Once upon a time, she was a fairy tale. Magic played on her skin. Children ran through her heart. Many a demons and witches perished on her breath. One day, a prince landed right into her eyes. She closed her eyes. And they lived happily ever after.

But oh! for the boredom of continual bliss. She contemplated suicide.

So, in one fragmented dusk she caught him making love to the fairies. Children learnt new words and went out, playing.

Labels: bliss, children, fairy tale, fiction, flash fiction, short story, story, suicide, surreal

"I'm back", he said. And yet, none answered.

The darkness knocked on her cheekbones. But the door was locked. She slept stagnant on her mute heart. She recognized none anymore.

He pressed his ears on her heart for the last time and whispered, "I'm back".

Labels: darkness, death, fiction, flash fiction, heart, life, love, pain, palm, short story, story, surreal, surrealism

Between the evening and the night, one day, there was no dusk. And from light to darkness, the transformation had been so rapid that it hurt their eyes. They promised they would be blind by the next day after the first drops of blood from their eyes.

A rich man hired them by the news. His palace had twenty-nine windows and they made a great exhibition. Each of his windows had automatic blinds.

Labels: blind, blood, dusk, farce, fiction, flash fiction, life, short story, story, surreal

A heart glowed on the road down his window. Its light hurt his eyes. Won't let him sleep. Never let him sleep in the nights. Closing his eyes won't help. The light made everything that came in its way transparent. He had to get up and go to the window. He found a boy coming down the street, his eyes lowered. He hung his head out and cried -

"Hey there, kid. Would you mind turning the heart off on your way?"

Labels: fiction, flash fiction, hand, heart, kid, light, short story, sleep, story, surreal

He wore his fears on his forehead. Engraved inside his skull. The solitary existence of an introvert leader and a fool. On a sun-filled day she accepted a flower from his hands.

Ever since, he wore his fears on her forehead.

Labels: destiny, fear, fiction, flash fiction, flower, love, short story, story, surreal

And still they lingered on her lips. The children. The tale of those who were lost with their fading childhood. Reproduction was an exact name. A re-creation of their childhood. A restoration of selves. A wooden plank on the river bed. Flowing. Empty.

After their mother had kissed them, they had ran outside with with the wooden plank.

Labels: children, fiction, flash fiction, gun, mother, peace, reproduction, short story, story, surreal, war

He had stretched his hands towards eternity. But since the road to eternity is through time, his hand aged. Ever since he was known as a man with senile hands.

One of her tears was lost in those hands. And yet, the smell remained. The sober smell of the garden of grapes. That drop of tear turned old in his hand.

Women afraid of age died in his hands but never left a tear in his hands, ever again.

Labels: eternity, fear, fiction, flash fiction, hands, short story, story, surreal, tear, time

He had learnt it from the spiders. A web drawn out of feathers. There's no windows in the feather apartments. A dream trapped on its edge. Melting. Falling on some rainbow feather. Accumulating. A heavy heart.

Her steps were measured on the feather-web. Each one a thousand escapes. Escapades. From all edges of her body she walked inside herself. Concentrated into a point. In the end, she found holes large enough to be called doors on the moist walls of the feathers.

She would have been miles away from him had it not been for his pet Protozoan who gobbled her.

Unforgetting

Animals - 1: Rabbit
Animals - 2: Rat

I stepped into a brown metaphor. A drill past my future. Steep as the stairs to the mountain top. The fall was uneasy too. Never as comfortable as it would be in our childhoods. We fell voluntarily in those days. Crashing down the mountains. Creating melody.

But in growing up speed had been infused in our lives in unequal proportions. Slowness fell in her half. In the end, I'd have to wait for hours until the evening at the foot of the mountain with a bucket and a crown. It was invariably someone else that Jill would come tumbling after.

Labels: fall, fiction, flash fiction, love, mountain, parable, short story, speed, story, surreal

He dreamt of a reincarnation on the exact day that he was to die. And it was exactly after he woke up from the dream, restless, that he realized that he was about to die. The only thing he couldn't decide was whether the reincarnation belonged to his past or his future. It disturbed him. For the first time in his life he experienced a headache originating from his heart. It angered him so that he decided he needed no reincarnations.

He got up and smashed all the clocks.

Labels: death, dream, fiction, flash fiction, life, reincarnation, short story, story, surreal

His birth coincided with one of his father's hiccups. The man had been drunk as usual. But for that fragment of the second, he had to lose all his senses. He didn't see the baby been reaped out, even though he was standing right in front. So, he never believed that the child was born at all. He accepted his son as a hallucination.

"You're my hangover", he'd say "But I love my imaginary characters."

"But I'm real", his son would revolt

"Oh! Don'cha worry about that. I'm imaginary myself. My birth coincided with one of my father's hiccup. You'd learn one day, that the hiccup negates reality. And with every hiccup we become more and more imaginary."

Saying this his father disappeared into the thin air.

Labels: fiction, flash fiction, hangover, imagination, reality, short story, story, surreal

There were no papers in his house. He wrote words on his guitar string. It took him a few years to complete his first novel.

One day, she took his guitar to render his favorite melody. Words from his novel shed like autumn leaves.

Labels: fiction. flash fiction, guitar, love, novel, short story, story, surreal, words

She stood for hours inside her own heart. She said she had swallowed herself. She had never known that her heart was this cosy and warm. She played with her enzymes for a while, then realized there was a pain in the left side of her tummy..... which reminded her -

"Shouldn't I have been in the stomach if I have swallowed myself?" she asked the enzymes.

"You are." They replied.

"But the heart...."

"You swallowed it too."

The pain in her tummy increased.

"Indigestion", she thought.

Labels: decision, digestion, fiction, flash fiction, grotesque, heart, short story, story, surreal

He went from, town to town selling the breeze of foreign lands. He said he had cure to every disease trapped in his transparent jars. Even death. He had brought many a corpses back to life. One day a child came up to him and said -

"I won't have a baby brother anymore. My mother had to abort. Father told he doesn't need another zombie in this house."

Labels: breeze, children, death, fiction, flash fiction, life, magic realism, short story, story, surreal

Nobody believed the little boy when he said that he knew magic. So, one day he invited everyone and from the roof of a five-storied building he jumped. Before his body would crash on the ground, he disappeared mid-air. People were awestruck. But to make sure this wasn't some kind of trick, they pushed a man from the roof. He fell down and died. Someone said, "He was a man. Physics would work differently on him." So, they pushed a child from the roof. He died, too. Someone said, "He was just a child. Metaphysics won't work on him." So, they pushed a famous magician. He died.

And so they concluded that you shouldn't jump from the roof of a five-storied building or else, you'd die.

Labels: children, fiction, flash fiction, logic, magic, short story, story, surreal

I carved shadows on the midnight rains. A whole lot of despondent footprints on the water. Somewhere, underneath the third layer of the waters, I left you back with oblivion. But your shadows were lighter than the water. They came up on the surface of the water and floated with the kerosene.

"I love the smell of kerosene", you used to say.

Matchsticks. Drenched shadows in memories. Darkness. A drop of water from the tap, repetetive. Music on your bathroom floor. The intoxicating fragrance of kerosene. I saw you dancing with the flames inside your eyes. That night, you didn't let me in.

Tonight, I walk through the infinite corridors of the burnt-out rain.

Labels: fiction, fire, flash fiction, light, rain. water, shadows, short story, story, surreal