When Darkness Blinks

Future: An Introduction Sep 28, 2007 |

"I can listen to the echoes from the past" she said.

"I'm thinking about you now" he confessed.

And went away.

Labels: confession, echo, fiction, fiction. flash fiction, future, life, love, past, present, short story, story, surreal

Insomnia Jun 29, 2007 |

The first raindrop fell in his eyes as he lay awake in the field.

The second raindrop fell in his eyes as he lay awake in the field.

The third raindrop fell in his eyes as he lay awake in the field.

The fourth raindrop fell...

And later, when it was quite late, the fountains rolled down his cheek. His tears lingered in the rain; his corpse about to catch cold.

Labels: absurd, agony, bliss, cold, death, eyes, fiction, flash fiction, immortality, insomnia, life, longing, love, magic realism, oblivion, rain

Breaking the Spell May 16, 2007 |

Although she tried, the water slipped down her palms and she could never wake him up from his sub-conscious state. Inside, deep down, in the core of his sub-conscious, she lived. She tried. The water kept slipping. Everytime.

She would never leave him alone.

Labels: destiny, fiction, flash fiction, life, love, palm, short story, spell, story, sub-consciouness, water

The Roof |

He seconds none in counting the minutes. Like glory passed away in some undiluted rhythm. He tells there's a season of pearls... when the sea won't leave you bereft.

His second wound was minute. Inside, he had found his cozy abode. Outside, where the burn remained, he applied ointment. He tells there's a reason for girls... when they find him to be too stubborn.

After his wounds healed, he kept living under the extension of skin. His cozy abode.

Labels: death, fiction, flash fiction, girls, life, love, pearl, roof, short story, skin, story, surreal, wound

Immortality: An Introduction |

For the difference of one, he could never sleep the number of times he woke up.

Labels: death, fiction, flash fiction, immortality, life, short story, sleep, story, surreal

Albatross Jan 24, 2007 |

When the sail had fluttered for the first time, they had thought the winds of melancholia had returned. Chastity had frozen on her dead wings. If there ever was life before this, people sure would've been waiting for the sounds of their heartbeat. But the silence was denser than the sound.

In the eagles that came trailing the smell of mutilating flesh, they found the first signs of life.

Labels: albatross, deathh, eagle, fiction, flash fiction, flesh, life, melancholia, short story, story, surreal, wind

...And They Lived Happily Ever After Jan 11, 2007 |

When she walked out of his heart, she forgot to tell him where she kept the key to their cupboard. They had designed their cupboard to be airtight. To keep their memories safe from the fungus and bacteria. It was an alternative to their own hearts.

She had taken his alternative away, forever - he thought.

This morning, she had stepped down his heart and walked into the alternative. Their cupboard.

Labels: alternative, fiction, flash fiction, heart, key, life, love, memories, short story, story, surreal

One Who Never Knew Jan 3, 2007 |

Inquisition was a clock that tick-tocked inside his head. One night, when he dreamt of insomnia he woke up to find himself afraid of the clock. Unable to decide on how he should interpret it, he oscillated between the choice of knowledge and ignorance.

It took him a few years to realize that his inability to decide was ignorance, personified. Since then, it took him an eternity of insomnias, trying to find his way out. Never did it occur to him that the realization was his ability to know.

Labels: decision, fiction, flash fiction, ignorance, insomnia, knowledge, life, short story, story, surreal, time

Cell |

I dispatched your agony on a wintry morning. Patient rust on the letter-box. Yours. People tell stories these days. That you had trapped yourself in your letter-box. Thought you deserved a prison. A cell to yourself.

"Life began from a cell," I'd told you, one day.

Labels: agony, cell, fiction, flash fiction, letters, life, rust, short story, story, surreal

Destiny's Thread Dec 31, 2006 |

I used to live by the darkened road that led to the enchanted destinies of a fellow who was lost like a long awaited letter from my lover melting into the storm cutting its way into an alien land where the people who used to stay feeling afraid of the gathering storm and reading the first signs of their doom had decided to flee on the first car they could remember seeing which was actually a mailman's van from which they emptied all their letters to find enough leg-space for making their longest journey comfortable never thinking for once how lost the mailman would feel when he wouldn't be able to deliver their loved ones' words to the people who waited like the man who stayed on the darkened road whose curse it was addressed to those who were responsible for his lover's letter not reaching him that would ensure that their doom become inescapable on the very day they were fleeing from the storm.....

Labels: destiny, fiction, flash fiction, letters, life, love, mail, short story, storm, story, surreal, tale

The Week Spent Inside A Palm Nov 29, 2006 |

"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

Twenty-Nine Nov 15, 2006 |

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 Makeshift Moment Nov 9, 2006 |

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

Life, Thereafter Nov 2, 2006 |

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

Peace Oct 31, 2006 |

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

The Wholesome Hole Oct 29, 2006 |

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

The Balloon that Rose up from Sleep Oct 28, 2006 |

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

Alter Oct 25, 2006 |

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

The Accordion People Oct 24, 2006 |

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

Taken Oct 22, 2006 |

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

The Clown

Frenzy

A Dance in Silent Violins