud. My closest friends share the same sentiments, the small pile of aggregate two cm from my left eye . Oh yeah, and that little dwindling patch of murky liquid beyond my cheek, looking like water but yet shimmering like the warm life-liquid that pours from my lips, a steady ebb and flow of the oral cavity that was my personal Normandy. My mind wants my arms to move just a teeny weensy bit but I presume the autobahns crisscrossing the Confederation of Spinal Republics are simply too caught up with the backlog of dead cells that nothing gets through. Ah well, since I can't move my arms, and my legs are trapped under some smoking ruin of metal stamped with 'Boeing' all over it, at least that's what I see; I shall just focus on that small hole near that dry wall, which looked pretty much like some giant pita bread and kebab set meal right now.
I have fond memories of that dry wall, once festooned with industrial stick-it notepaper, listing power lunches and high-flying hot dates from firms in TriBeCa and the Lower East Side. It had a life of its own, which is something I am going to be soon, a 'had' as opposed to a 'have'. But enough of the morbid %!!!. Okay, as I was saying, my personal trophy board was lined with JC Penney's gift paper that was reincarnated from its past life as a wrapper of a gift from Julia. GOD! Is Julia alright? OhÂ… I forgot, I'm a paraplegic, that's what Dr Ang would say, if he was still alive. I donÂ’t know anyone who would be alive except me, secured from imminent death by a temporary permit for future historians to use their fancy time-travel thingamajigs to peer at me and skin any goddamn residue of dignity off me. Bleedin' suckers for instantaneous historical gratificationÂ…..bunch of softies not thinking about the past but merely looking at it like goggle box addicts. God forgive me but I have this really bad feeling that the sonsof$#%&!es that did this will do it again. Am I right, you complacent future ninnies??? Still, I suppose I should get back to my dry wall instead of haranguing my descendants' peers about any bearded/clean-shaven mud/moon rock -slinging terrorist that might steal nutty Doc Chen's particle beam and shave a few kilometers off the top of Clarke's space elevators.
Speaking of elevators, my dry wall and the elevators had an intimate relationship going on. I remember when they wheeled my dry wall partition thingy in, the lifts were so full that six VIPs from upstate had to be offloaded and made to wait in the lobby before they could inspect our operations. I am so sure that the drywall had actually violated the basic principle of polite behavior amongst non-sentient wall furnishings when it was wheeled in and out a few times cuz the crew in loading wasn't quite sure who should go up first, a Ben Franklin lookalike or a off-white cork/chipboard combi drywall. I still think it was a ploy for us to clear up the junk on out tables before the head honchos could flick their cultured noses at our cheap cigarettes and stale pilsners. Those were the days, when you felt that you could make the big smackeroos, buy a Corvette with the works from ol'Jake, live the fast life, a filching hand in the betting kitty and never worry about religion till you were two hours past your expiry date. My life was a huge motif that was smeared across the drywall. Mr. Mori%!!!a from Japan placed a Mt.Fuji pin there as a sign of friendship, and I was driving a Lexus, go figure. Ah, the LexusÂ…Never was there a more silent mode of transport for all humanity unless you were talking about dead Toumei being dragged away by a saber-toothed tiger. Come to think of it, isn't it strange that you don't feel any pain in your teeth even though you have the rear engine nozzle of a Boeing triple seven plowed through where your supervisor once sat?
Something tangy sloshes through my dentures. I recognise the taste, it is the taste ebbing life. Keeling to one side, I gaze into the far corner of what was the office. The fuselage of the grey UA plane split open in the middle, and limp bodies hung like macabre manikins, attached to the smoldering seats by heat-resistant seat belts. SeatÂ…..beltsÂ…. ChrissyÂ…Tessa..my God what have I done!!?? It was 1979, summer. One interstate. Three people. One creaky Chevy Impala. Pot and Led Zep blasting from the stereo. Tessa and Christina, Chrissy for short, were my soulmates. Almost fell in love with Tessa, her smile and bright eyes. Three of us, CalTech natives in a cut-price Mustang, a Hemi450 short of flying into the warm summer sky. The sky was our frontier, cirrus clouds dreamily gliding past as we looked up at the setting sun on the Big Sur. I was always like one of those clouds, bright and wistful on the outside but often a seething rage and dark on the inside. My darkness seeped outwards after seeing Tessa's mangled corpse in the sterile, detached atmosphere of the morgue. Chris and I had lifted the covers , wanting to tear our eyes away but steely adjusted them back for the last duty that we could do for her, attaching a name to Jane Doe. Her eyes, they were alwaysÂ….soÂ…blue. Now, they were speckled with Â…..Noooo! I shake myself , maybe I didnÂ’t actually , due to severed nerve endings. Perhaps it is just a phantom sensation, shaped by decades of stretching my head in mid-witching hour marathon work sessions just three feet away.
This was simply endlessÂ….where was everyone? The rheumy eyes that now perched on my blistered and hemoglobin-stained face is presently becoming encrusted with the hot and wet residue that frequently threatens to burst forth likes a dam. Tears. That's what they are. Granddad used to blow up dams in Southern Europe for the resistance. A hero , well-loved and respected by the people around him, grateful for his blood-letting that washed the sins of Hitler off Europe's map. My blood, well, it merely congeals on the carpet , pooling into a kaleidoscope of Grandad's heroism, ol'Dad's callused hands which built our house back in the Appalachian Mountains, and my miniscule output of any real contribution to anyone, except as a corporate vulture that lived a sinful and commercial life. The planets of Money, Influence, and Pleasure had revolved around the Sol of my mind. Sweet ironyÂ… the things I would die for now seem to be the direct cause of my ebbing life. The agony is more or less a part of my landscape, like an irritating surgeon's scalpel that lies inside my churning stomach. I feel a familiar and reassuring vibration from my shirt pocket, which I think has been so for a while already. It's almost a blasphemy to sneak a glance at the small device which links me to the world while looking at my immediate world which I am slowly losing my connections to. I have tried too hard to look beyond and afar while forgetting that the smallest pleasures of life are to be found around the corner. Have I failed in this life or is my guilt derived from holier-than-thou concepts which I am trying to squeeze into my soul's schedule in the eleventh hour of my life? I yielded my chin to mouth the hallowed words of global western communication .The sloshing feeling in my mouth is getting heavier. The crack of light expands, heavenly air rushes in, sunlight too. It washes over me. The angels are hereÂ….
" Hello? " -
Julia's SoliloquyÂ…Â…
I have to admitÂ….Mike was sort of an on-off person. Someone who does not really know the status of his relationship with me. Six years. Greensboro to Manhattan, platonic to romanticÂ….and last week, back to plain old platonic again. The dust seems to swirl around me like a maelstrom of unfinished business and vacillating words which cluttered the air around us. My arms ache from the frantic finger-tapping on my cellphone. WHY?! WHY?! Is life meant to be a series of goddamn half-baked crumpets? Yeah, darn crumpets. Mine is now three blocks away buried under a soft mound of asbestos and cement aggregate, never to see the light of day and innocently marvel at the livery of its own being. Seems to me that the sooty stoop which my ass is parked on feels reassuringly solid and comforting. Life is such a dichotomy, the ragged looking, filled-with-dubious-stains stoop is a honest-to-goodness refuge from the crumbling steel and glass edifice of modern-day capitalism and global unity. From the corner of my eyes, I see people fleeing from a citadel of hope into an anonymous side alley whose dank, dark corners become lighthouses for the desperate. The light burns and the darkness soothes, our world hath become a paradise for satire on a global and a micro scale.
Have you ever seen the futility of life? I am looking at it right now. I see tumbling bodies, starkly disengaged from their surroundings, as alien to the morning air as the image of a burning skyscraper in downtown NYC, You look at the surreal motion of a body tumbling over and over and you feel that somehow for one instant ,anonymity and stardom, ..sob…., converge. It's like you don't even know who these people are yet the mere sight is likely to etch itself on your consciousness for a long time to come, akin to these poor souls taking up residence in you mind. I stare at them dumbfounded, scarcely noticing that I'm trembling heavily and that others are also like me, living statues lining the boulevard like a scene out of any penny comic, you know, when pesky Martians blast everyone with freeze-rays. Whap! Was that a punch? I'm too jaded to turn, body stiffened by fear. Somehow, I manage to twist my eyes from the smoky edifice and realize that the portly Arabic café owner is being assaulted vehemently by the stocky men that were just sitting across my table. Fists streaming with blood, these men hammered hurricane-like blows on the poor genial man who always had a kind word for every customer. He looks at me with eyes that accuse me and all of my white brethren with betrayal. The men look up at me, eyes burning with hate and vengeance. Vengeance…I remember that very well. Mike was the lead actor in that episode. He was at his competitive best, a keen master of Machiavellian principles. God.. I can’t continue….. it's too painful.
The phone still rings but no one picks it up. It must be all overÂ….my last chance to speak to Mike. I can't believe it's been 3 weeks since we spoke. Somehow our relationship was characterized by ambiguity. I would give anything to listen to that voice once more, but not even the Fates would grant me that. I cradle the phone to my ear, like a baby, the dust that encrusts its frame rubs against my ear, causing irritation, but I ignore the prickly feeling. If anyone is to see me know, they would see a hunched figure by the curb, solitary and slightly wacko, babbling and being very possessive of a well-used cellphone. It ringsÂ…ringsÂ…God Almighty! Mike,.. WHY DON'T YOU PICK IT UP?!!! .A click- "Hello?"
I swear the next thing I hear will forever be engraved in my psyche.
"JuliaÂ…is that you?" my phone crackled. I hear the rich and warm voice which was Mike.
There is a loud crack that reverberates in the smoky morning air. It gets smokier. Oh God..NO!
"Julia..it's Mike. Just Â…zztzzt..want..zzt.. to tell ya..I'll see you aroundÂ…."
I blubber and stare at the collapsing towers, unable to comprehend that I can reach out to Mike on a level consisting of radio waves and witness the 'live' and grotesque snuffing out of a life. It is too heart-wrenching. I mouth off a silent prayer for Mike and stand gape-mouthed , a living example of such intense sorrow and pain that paralyses you and keeps you in its thrall. -
Thanks dude.
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so sad....