The Night-IV

T R Mist


Continuation of Night-I, Night-II, Night-III

The Game of Shadows II

The story so far: The protagonist is leaving to meet his friends at the Sunshine Cafe when suddenly he is called out for from a dark alley. The man is an old acquaintance whom the protagonist had named Corto. Corto cryptically mentions about his involvement in the failure of the light globs of the city, which stuns the protagonist.

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“You with me?” I was too stunned to reply.

“You look like those frozen stumps of trees in the jungle”, he added. “Don’t look so confounded I have not even begun telling you what I have come to tell you.”

“You mean to say there is more. More of your dare-devilry and machoism, of which I need to be enlightened about?” I asked. Corto laughed. It was the first time I had ever heard him do it. But as the man’s nature, it was brief.

“Don’t you think I am here to boast about things that we have been doing, I came with a completely different purpose. I hardly venture out so openly, but today I have done it as the situation demanded it,” Corto said.

The Night- The Game of Shadows

T R Mist

Days passed ...lifeless, listless. While returning from work one day…wait did I mention about the work I do. Not yet, but this seems to be a good opportunity. I work in one of the sections of the great formless municipality. A puny cog in the gigantic wheel, which keeps turning and turning without going anywhere.

People tell me I have a respectable job. I harbor no such delusions. For the record I am a truth checker. I go through volumes and volumes of municipal documents and point out mistakes and lies and set them right. It is needless to say that truth is relative, and what the truth is, is decided by the top echelons of the municipality. The nameless  and formless.

So 'the suns’ are as good as the Sun who never disappeared He just manifested Himself through the smaller suns, and they are to be referred as ‘the suns’ only and any other name given to them amounts disrespecting the Sun himself who never disappeared.

The Night-2

T R Mist

Continued from last issue 'The Night'

Suddenly my survival instinct kicked in. I bent my right elbow and hit back at the chest of the man behind me. Hmmp  came a sound. I knew it had found its mark. The hand yet remained on my mouth. This time I attacked the hand. With both hands I grabbed the huge hand on my mouth, it loosened a bit. I gasped and caught some air and fought harder. I could feel the beads of perspiration forming on my brow and slowing trickling off my temples. I bent a little and then with sharp turn of my feet tried to swing around to throw my attacker off balance. He seemed too big for me he hardly moved, but suddenly I felt free of the cage around my mouth. The first breath I took  sounded through the whole stairway. I turned around and stood facing the stairway going down. It was as deserted as it had been. The same dim glow of the light and the creeping mist. As I took in deep breaths of air I felt the chilly air burning through my lungs. The cold was gone and my body burned with fear and yet unseen threat to my life. Something made me look to the darkened corner on my left, where a door existed to an apartment that was occupied long ago by a person who then and went to live in the inner city. Was there a silhouette of a man there. “WHO IS THERE, SHOW YOURSELF. WHO IS IT,” I shouted. The whole building shook with my frenzied shouts borne out of the instinct of self-preservation. Silence. My heart pounded hard. “Ha ha ha,” came a reply. 

The Night

By T R Mist

It was the haze of dark nothingness that bothered me always. It is something I could never get away from, even in those brightly lit streets with various kinds of shops that sold happiness. As I looked I saw men, women and their children happy, some of whom I knew, others who were strangers enter and exit from these brightly lit shops of a dreary city, with an air of nonchalance. They had what they wanted. And they were happy. For them the haze seemed nowhere. I had stopped gazing too long and with a start I started back on my way. Bright lights were not for me.