HEAVEN - 0666
Two orbs of white light, roughly four feet apart, standstill. Just a foot away from me. It is dark except for those cunning eyes. Its intensity awakens my repressed anger. The anger that she had yearned for in me. Now, she lies on my lap, her loving husband’s, the one she trusted her life with, in her purest red, oozing from the ear. “Daddy, my head hurts,” cries my little angel, clinging onto my shoulders. Even the smallest pricks are as sharp as diamond for the 13-year-old. “Just like you,” she used to say. His wailing starts fading as he loses grip and falls off onto the road. The engine rumbles. That is greed, mixed with an ounce of pride. The beast moves back, ready to prance. “Take me,” I close my eyes to the speeding car.
I open my eyes to the shadow of my soul. Ubiquitous darkness. UMB… UMBRA… that is what it is called. “Eternal Oblivion”, my philosophical ancestors believed in this conception of death, and now it unfolds, right in front of me. For the first time, darkness offers peace, something that Robert needs. Just like me. Life after death gives space for introspection, not for insecurities. What it takes is a dark place and complete silence, as we wait for it to cover us with a blanket of serenity, giving us the comfort and warmth needed during the chilling winter. Don’t ponder suicide to correct your follies to live a reformed life after the resurrection. What proves our resurrection anyways.
My hands support my rise off the ground in the dark. It quivers… like the ’quiver’s when I struggle to solve a math problem. It is common in our circle of mathematical logicians. We feel like breaking stuff, throwing it, and at times murdering… ourselves. As if the world is gonna flat if we fail to make it. ”Take a break,” Jane used to say. Slowly, these breaks offered me newer dimensions about the problems, battling a bellicose inner turmoil. Bu… Ouch! I fall to my knees and can’t help the grin on my face. But, I fail to battle the external ones. “Why are you sorry for their mistakes?” “Do you want Kyphosis? Stop bending your back while conversing with people,” “You sounded feeble over the phone with the pizza delivery guy. Gosh, he is a human, not a hue-man!!!” “This random stranger walks up to you, calls you an idiotic ***** and you smile back at him. You are proving him right, do you know that?”
Ah… The aftermath stabs me right in the heart. ”Answer me,”
To:
Jane,
Somewhere in this darkness,
Heaven – Not666
Subject: Answers, that couldn’t be answered alive.
Dear Jane,
Hope this message reaches you in proper soul.Had I known the answers, had the light shone, I wouldn’t have given a blank stare, just like how I am staring into this darkness. Treat others like i, you will be treated like pi. That is my school of thought. And you say: Keep treating others like e, and be their p. You are right, they treat you like p. I just can’t hurt others at any cost. Even an ant or even numbers, it is just me.
To your surprise, I faced that beast with immense courage, the one that you wanted. This world is not for the sensitive and the emotional. Hope heaven is.
Take care of Robert.
Yours lovingly,
Dave Bourbaki
Those cunning eyes, shining white, and the attitude… it is stirring something… no words to describe. Mysterious to discover something undiscovered. Jealousy? Is that what it is called?
Time? I am losing track of it. It is all warping. I count an hour, sometimes a day, and then my eye closes. It opens, just like it did minutes back??? Sorry, hours back??? I look into the oblivion. “Jane… Robert…” I shout, frustrated as it echoes into the never-ending darkness. Nobody to love or to be loved by. What does the lack of love and a need for it do? Pops your eyes and clenches your fist. It did happen to me. WHERE ARE THEY? Banging the ground are my hands, and quenching the thirst of Erebus are my tears. I retire, giving up to the seeded turmoil.
“Happy birthday Robby,
Soon to be a Boby,
With his favorite flappy,
Look around… For every one is happy,”
Jane’s mellifluous tone lightens my mood. There is light in this space, not enough to conquer the darkness. Like candlelight. Two silhouettes are standing right in front of me, one’s parity being male and the other’s, female. “Beautiful,” my compliment yields a Stoic Jane, admiring Robert in his party hat. “The cake is coming… Go on, this is your day,” says Jane to Robert, with a knife in his hand. My hair is sticky. As I dig through my hair, a short, waxy, and warm entity penetrates out of it.
“Blow the candle and cut the cake, Robby. Forget all of your worries, to the newer beginnings,”
“I am not a cak…”
He raises his knife with a stern face, his hands ’quiver’ing. Aaaahhhh!!! The knife…
My head... it is spinning, aching as if it split into two halves. For hours, No... for days, No... I bang my head against the ground. Questioning my own sanity. “Thirsty! Thirsty!” mutters my mouth, dry like the Atacama. More the sin, more the struggle. What sin did I commit? Staring back with courage? I stroll in this turbulent darkness, in search of a cloud to quench my thirst, hoping no janglyhead was perturbed by my howl. Something obstructs my movement. My hand drifts forward, tracing the locus of a rectangular plane. Must be a wall. As it drifts downwards, it touches something wet. The sound of water dripping from a hole in the wall resonates in my eardrums. The water is salty, but enough for the dryness.
Two orbs of white light, roughly four feet apart, standstill, flashing on my eyes as I savour the life replenisher. Those cunning eyes and the stare... That beast. The engine rumbles as I close my eyes to the speeding car.
