Slowly, his life became denser than the graveyards. Not 'til the recent times did the townsfolk notice that the gravestones growing out of the grasses were more in number than the flowers in the grave. They had went to the mayor asking for a brand new grave, but he declined saying - "few people die in the town, nowadays. The young people, who are most frequently dead, are buried in the largest grave of them all: Agony."

People stopped complaining after that. Not because of what the mayor had told but because they found one fine day, that the lovely undertaker whom all of them admired was living a life much, much denser than the death of their children.

Labels: death, fiction, flash fiction, grave, life, short story, story, surreal, surrealism, war

When children would dig holes into the sand on the shore, he had started digging a hole into the sky. It ran piercing the air above his head. As his head grew higher, so did the hole. On the end of the hole, he planted a thousand lightbulbs and started living.

One day, when he had become a man, he invited a few guests into his hole. They told him it was a lighthouse.

Labels: children, fiction, flash fiction, hole, life, short story, story, surreal

One morning, as I woke up, I found my palms were empty. The lines had detached themselves from my palms. They were floating around in the different corners of the mid-air in my bedroom. Like strings lighter than the air. Like destiny trapped in a hydrogen filled balloon, covering the distance between the heaven and the hand.

That evening I told my father -

"Dad, you know what happened when I woke up this morning?"

My father smiled.

"Son, you're insomniac. You haven't woken up for centuries."

Labels: balloon, fiction, flash fiction, hand, heaven, insomnia, life, short story, sleep, story, surreal, surrealism

All his echoes were endless and moist. The morning dew accumulated on his echoes. And when the lights filled up the dew, his voice would shine throughout the realm. Bright. Much too bright. The Ultra-Violet rays of repetetive sounds.

People wore sunglasses to save their ears.

Labels: dew, echo, fiction, flash fiction, perception, short story, sight, sound, story, surreal, surrealism

She always reminded him of dust. Her memories left drying in the sunrays. Like a host of butterfly wings. A reverse metamorphosis. The second cocoon. Caterpillars crawling on the edge of his dreams. Roaches in the corners. Accumulating dust. The leaves springing back to the tree. The ghosts retaining form. She lingering in her life.

It didn't matter. Whichever way the time flowed, in the end she'd disappear from his life.

Labels: cocoon, dust, fiction, flash fiction, love, metamorphosis, short story, story, surreal, surrealism, time

Lately, the sea in my head had become noisy. The waves broke breaking a few of my nerves. Anaesthesia flowed all through my body. Yet the doctors said that the sound was sound. It was a natural sound, they said. Meanwhile, the sea seeped into my blood. And a few fishes too, broke in. On silent nights I'd be woken up by the sound of their lovemaking.

I donated my blood a few days back and a fisherman's life was saved.

Lately, he's making lots of money.

Labels: blood, business, fiction, fish, flash fiction, money, noise, sea, short story, story, surreal, surrealism

Right from his early childhood, he has been appreciated for his capabalities to lie. All his lies were so intense that even when you'd know he's lying, you'd persuade yourself that the entire world has been a lie. Nobody really cared for the truth anymore. "Truth is relative," they'd say "but the liar is universal."

He became a professional liar when he grew up. He lied with such mastery of the art that all his lies seemed interconnected. Juxtaposed. Existing as a parallel realm with the reality. Elusive than the real. The liberation.

The heavens found real competition in him: 'The Great Lie' wasn't meant to have an alternative.

Labels: alternative, fiction, flash fiction, heaven, liar, lie, life, short story, story, surreal, surrealism, truth

When he played the accordion, people could fly. Everyone loved him and the women cooked for him. After he'd fininshed his food, he would start tapping his left foot and picking his accordion would start rolling his fingers. The women would fly back to their home.

When he died, everyone in the town was infuriated. How could he do this to them? Just because he had special powers didn't mean that he had the liberty to succumb the pleasures and pressures of dying whenever he felt like doing so.

So, they hired a man to play the accordian. But they couldn't fly. So, they hired wings for themselves. And they hired everything else. They worked hard and made all the arrangements. At last when they could fly they were too tired to do so.

That night, they set the accordion on fire and each jumped into it. The accordian played by itself. Never was a better composition heard by the fellow passangers of the plane I was flying on

Labels: accordian, death, fiction, flash fiction, life, music, short story, story, surreal, surrealism

I was disturbed, yesterday, by a swarm of rats. They kept eating off my fingers. I didn't like it because I had cut my nails a few days back. And she said she fell in love with my fingers whenever I'd cut my nails. In fact, those were the only days she would talk to me. She wouldn't recognize me without those hands.

I didn't like it when I found the rats eating my fingers. But they ate it off, anyways.

When I went to her home this morning, frightened of what I thought her reaction would be, I found her sitting on her bed - playing with a swarm of rats.

Labels: animal, fiction, finger, flash fiction, love, rat, short story, story, surreal, surrealism

Inside her closed eyelids I had drawn a map. She could follow it when she slept. And return to the unknown places. Unknown faces. In stealing times, when she betrayed herself. Faces were imposed on the days.

I came into her life as a day. She took me as an adventure. Unfathomable. I was tired. I took a bath in one of her teardrops. And then I painted a map for her, inside her closed eyelids.

A map to the farthest point from my home.

Labels: day, face, fiction, flash fiction, life, love, map, short story, sleep, story

She was photographing her shadow in the neon lights. Her shadow posed for her on the wall.

"My shadow's such a proffesional bitch. She lures you with her lusty frame."

She was jealous. But her camera won't listen to her. It kept clicking. Click - clickety - click. When she was checking out the photographs of her shadow, later, she found on the wall her shadow checking out a few photographs too, in each of which she was seen photographing a shadow, holding my hand all the while.

"You belong to the wall", she whispered into my ear.

Labels: fiction, flash fiction, love, photograph, shadow, short story, story, wall

She was stuck inside her fall. So, I decided to give her a push. But the constituents that made up her body had changed. She belonged to the anti-gravity now. When I pushed her she fell back higher and higher. And the top has no bottom.

I brought down a dictionary from my book-shelves and started browsing through it. S, t, u, v. Ve. Vel, ven, ver. Vertigo.

Labels: anti-gravity, fall, fiction, flash fiction, push, short story, story, surreal, surrealism, vertigo

I wrote my screams on a piece of paper. Distributed evenly on either sides. One of the sides would weigh more than the other.

Labels: fiction, flash, life, pain, scream, short story, surreal, surrealism

Evenings have turned to their strands. Leaving my hands wet of the manifold orgasms. I kept kicking the pebble and went where it went. Inside you. The clumsy face of our dead children. Careless kids. They'd always keep coming to us. Breaking into sobs as they spoke -

"Dad, Alice just killed me."

"Johnny, you should be more careful. It's a tough time we're living through and we don't have enough money for a brand new coffin."

"But she told nothing'd happen. In the end you never fall."

"What fall are you talking about?", we would ask, concerned that he might have hurt himself. "Where have you been?"

"I jumped with her into the rabbit hole."

Labels: children, death, fiction, flash fiction, life, magic realism, orgasm, rabbit, short story, story, surrealism

I've been singing into the depths of the night. Seeing them banging their heads into the blue. Until drops of blood would splash onto the bluish blue - making it turn purple. Purple. Perplexing. Unsimilar selves walking in and out of themselves. Trying to catch hold of the tears flowing from their bosoms. An investigation called past clinging onto the back of their tongue. Resisting their flow into the lungs and kidneys of being. The eternal darkness of metabolisms and metamorphosis.

I've been singing the songs of light into the depths of the knight.

Labels: blood, blue, death, fiction, flash fiction, life, love, magic realism, short story, song, story, surreal, surrealism

Dear girl,

I met your mother today. She lives her days dreaming of death. When she wakes up she says the nightmare has taken her back. She asked me about some of your letters but I've already left them to the rivers. How she longs for you to lay down with your head in her lap, once again as you recollected the day you just lived.

Lived.

After the tide, they said the river is flowing in the opposite direction. I hope to sit beside its bank someday waiting for the letters I had left in its arms.

The river is flowing in the opposite direction, with me.

I'll meet you on the way.

Kisses
The Clown

Labels: death, fiction, flash fiction, letters, life, love, scribblings, tribute