The Gingerbread Boy

I'm going to tell you a story, now. It's a nice story, filled with juicy twists and even one or two lines that you can play back in your head later and chuckle. It's a bildungsroman, I suppose. Or - if big words aren't your thing - an adventure. What this story really is is a tale with a moral. And if you sit tight and listen well we might even get to it, in the end.

Are you listening? Good.

It begins like this:


There was once a gingerbread boy. He was a normal child, very much like you or me, made of the same rosy skin and jet-black hair and razor blue eyes. The same slightly-pudgy arms and legs and the same sparkling teeth, the same self-conscious expression. A flesh and blood boy.

A normal child. Except deep at his heart - in some lonesome dank corner that lay at the end of too curved a path for even him to see - he was also a gingerbread boy.

Now the boy lived and worked and grew like normal children do. He went to classes, tried his hands at debating, worked like a heathen charm upon the ladies (for he excelled at athletics and had the broad shoulders to answer for it). He was respected by all, feared by none, admired by quite-a-few. People nudged each other to watch him pass in the corridors.

And then one day the dank thing lying at the end of the curve reared its head - and it was a head made of molasses and cinnamon and ginger and flour.

       *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *                

It must be the diluter, thought the gingerbread boy. All those fumes.
He was standing in class, trying to make sense out of the words in a file. The file was lying on the desk in front of him. It was filled with a brief assortment of rumpled papers. The words were on the papers.
They were in his own handwriting.

Not the diluter. It is the walls, thought the gingerbread boy. The walls are sneaking about when my back is turned.
He whipped his neck so fast there was a dry crack. The kid dozing behind him started.

"Are you ok?" the teacher's glasses had slipped a quarter inch. The fan periodically made a sound like somebody's face being slapped against sand.
Someone in the back sniggered.
They're in on it, thought the gingerbread boy. They're all in on it.

There was a dull clicking from the front of the class. People were beginning to turn away from the whiteboard, where a projector was shining the closing slides of a presentation on the mitotic cell division observed in carbide batteries. The kid conducting the slides (and now the verbal cues as well) was tapping  the screen with a Westwood School Wooden Chalkboard Pointer with Plastic Tip (36") in his desperate bid to regain the attention of the class (which was focused on his teammate) and the attention of his teammate (which had long since wandered away).

His teammate was the gingerbread boy.

"In conclusion, when a pseudonymous receptor and a shot of pure energy in the jugular love each other and wish to procreate-"
"They give birth to a gingerbread boy," said the gingerbread boy. Every eye in the room turned back to grab at his face. "I'm a gingerbread boy."

"This is highly irregular," said the teacher. "I demand an explanation, Mr-"
The walls are closing in, thought the gingerbread boy.

I better get out of here.

       *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *                

And so the gingerbread boy ran. He ran to the window, first, out through the glass like it was a brittle sheet of water, and then he was off.

He ran and he ran until his cheeks puffed blue. He ran as the shadows darkened and grew.
That's the stuff, thought the gingerbread boy. I was born for this.

On the way he ran past a stalled DTC bus, a busted transformer. He ran past a couple fighting playfully in their car, a balloon seller trying to weed out a stray green balloon out of a host of red ones.
 This is a good high, thought the gingerbread boy. Better than eau de acetone, at least.

He wanted to keep running but there was a sharp smell from an alleyway. An overripe smell but an inviting smell, an enticing smell.
Maybe I'll stop a while, thought the gingerbread boy. Rest my legs a bit. 

He stopped and made his way inside.

       *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *                

Somebody had set up shop there.
It was temporary shop, at best. A tent nailed up inside a dead-end alleyway. Row upon row of wooden planks nailed up inside the tent. Green glass bottles sealed up with pieces of cork and blobs of wax.

"What is this place?" asked the gingerbread boy.
"The Watering Hole," said a voice in the distance.
"Destination Unknown," said another.

A carrion bird flew up, up, up till it was nothing but the fading blue silhouette from an oversized pair of wings. It flew too close to the sun and was roasted alive.

This is where the animals drink, thought the gingerbread boy. I shall drink with them. 
Across the sky, the moon licked its lips in anticipation of a fried vulture dinner.

       *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *                

There were six of them at one headcount. At another point they were four.

A friend of his stayed throughout. It wasn't necessarily the same person, but his friends all had refreshingly similar views on practically everything; he sat and basked in their conformity, their lack of lateral thinking.

I am different from them, he thought as he took another sip and the seats around him emptied and filled, emptied and filled. I am the gingerbread boy. It is my lot to run.

There was an exciting exchange at one point.
"We're currently escaping from reality," declared a sloshed friend in brown muttonchops and a dhoti. "We're wasting ourselves. Into oblivion."
"Probably," replied the gingerbread boy and took another swig.
"I'm s-serious, man." The dhoti was dishcloth green. The muttonchops were three weeks untrimmed. The level of sobriety was Not Even Slightly. "We're n-neglecting our duties. Well, not anymore, I say."
"What do you suggest?" asked the gingerbread boy and took another swig.
"I'm  turning over a new leaf. Starting today."
"Is that right?" The world kept floating in and out of focus.
"Yeah, man. No more smoking. No more betting on horses. No more hanging down at the arcade all the time. No more gali cricket in the afternoon."
"What about drinking?" The gingerbread boy could feel his head travelling down in a soft, loose arc to settle upon his forearm. He felt the same thing over and over at least a dozen times before his friend responded.
"You serious? Nothing is ever the booze's fault, man. In fact, I'd strongly recommend using it as a vacation for when things get really bad."
"Whatever you say, pardner," the gingerbread boy slurred, and then the ground was coming up to meet him.

       *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *                

When he left it was late afternoon. The pylons all threw heat in squiggly waves that collected under the tin blanket that served as the roof of the world. There was an infernal screeching from the cosmic kittens as they  hotfooted their way across the metal, leaving pawprint indentations from the other side.

The gingerbread boy felt on top of the world, too. The world tilted inexplicably to either side on random intervals, but that was okay.
I feel boy, thought he. I am the gingerbread fine.

There was a clatter from somewhere down the road. The gingerbread boy cocked his ears in a passable imitation of a dog. Steady as she goes, he thought to himself. Then the clatter repeated itself and he was off again. "Just one foot after another," he called out to nobody in particular.

On the way he ran past an upturned car. The doors were open and a brief trail of blood and snot led off to where the passengers had managed to crawl before being picked up by somebody (he hoped it was the paramedics). The windscreen wipers lay crumpled below the spiky glass shards of the windscreen. The cumulative effect was like staring at some giant mechanical bug in the few seconds between its swatting and the last exhale of its oily breath.

The clattering came closer.
I will see the source of the noise for myself, thought the gingerbread boy. I can outrun trouble, should trouble find me. I am, after all, the gingerbread boy.
He turned a corner and came upon the manhole cover.

       *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *                

It was around thirty inches across at its widest, and then it tapered away to nothing in all directions. It was a round manhole cover, of the sort handed out quite freely by the Government on roadways.
The gingerbread boy had seen nothing like it in his life.

"Is there anybody out there?" he called out. The road pulsed in an intense burst of aquamarine light.
A merman poked his head out of the gap where the light was coming from.

       *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *                

I will stop here, for a moment. You do know what a merman is, don't you?

Imagine a creature just over five feet tall, standing on hind legs that have webbed feet at the end. Imagine fins on the side of its knees, behind its elbows. Imagine spindly arms that would end in webbed hands, too, except the creature slit the membranes down the middle and wrapped each individual finger in a thin strip of cloth (the webs would grow back, given a chance). Now imagine a thin layer of scales on the whole thing.

Done? Good.
The key word here is imagine. There is no such thing as a merman, not really.

The merman who peeked out of the manhole that afternoon was called Fathead. He spoke on behalf of five other mermen, three merwomen (they'd stopped being maidens a long time ago) and a boy in a green shirt.

       *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *                

It was a breathtaking moment, history in the making, the landmark first interaction between two completely alien species (nobody remembered the first thing they'd said to the green shirt, and he wasn't even a part of the narrative yet). The gingerbread boy even stopped jogging in place for a while, leaned in closer to listen.

"You wanna come join our party, bro?" declaimed Fathead.

       *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *                

Of course the gingerbread boy acquiesced - you haven't been listening at all, have you? He followed the merman all the way down the rickety ladder, past a bunch of grimy-looking pipes through which the river Yamuna flowed sometimes, through a revolving door that looked rusted shut (but wasn't), and through a secret door in the back of what seemed like a padded cell.

The gingerbread boy continued to walk, spellbound. There was a gigantic cavern under the sewage system (if that's where they still were - he found it harder to tell directions without the sun standing in the background hemming and hawing) and they seemed to be near one of its walls. The dull grey stone rose up in front of him and faded into black somewhere high above. Peering closely at the darkness, the gingerbread boy realized it was made up of clouds.

Trees grew near the wall, at irregular intervals. The soil felt warm and crumbly in his palm - a little stale, but still more than potent enough to whelp trees that went up a good five-six storeys themselves.

They were all sitting with their backs to the wall, the mermen and the merwomen, a boy with a green shirt tucked away somewhere in the middle. They watched him with genuine curiosity as Fathead went up to one of them, took the gnarled and elongated wooden pipe they were smoking and handed it over to him.

"This is our peace pipe," said Fathead. "Would you like to share?"

The gingerbread boy looked carefully down the stem. He felt the roundness of the bowl against his thumb and forefinger. Then he dipped his finger into the bowl, scraped some of the powdery residue with his nail, and sniffed it.
He smiled.

"I am the gingerbread boy," he said to them all, as one. "Let's get baked."

       *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *                

They sat there for a long, long time.
The walls turned purple for a while but nobody really noticed. Jagged forks of foliage bored through the ground and shot up towards the sky (The roof, Vermivore said it was the roof). Lightning flashed occasionally and by its light they could make out the gigantic tree painted upon the ceiling. The air was heavy with branches falling back to the ground utterly spent and the sound of rain.

"Is it safe to be sitting here?" the gingerbread boy said. He wanted to stand up to lend his statement weight but his legs were jammed against the ground.
"Yes," said one of the merwomen. "You sit where you are and you pull with everything you got. That's all."
"Shut up, Saffron," said Fathead. "You're a woman. Go fix us some worms or something."

       *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *                

The gingerbread boy followed the motions of the guy in the green shirt. He seemed to flow from one state to another - sitting leaned back against a rock, then neck craned to see where the pipe had gotten, then jutted forward like a monkey going after a jar of cookies as he received the pipe, then cross-legged, shoulders hunched slightly, the bowl of the pipe a smoldering orange against the greenness of his shirt.

"He makes me slightly uneasy," whispered the nearest merwoman to the gingerbread boy.
"Shut up, Saffron," said Fathead. "Didn't I ask you for something to eat? Get off your fat arse now!"

Saffron stood up.
Everyone stopped talking. The green shirt forgot to hold out the pipe to Fathead.

Saffron left.
Everyone slowly started talking again. Fathead snatched the pipe from the green shirt.

       *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *                

The green shirt waited for the pipe to go out before getting off his perch and going to sit with the gingerbread boy. "Got bored of crushin'," he said affably.
The gingerbread boy coughed a little and nodded. He had no opinion of the guy in the green shirt. He didn't need one. He could run whenever he felt like it.

The pipe was refilled.
"Good shit," said Fathead. A couple of mermen raised their index and little fingers at him.
In some cultures that is taken as a sign of respect.

This is perfect, thought the gingerbread boy. I have never felt more inclined to stay in one spot.
The rain came down harder now. It ran down his cheeks and his throat. It drenched his shirt in a matter of moments. Small bits of light snaked in through far corners of the cavern and the rain got at them, too. Great gobs of water smashed themselves up around them and depending on the light the pieces that fell were either a deep purple or a bright green.

The green shirt had to light the pipe again when it came his turn. The gingerbread boy leaned forward to hold the flame to the cup and saw that the other boy had an even set of clean, white teeth.

Halfway through the second round Saffron walked back into the circle, pulled a saucepan from somewhere in her dress, and smashed it upon the titular fat head of Fathead.

The green shirt watched the pipe sail over his head and smash against a tree. Then he turned to the gingerbread boy.
"Let's get out of here," he said.

       *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *                

So this time the gingerbread boy didn't have to run alone. The guy in the green shirt did not offer any conversation beyond what was necessary. He just kept pace with the gingerbread boy as he made his way back to the rubber room and then out towards the surface.

They ran over the crest of a hill and then skirted down the smooth pavement on the other side.

The gingerbread boy squinted back in the direction he'd come from and saw the irresponsible fizzle of fireworks above a dead town. He thought he saw rainwater pulling on the sides of the road like some long-delayed shutter. Occasional forks of lightning framed them against the backdrop; the image of a green shirt squeezing between cars at an intersection burnt itself into the retinas of the gingerbread boy.

He's got some balls, thought the gingerbread boy, and Ow.

"Where do you live?" asked the green shirt.
"Nowhere," he replied. "I belong on the road. I am the gingerbread boy."
"Are you, now?" the green shirt grinned in the darkness. "What do you run towards, gingerbread boy?"

This was a new question. The gingerbread boy pondered and pondered.
"A place where things keep happening," said the gingerbread boy, finally. "A place that does not sleep."

"Great way of inviting yourself over," said the green shirt. "My house is not far from here. You can meet some of my friends. Sound all right?"
"Yes, it does."
"Unless you have somewhere to be getting to, I mean."
"Let's just shut up and sprint already."

       *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *                

The green shirt lived in a dilapidated old house halfway between the University and the Transit. The gingerbread boy had passed it often, back when he was a human child and had to go to distant corners of the city and make people listen to his speeches.

"Is it safe to live in there?"
"Better in there than the road, man," the green shirt grinned. Somebody finally opened the door on the third knock.
It was a girl.

"You should've told me there would be guests," she said to the green shirt, eyeing the gingerbread boy up and down. "Decent-looking ones at that."
"It's no use," said the green shirt to the girl as she followed them inside and surreptitiously sniffed the back of her guest's neck. "He's a runner."

       *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *                

Once again, there were anywhere between four to six people in that room. Nobody got up and left but they all looked so damn similar it was difficult to say whether there were three girls and two boys or two girls and three boys or two girls and two boys and one incredibly gifted master of disguises.

The gingerbread boy looked for his friend but it was difficult to tell which of the two boys play-wrestling on the couch was the one who'd come in with him - was it the one on top twisting the other's ankle or the bottom bitch yelling in pain and reaching slowly for the cricket bat lying a few feet away from them?

There were no more shirts. The guys and girls all wore blue shorts and white vests. The guys all had chiseled physiques. The girls were all incredibly easy on the eyes. The gingerbread boy had taken off his own tattered school blazer when he entered the room but he felt self-conscious in the presence of what were obviously underwear models who'd gotten bored of hanging on the billboards.

"Wanna try something mindblowing?" the familiar clap on the back meant it was his friend formerly of the green shirt.
"Always," said the gingerbread boy.
A thrill of anticipation went through the gathering.

       *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *                

"Like that?"
"Yeah. You managed not spill any. That's good."
"Does it usually come in droppers?"
"No, it has to be extracted and put there. Delicate process. Sorta."
"And what does it do?"
"It's a really intense high, man. Puts you right in touch with the other side."
"The other side of what?"
"Everything, man."
"Oh. What is it called?"
"Got a weird-sounding name. Biological shit, man. I'd tell you but your eyelids are getting red. It's hitting."

       *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *                

It was a strange sensation.

The gingerbread boy found himself floating, floating, detaching from the body splayed awkwardly on the couch, from the circle of spectators (definitively proven to be three girls and two guys apart from the green shirt - one or the other person was always in another room, hence the confusion), from the green shirt (whose turn it was in the other room), from the room itself, from that giant depressing bitch of a tether everybody likes to call the ground. He was...

... Not just a gingerbread boy. He was the gingerbread boy. And running was for retards, especially when one could fly...

...Back to the days before his trip to the condemned building, to the days when the fumes from the peace pipe went straight up his nozzle and into the slot machine that was his head...

...Back to the days when he first met the peace pipe, in a gathering of familiar faces who only surfaced when there were green stalks and murk in the sky and a clean surface to crush on...

...Back to the days when his world was populated by locked rooms and empty faces and liquid fire that you drank straight from the bottle to burn the demons scrabbling in the recesses of your soul...

...Back to the day years and years ago when he first saw that there was something damaged irreparably in the workings of his mind, some blighted short circuit that would light up a neon arrow if ever he got within a mile of an open road...

...All the way back to the day he was born, a few moments after all the blood and slime and bits of his mother's womb had been washed away, the moments of utter quiet when every eye in the disinfected white room stared at him, the moments when he could be anybody, any random miracle of chromosomal interaction and evolutionary progress...

This is who I am thought the gingerbread boy and I better tell them my name.
So he did.
He finally cried out his name.
And it resonated across all the disparate strands of his story, unifying them under a common umbrella that would grant them form and context and meaning and purpose and cohesion.

This was the gingerbread boy's finest hour.

       *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *                

And this is where the story ends. No, seriously. It's a positive note, right? Everything turned out okay. The hero gets his moment in the sun, and there's always the vague promise of sex in the distance to spice things up for the more mature audience (subtext, folks, all about the subtext!). All is right with the world. Except..

Except there's no moral yet. I mean, come on! We don't want empty words like closure, do we?
We want a teaching. And we want it drilled into somebody's head (foreshadowing alert).

The gingerbread boy's story could be over.

Except it wasn't.

       *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *                

The green shirt walked to the other room, the one where somebody had to be present at all times. It wasn't a hard and fast rule, of course, but it would be decidedly impolite to leave the other occupant of the room alone - especially since he was sponsoring their trip, so to speak, and also happened to be tied to the bed.

"P-please let me go home now," sobbed the man in the bed. He was hardly a man, what with crying in front of somebody out of sheer helplessness.
He also didn't have the required number of limbs.

"We'll be done soon," the green shirt reassured him. He checked on the swathe of tubes and cables attached to the base of the other's neck. He checked on the clear receptacle - half an inch of fluid remained, enough to fill in at least five more droppers. He finally checked on the man's body. The right leg and left arm both ended in bloody stumps, wrapped in rags that had barely stemmed the bleeding when first applied a couple weeks back.

"Please. It really hurts..." the man wasn't crying anymore. He'd tried everything already.

"I'm telling you, man. We're almost done with you." The green shirt checked to see if the scalpel was still on the tray where he'd placed it on his last shift.
It was.

"We've found a new lamb, you see," he said, and then he walked out of the room.

       *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *                

The gingerbread boy was still falling over the edge of the sofa.
He'd been falling for over twenty minutes.

"Human body. Beautiful thing, ain't it?" green shirt fondly stroked the boy's hair. "Creates hormones, regulates their presence, knows how to hold a party. Shall we get the last formality out of the way?"

The female on her way out mock-bowed. Green shirt grinned as he turned to their guest.

"It's getting really late," he said. "We're thinking of adjourning for dinner. You good?"
"Mmpff-fine," said the gingerbread boy. "S'really good stuff."
"I know. But," he asked casually, the third and final time, "don't you have to be getting home?"
"No home, nowhere to go. I am the gingerbread man," said the gingerbread boy.

"Good." green shirt stroked his hair again. "We've been having takeaway for ages so we decided to cook in. You're welcome to join us whenever you want."
The gingerbread boy lolled. Green shirt got up to leave.

"Just the one thing," he called back from the door. "I almost forgot. You don't have a problem with non-veg, do you?"
The gingerbread boy didn't hear, but that was OK.
Green shirt hadn't really waited for an answer.

       *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *                

...And that's the real ending. The gingerbread boy is safe and sound, the butt of a few jokes perhaps but in good care. The lost boys and girls living at the condemned building look out for their own. Drug abuse aside, look at how beautifully they tended to their invalid friend until he succumbed to his injuries.

It is things like these that give me hope for humanity.
Anyway. You have made it this far, haven't you? And I promised you a moral.
I didn't think anyone would make it this far.

I guess I'll have to freewheel, then. Here's me casting a look about my room for inspiration: a grimy, boarded-up window, a hole in the wall where I can press my ear and hear the rambling of the stretcher-bed's current occupant (he's been babbling nonstop for the past ten hours. This story was restructured out of the more coherent parts of his soliloquy) and, right next to the cot I currently share with one of the girls (there are no restrictions here. There are six of us and five different partners is more than enough for anyone), a slightly-faded but crisp green shirt that I wear when I am outside.

To return to the issue at hand. The moral of this story is, always try to be like the gingerbread boy. Take chances and allow life to surprise you, every once in a while.
You never know where the culmination of your travels shall find you.

Now if you'll excuse me, I believe I left something in the oven.

Superhero Movie

You wanted to see a Superhero Movie. I wanted to see a Superhero Movie. Everyone else wanted to see a Superhero Movie, too, but then they went without us so we went later.

We spoke on the phone in the morning before going for the Superhero Movie and you asked me, when did a Superhero Movie turn into the Superhero Movie?

Does it really matter, I asked. It was hard to hear you clearly because the phone lines had been dug up a little. There were craters the size of thirty children going around the mulberry bush. Elephants, the government reported. Just, like, elephants, you know. Falling from the sky.

Because nobody in their right minds would go watch The Superhero Movie, you retorted.

Halfway across the world renowned actor Drake Bell sat down to a quiet early dinner with his immediate family, unaware of the cruel oblique jibe at his expense. There was too much butter on the shrimp.

I reached the theatre a whole forty minutes early. There was a lot of time to spare so I sat around with a suitably thick tome to swat at the air with. After what seemed like eternity I looked at my watch and realized I’d only killed ten minutes.

You called with twenty-five minutes remaining. I’ve just woken up, you said.

It’s a fine sort of day to have just woken up to, I supplied. I decided to walk while I talked. There was a temporal anomaly where the mall's central promenade had been; people walked into the blue-green haze and suddenly found themselves bitter and resentful, wondering where the best years of their life had gone. A minor leak, a man standing on a wooden crate was yelling into a megaphone, we were laying gas lines and there was a minor leak. Nothing to see here. Move along. 

I sidestepped the anomaly. 

All of this for a stupid superhero movie, I grumbled.

I had forgotten all about the stupid superhero movie, you confided.

Halfway across the world renowned actor Drake Bell waited until the rest of his family was asleep before creeping down to his study. He picked up a salt-shaker half filled with grade-A Bolivian snow and helped himself to a toke. He looked at the walls, decorated with prime-time Teen Choice Awards, none of which he’d won in this decade. He decided to help himself to another toke and then some.

It was decided that you'd make it by the skin of your teeth and we'd watch the movie minus the irritating trailers that we'd wanted to gasp at.

And what if I don't make it in time? You inquired.

Come on, I exhorted. It's not like we haven't had our fill of superheroes.

And that was true: the only known superhero alive at the time was a young man from Tampa Bay, Florida. He called himself Horsedick Fuckaton (spelled Fuckathon in EU countries) and was victim to a severe case of functional retardation. He was also the metahuman equivalent of a truckload of Supermen on steroids: a Godlike entity who couldn't tell apart his various abilities, let alone control them. 

Each and every one of his adventures caused billions of dollars worth of property damage and almost always culminated in the gruesome deaths of at least a thousand people. It had come to a point where criminals stayed at home just so they didn't have to be guilty of causing the spontaneous implosion of an entire housing complex because ol' Horsey couldn't discern between his left hand and his right.

We could always Google Horsey's latest exploits and feel terrified, I reassured you. The elevator to the top floor had been wrenched clean out of its moorings and skewered into the ground like a flagpost, six miles away in an open field. Some government official was probably on site, lying through his nose. 

It felt good not to know for certain.

Halfway across the world renowned actor Drake Bell hit himself upside of the head to clear the ringing. Then he realized the ringing was the alarm of the battered sedan into which he’d plowed his Porsche. He felt himself up and down before ascertaining his only injury was a moderately severe nosebleed; but he’d had that since before he got into the car. He opened the door, fell outside like a discarded juice carton, and then fumbled to his feet before continuing down the nearest darkened alleyway.

I'm sorry I made you miss your superhero movie, you said.

That's all right, I suggested. You'd turned up seventy minutes after the movie was supposed to begin. I'd tried reading my book for all of five minutes before taking the temporal anomaly for a spin. I felt too woozy to be upset. I also felt a strong urge to watch Nirvana live.

No, I feel like I wasted your time, you said as you typed out yet another text to yet another friend - your fifth or sixth in the past two minutes.

You don't, actually, I said in a more perfect world.

We were standing outside now. I felt fine. A little less woozy but in control.

Pardon me? You looked at me politely. Your fingers on the keypad never slowed down.

It was just another Superhero Movie, I remarked. In a season when superhero movies are a dime to the dozen. It had more to do with spending a bit of time together. Maybe it wouldn't have been awkward. Maybe it would even be worth it.

You stopped texting and looked at me intently, in this perfect world I had in my head. The intensity of your gaze increased considerably as I took off my jacket, revealing red and black tights underneath. I raised one fist towards the sky and then I was off - over the buildings, the concrete hills, the rivers of smoke - far, far away from the realm of your all-too-human eye.

Halfway across the world renowned actor Drake Bell slumped against an overturned trashcan and waited for his breathing to regain some semblance of normalcy. Then he took the .38 Magnum he'd yanked from the Porsche's dashboard and put the barrel in his mouth. He'd already cocked the hammer and squeezed his eyes shut before he realized he could not do it - he could not possibly die with that terrible overbuttered shrimp as his last meal in this world. He waited momentarily to see if he'd change his mind before tossing the gun in the nearest garbage can and starting upon the long walk home.

The story ends quite unsatisfactorily.
Which, in retrospect, happens to be the point behind this poorly-constructed narrative.

We don't live in a perfect world. Or else Horsedick Fuckaton would have choked to death on his own umbilical cord. And Drake Bell would have the best shrimp in garlic butter sauce he'd tasted in his life; and then he could off himself less than a hundred meters from the carcass of his beloved Porsche.

And I could afford to be a raging alcoholic with writerly ambitions. And you could be utterly self-absorbed and insensate, because we'd know ourselves with all of our problems and failings.

And there wouldn't need to be the tantalizing promise of some larger-than-life icons sweeping up our trash for us and making us whole again.

You'd see what I've seen all evening - what drove me to try something as preposterous as this in the first place.

All we have - all we really ever had - is each other. And no matter what our problems might be, we can take them on. You and me.
The way we were before we became this twitching mess of neuroses and inability to communicate with one another, let alone relate.

We'd watch the stupid Superhero Movie because we'd have three hours in a darkened theater to hold half a million discussions that the world wouldn't have to share in.

We'd have reaffirmation.

And the Superhero Movie could go back to being what it is - a stupid goddamn Superhero Movie - rather than a metaphor for all that is wrong with our world right now.

Apophenia

Mildred listened to George's breathing slow down and finally even out in the other room.
There had been a brief moment when the inhale-exhale had snagged, somewhere between 3:34 and 3:35 on the digital clock in front of her. She knew it was because George slid his arm, elbow onward, into the space where it would lie upon her if she was lying beside him.
George and Mildred had been married for thirty-five years.

"And right now I can feel every second of it," Mildred said out loud, to no-one in particular. Her voice - generally clear and rhythmic (though nothing like the 'sonorous warble' her husband told guests about at dinner parties) - sounded rusty and disused to her. She hadn't said a word to George all week. It was her idea of giving things one more chance.

She got up to get her glasses from the dining table. She'd placed them within easy reach of the armchair before she went to bed, but George continued to arrange them at the exact center of the table every godforsaken morning.
The morning tableaux were another thing Mildred could do without - her husband smiling at her over the paper, mottled chin moist like some godforsaken retriever, straining his eyes for the slightest sign of approval.
"Too hard," she said, and it was true. He was straining too hard. Missing other things which should have been obvious a long time ago.

The joints in her knees popped like gunshots, and Mildred felt rather than heard the sound. She held her breath for a few seconds, but George's breathing continued along the same lines.
The glasses were kept over the telephone bills from the previous week. She picked up the limp envelope by force of habit, and it took her a concerted effort of will not to place it on the mantelpiece among the bric-a-brac that comprised the padding of their little household.

She put it back on the table, put on her glasses, and spared a brief glance at the picture of her son in his football jersey, the bright yellow and green stripes and number 15
(I don't want kids not now not ever just to roam the world live at my own pace you know)
of the fullback. He'd made her proud; very proud indeed. But her husband's reaction
(of course dear I understand I totally do it's not like I wanted one that bad)
had put Mildred to shame; the incessant preening and proud exclamations and those godforsaken awestruck whispers about strong jawlines and his mother's eyes.

The clock hit 3:47 and Mildred quickly sat back down; the time had been the one thing she had been particular about. Sure enough, there was the muffled thump of padded footsteps and then a brief ratcheting as the lock on the front door was overcome.

Four men in black overalls and balaclavas entered the house. They were greeted by the sight of an old woman seated alone by the dining table, her glasses opaque reflectors in the green glow of the digital clock.
"Listen to me closely," she said in even tones. "We have an agreement and you're going to keep it. Your payment is in the bedside cabinet. Touch anything else and I scream for help right now. Improvise and I call the cops. Try to get any funny ideas about taking orders from old ladies and a dead man's switch lands you in jail. You know about dead man's switches, don't you?"

The men nodded, hesitantly. They'd probably taken her for a senile old windbag when she first approached them at the bar; but this was unquestionably a voice of authority.
They would have to obey her.
"Good," Mildred smiled. It had been a hobby of hers to collect obscure lexicology, and it made her happy to see it come back. George had all but cured her of that particular affliction. "Now get to it."

The men marched into the other room. There was a brief spell of silence as they readied themselves.

Mildred closed her eyes.

She heard her husband's gasp as he was yanked awake by the lapel of his dressing gown. She also heard the first blow land in the middle of his garbled protest. Judging by the sound he'd been struck across the face, which meant the loud crack was the bridge of his nose breaking open.

After that the sounds resolved themselves into a more regular rhythm, and she let it flow over her like the intro to some plodding march. The only false note came when George (in a desperate bid to escape) tried to squeeze between two of his assailants; he ended up losing his footing and falling facedown off the bed, breaking his maxillary central incisors (one of which had been chipped during a skating accident on their honeymoon). To give them due credit, the men instantly improvised by tossing him against the wall, after which the earlier rhythm was miraculously regained.

Five minutes later (the digital clock said 3:53) the men strode out of the room, overalls stained with sweat and large quantities of AB negative. The man in the front held a thick wad of cash, which he waved at Mildred as they passed her.
"Don't let me see you again," she said. The men nodded, hastened their steps, and were soon part of the night.

Mildred took off her glasses and placed them back where she'd found them.

The only sound that came from the bedroom was the occasional broken sob. She walked back inside, where she found George lying on the floor in a crumpled heap. The bedsheet lay pulled on the floor around him, stained with blood and sweat and tears and snot.
"Baby," George said as he saw her. "Baby Ruth."
It was an endearment that she'd actually liked (and, perhaps consequently, hadn't heard more than half a dozen times in the past few years); so Mildred wasn't really surprised to feel tears pricking her own eyelids.
"Are you okay, Baby Ruth?"
"I've been better," She said. She wanted to stroke his hair but there was a leaky hole on top of his head. "What happened here, George?"
"I didn't see you when they... When I woke up," George said. A sense of unreality was settling on the whole conversation. "I didn't know how long they'd been here. I'd hoped you were in the bathroom."
"Of course." She looked the other way; her husband was moments away from his demise and yet this close to descending into the same banality that he'd embodied throughout his life.
"Why, Baby Ruth?" She turned back sharply, but it was merely the delirious rant of a dying man. "Why? Why? Why?"

Mildred sat and stared at her husband. It had been a perfectly planned operation - from the hired thugs to the depersonalization of George (a proper noun) into her husband (a common noun). It had been a cold and calculated act of hatred, the sort meticulous people commit when pushed beyond the edge. But what edge? He'd always been faithful. He'd loved her dearly. How was she supposed to explain to him the idea of loving someone too dearly? Of finding patterns and sequences where there weren't any? He'd blown a casual summer fling into a lifelong romance, a slightly-crazy girl who sought freedom into a godforsaken ice princess, to be cherished and adored and held captive in a steel cage of material comfort.

How was she to explain to her husband that the past thirty-five years of his life (of her life, of their life) had been a lie?

Instead she ran her fingers through his hair. "Apophenia, George," she said. "The word is apophenia."
George didn't hear her because George was already gone.
Mildred sat there for a few more seconds. Then she got up, pulled her husband's mobile from the dresser drawer, and called 911.

As the slightly-accented voice of the operative answered, it finally hit Mildred that George - her husband of thirty-five years - had just passed away in her arms. And despite his flaws, despite his eccentricities, despite his madness, she'd always loved her Musketeer (the one who called her Baby Ruth, dear God). So the tears that began to flow were real.
"A b-bunch of armed thugs just broke into our house and killed my husband," she said in one gasping breath, and then she was crying, sobbing over her George's body, too broken even to put two words together, beyond inconsolable. It took the operator over a minute just to get her address right.

After the call she dropped the phone and sat gently rocking the corpse of her husband. And that was how the paramedics found her, seven minutes later.

Empty House

This is not exactly a happy sort of day to be posting.

The morning started out ok. Woke up at 9. Showered. Dressed. Takes me a while to come to terms with the world, so don't remember much about the morning till then. Dadi looked slightly off, but she's looked slightly off before. Nothing that another dozen colored pills won't solve, right?

Wrong.

The only significant interaction I had with her was after I put on a shirt. Went up to her room, asked her how I looked (wearing a shirt is a bit of a ritual, since I generally don't do it too often). She said she had no clue.

Not a downer by itself-she's been putting up with my retarded fashion choices way too long-but her responses are generally more positive.
Either way.

Put on a Tshirt instead (white, Harry Potter motif, old reliable) and off to college it was.

Here's what I did in college today:

1.) Mooching about

2.) Marxism

3.) Mooching about

4.) Ice-cream

5.) Mooching about

6.) Gaming arena (Call of Duty, let's kill us some motherhumpers)

7.) Mooching about

8.) Going Home

Called home from Kashmiri Gate - my Mausi resides at Connaught Place, a visit is long overdue, and have been instructed to call home in case I am delayed for some reason.

Mom said she had some work for me. Told me to come home.

Her voice didn't quiver.

Her laughter did not sound contrived.

I came back to an empty house.

Because while I was away, this is what my grandma had been up to:

1.) Dizzying spells

2.) Disorientation

3.) Nausea

4.) Bouts of confusion

5.) A complete loss of will power.

That last one means she could not even muster the strength to get out of bed.
And you thought you were having a bad morning, eh? Ha ha ha. What a card you are.

Try building a joke around the punchline provided.

Ready? Set? Go.

Brain hemorrhage.

She was hospitalized somewhere between 1.30 and 2PM, which means mom already knew when I called her in the afternoon.

Dad thought it would be best if I wasn't told over the phone.

Apparently they did not want me running over to the hospital and making a nuisance of myself.

They are currently in the process of shifting her to Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital. And while I can see why they wouldn't want me turning up and being a hindrance rather than a help, it pains me slightly to note I cannot read my own parents. We tell ourselves how we're keen judges of human response, how we can read our friends' tells without breaking a sweat, and here I am, a stranger to the house of my father, so to speak.

And while on the subject of the fallacy of human nature (I am going to assume the rest of the human race is as inept and retarded as I am), who am I going to talk to, about this? My closest friends from yesterday are either as insensate as I am or out of touch (through no fault of their own, let me tell you - I would fall out of touch if I were them, and since they're obviously not smart enough I have no qualms making the call for them). The ones I made today are nice people. Do not want to dump this upon them, because I don't know how they'd respond. I mean, I wouldn't know if I were them, either.

So that leaves You. Who have read this far because either

A.) You have nothing better to do, or

B.) You thought I had something worthwhile to say.

Do you have something comforting to say? The one other person I told said I should buck up. He talked about how I'd been the one he turned to when he lost someone close to him. He also said that while RML has the best neurosurgeons in the world, I should prepare for the worst.

Could you do better?

Didn't think so.

Are you still here?

Good.

Here is what I have to say to you:

A.) Do something more productive. Life is a fleeting bitch and you have no clue what she'll throw at you next; and

B.) The amphitheater of your world is running empty. So stop listening to the lines that the actors keep spouting. Watch their body language instead.

Words can be fickle bastards.

Now fuck off and let me brood in peace.

UR

And so we finally come to this.

To be honest it wasn’t supposed to go like this; the review on the cards for tonight was Blockade Billy, a stunning novella by Stephen King, about baseball – one of the things he loves so.

However, by virtue of the fact that the title of this blog professes to contain the views of a so-called bastard of the cynical variety, it wouldn’t have been kosher, so to speak.

You see, this blog was originally started with the intention of bashing upon badly-made films and badly-programmed video games and (perhaps most cathartically) badly-written books. We’d have us a couple drinks (cold coffee, if you must know), lounge about in the living room, and make light of the things that piss us off.

The first two entries veered more towards the Oh-Look-Here’s-A-Lesser-Known-Jewel persuasion; and while that is not a bad thing for a blog to be, the readers (yes, someone did read the goddarn thing already – my shock exceeded yours. Honest) found the less-popular subject matter a bit too obscure for their liking.

And that brings us to tonight’s rant. For the novella I am about to bash (spoiler alert) is not too well known, either. But it is Shite. So we get to cut loose.

UR is a rather recent work of fiction by (hold your horses, folks) Stephen King. The same guy who gave us sublime horror and literary fiction and a most enlightening guide for the aspiring author called On Writing. UR was released as a promotional title for the Amazon Kindle, and was exclusive to that platform-and therein lies the crux of the matter.

You see, UR is nothing but a two-hundred-page-long love letter for the Amazon Kindle. The book meanders through a vague (or mediocre, if we follow the author’s lead and slap the word upon every page) account of an English teacher whose girl leaves him because he does not have an... Amazon Kindle. The book begins by him attempting to spite her by buying an... Amazon Kindle (which, incidentally, has to be the most mediocre way of spiting someone I’ve ever seen. Kinda like putting a horsehair brush in a jockey’s bed to send a message). The whole tale revolves around something that is off-kilter with his... Choice of Lifestyle. Oops, sorry folks, I meant his motherlovin’ AMAZON KINDLE.

Stephen King has already forayed into the realm of e-literature by releasing a story called Riding The Bullet as an eBook exclusive (it has since appeared in the collection Everything’s Eventual and is pretty darn awesome, all things considered). However, he noted with displeasure that people were more interested in his choice of medium than whatever it was he actually had to say.

I can’t say I don’t sympathize with him; writers need to take a firm stand regarding the treatment of their creative output. but UR is the literary equivalent of bending over and praying one doesn’t stay sore for too long afterwards. The lead character is shown to be a traditional Books-Belong-On-Paper sorta guy, but subsequent events bury his preferences under a torrent of Hemingway and Poe and a bunch of other guys, all of whom have undiscovered works in some phantom dimension that happens to be KINDLE-EXCLUSIVE.

A couple of moments were chilly- the take on world events in other worlds, for example-but one expects King’s work to be packed with such moments; any relevant message he might have had is buried under walk-on characters mouthing a single line about how THE KINDLE IS THE EARTHLY MANIFESTATION OF GOD and YES, YOU NEED TO USE A LITTLE LUBRICANT BEFORE THINGS GET GROOVEH (pardon the cringe-worthy metaphors but the picture that pops in my head is even more disturbing) before vanishing somewhere in the background –a Chinese sweatshop where they make Kindles for an angry population, most probably.

Anyway, apart from the blatant advertising spots, there were a couple more irksome things that I despised.

Firstly, why thrust supernatural creatures of judgement into an otherwise-sane story at the eleventh hour (Spoiler Alert)? The way they kept referring to the circular notion of things and the significance of the Tower were both sickening, to say the least. I mean, obviously your regular fanboys won’t really buy something so derivative; and those unaware of the Dark Tower mythos will only pick their noses and ponder for a brief moment before going back to reading their SPANKING NEW STEPHEN KING EXCLUSIVE on their AMAZON KINDLE.

Secondly, after everything has died down and the guy has finally disposed of his Kindle on grounds of sanity, what do you get? A picture of his girl in the local paper (Spoiler Alert!) And a pathetic desire to call her up right then. I mean, you take the one likable character in a crappy story (that's the english teacher's girl), build them up to the point where a satisfactory conclusion would do verra-well, thankee, and then abandon them with no sense of closure whatsoever.

The cumulative effect is that of banging your head on a wall, if the wall were a freight train and your head was, oh, I don’t know-THE AMAZON KINDLE?!?!

In conclusion: This is a crappy book that serves as a crappy advertisement for a device that was outdated the second it rolled off the conveyor belt. I read this whole novella on the Kindle app for Android (it has a 16-bit colour display and can-gasp!-access the internet and play music, among other things) and am now thankful I did not pay for it.

Seriously, though, if you’re looking for a mad old time, you could always print the story out on paper and then read it-a book about the Kindle read by a bunch of guys with no electronic assistance.

Way to be ironic, Danny boy; now pass the bottle of absinthe.

Meanwhile, I shall finally call it a day-thank you for reading this far. Do drop in from time to time, and pray keep your eyes open for Blockade Billy. He’ll probably make his appearance after my brain stops feeling as clunky and overheated as, say, an AMAZON KINDLE.

Peace.