The checkpost

There was a checkpost within sight.

Dirt and sweat. Distances long yet falling short of pay. That was how his days could be described. as a truck driver, what else could one expect.

He drove a goods truck, and what came as a surprise to many, was not an alcoholic. Only he knew that he had seen his father succumb to the devil, when he was a child.

Travelling ran through his veins like spirit. He had always been someone who grew up on the highway. His old man used to make roads, which he liked to see as paths leading somewhere. 
After work, both of them used to sit beside the highway, planning to tour the world someday.

His occupation would tire him but came with a sense of satisfaction. He knew he deserved more. The more his hours became unpredictable, the more determined he became to take himself and his wife out of the shanty town.

There was a checkpost within sight.
Only one difference.
He was carrying arms today.

Elephants in the cottage

They hustled and bustled in the cramped room, the floorboards of which creaked but the sounds got muffled in the laughter.

The musty smell pervaded the two-room cottage but the lady in the apron shuffled around carrying an aromatic freshly baked bread with strawberry jam, avoiding the feet of the crowd.

Two sneaky teenagers exchanged looks from the far corners of the room, which were not that far if not for the people blocking the sight of the two restless young men, who jumped at the sound of a siren somewhere far in the curious little town.

A suspicious rat scuffled under the rickety dining table, sniffing away to glory.

The men with cigars in their hands were having a rather serious debate on politics and drifted from the topic every once in a while, being painfully aware of the presence of each other's wives' in the room, who could spill more than they needed at any point in time. They could not resist resting their gaze at the lady in the apron and then sharing a smirk when the wives were looking away.

The racket at home, thanks to the two families that had come to meet the lady in the apron, was a welcome change. The friends rarely met to avoid facing the elephants in the room.

The lady stuffed bits of bread in the mouths of her children and hummed away as she made her way to the kitchen garden, picking up the potted plants that needed to be packed for her journey.

She was soon to leave the town for the city with her two children.

They all thought the man of the house was out of town.

Only she and the young men knew. Some secrets were better off buried in the kitchngarden, where many weeds had made their place on the freshly dug out soil.

-x-

 

That night, it had rained.

Rain was not falling diagonally that night, she was thinking. It fell like tear drops, patient and painful yet a salve. her eyes brimmed too as this was the only time she could flee from the chaos of daily life. Otherwise, she had made a habit of fleeing from herself. Romantic or sad, she did not know such clichés. maybe that is what made it difficult for her, the realism. For her, rain was still.

A cat, cold to its bones, yowled on her windowsill, startling her out of her thoughts. Lights went out and she could no longer see the rain from her window. She did not like sounds that were not accompanied by sight. She gathered herself and shut the windows. The knock that followed was unexpected at that hour of the night.

Dark Beauty

A regular consumer and connoisseur of dark chocolate, he could smell the percentage of cocoa in every chunk. “No one understands my passion,” he said to himself as he bit into a dark beauty, staying up the entire night, high on caffeine.  

The Lucky Charm

Going from door to door, he would whistle incessantly. They called him the Whistling Messenger who would hand them the letters and cycle back to town, leaving behind a haunting tune.The letters never carried any saddening news.

He was their lucky charm until the day he delivered a postcard with news of death. The Messenger’s whistle was never heard again. All that was found on the lane drifting back to town was a bicycle, a khaki uniform, and a handbag with a skull.

Happiness sealed in the letters used to be his lucky charm. 

The Picnic

As we lay our rug beside the river and settled down, looking forward to the much-awaited Spring picnic, the sound of rustling leaves was difficult to ignore. It did not take me more than a few seconds to back up and drive away in my Jeep, before the merry group could get suspicious. I saw the sleek body of the panther, playing hide-and-seek in the vegetation. Everything was happening according to plan. 

Marriage

He had presented her a dictionary, the page bookmarked said that marriage is the relationship that exists between a husband and a wife. The dictionary lay torn in the bin as she wrote down with pen her own definition of revenge on the divorce papers blotted with tears. In this one year of marriage, he had taught her that marrying her teacher was not a good idea.