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First published in India 2015 by Frog Books
An imprint of Leadstart Publishing Pvt Ltd
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Bandra Kurla Complex
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

ISBN 978-93-81836-95-8

Book Editor: Cora Bhatia
Design Editor: Mishta Roy
Layout: Chandravadan R. Shiroorkar

Typeset in Book Antiqua
Printed at Dhote Offset Technokrafts Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai

Dedication

To my family and people, who have contributed directly or
indirectly in this, including the publishers Leadstart and
editor, Cora Bhatia.

About the Author

Imran is an enthusiast bearing an endless temperament for writing, and likes to be creative whenever he finds time. The thing that brings the most out of him is his craving to do the same things in the most different possible way. Born in India, he currently works and lives in the Middle East.

Contents

1. An Empty Page

2. The Crime

3. The Prisoner

4. The Writing on the Wall

5. The Story

6. Yellow Winged Stranger

7. No matter what happened

8. And in your eyes I see my Defeat

9. Fine Line of Truth and Reality

10. A Companion, worthier than Life

11. Faded Colours

12. Asylum

13. Jack

14. The Tragedy of Samantha Rodriquez and Dotted lines of Fate

15. Ethan’s Part

16. The Truth

17. Two Brothers

18. Song of a Lonely Bird

Dedicated to the ones I love…

An Empty Page

At the sound of every engine moving through the usually quiet street of Mason’s Dawn, an elite friendly neighbourhood, on the South bank of the city of Dartonville, Emily stood to scale the street from her bedroom window for the car, as she had been waiting all night. The curtains were drawn making her view quick and easy at first peek. Her room was at the corner, on the only first floor of the house. Next to her room were two adjoining ones, belonging to her sons. One had been vacated ages ago, when her younger one left for a job downtown, he would normally visit on weekends. The other being deserted since the afternoon making her edgy. She was nervous as was conspicuous in the way she moved, hurrying through her room and jumping to the window for answers, after a brief round of walking around the table. It was pouring heavily, and she was concerned about her son.

Her Husband, Dan, had left about an hour earlier, after a worrying call from the police station. She was a small woman, her brunette hair being the only part adding to her beauty. Acutely afflicted, she moved scratching her stub of a nose continually, determined to have her confrontation as soon as Dan arrived.

Her wait had been stretched; the patience was being lost. She tried to convince herself to relax and made the bed all over again; she had stopped counting after three. Her legs had started to ache; she finally sat down on her well-made bed to relax, cupping her nose, and taking a very deep breath, mirroring a release of negativity brewing inside of her.

The phone on her bedside table rang; it was her mother. She promptly explained the situation at hand and how Dan had to leave for the police station, gasping for breath in the middle of words.

Hearing tyres move silently into their driveway making a frictionless sound on the wet rainy roads and the engines hissing aloud nearer than before, growing excited, she excused herself from the phone, hurriedly moved to the window and was in time to notice the car lights go off, bringing the temporary lit street back again to darkness. The sound of the engine replaced by the tapping raindrops on the pavement and the rooftop.

She hastily ran downstairs.

*********

The room was partly lit from the fire blazing actively from the fireplace at the right corner of the living room. The major part of the room was yet dark. It was raining heavily outside, with brief moments of lighting, notable through two symmetrical windows, which rapidly illuminated all the formation inside the house, regularly bringing it back to darkness, except for the sofa, which looked cosy from the heat it was receiving from the fire.

Two figures could be seen approaching the door through the curtains. They hurriedly entered the room jerking off the extra water from their clothing, wetness dripped from them on the doormat and the wooden floor, leaving a trail of water near the clothing hanger, as they moved to place their coats.

Dan had just posted bail for Howard and brought him back home in the middle of the night. It was past two already, but they had more pressing issues on their mind than the odd hour it was. He was furious at his son for his actions that night; it had put Dan in bad taste with the society. He was a well-to-do man with a good reputation – honourable, distinct and yet a family man. But what infuriated him even more was the inability of Howard to understand. He was not sure how to convince him against his wishes; Howard was growing out to be a rebel by the day.

Dan had enough of it and he had a plan tonight to bring senses back into him.

Dan had struggled with Howard for the most part of his life. He had issues of his own, and Howard’s defiance had resulted in compelling insults towards the respectable image of Dan in the society. Dan cared about his image – a lot.

A palpable exchange was about to start between the two in their living room. Mostly it was going to be one-sided, thought Howard. The car journey from the police station to the house was rather quiet and alarming.

After shirking off his failure, Dan finally began the conversation,

“Howard,” moving forth with his posterior towards his son.

“Why do you always have to find the logic for doing these abominable things?” He paused.

“You do them to make me look lousy in front of everyone.” Putting an answer to his own question.

“After the completion of your filth, you wait for your senses to kick back until hell freezes over.” Dan judged Howard, as he entered further into the living room slowly, towards the warm sofa, and freeing himself from the undercoat, that he had on.

Swiftly, he turned towards Howard, looked at him with caution, and briskly moved against him, finally grabbing both his arms and shaking him rigidly.

“Why in God’s name would you ever lose it,” he asked in a shock stricken voice. He was very angry.

“Look at me, Howard!” he said, as Howard tried to avoid eye contact.

“You don’t have to know how to read the eyes of people to actually read them! Can you read mine?” He moved his head along with Howard’s to look directly into his eyes.

“It’s simple, eyes are windows for many things, and they show fear, intimidation, and carelessness.” Dan’s warning was making Howard hide his feelings.

“It is just like predicting the cards in a good game of poker. And in just an instant, you get to decide whether you have a tough hand or not. If you don’t, then you call the best possible bluff ever. I read the eyes of the prying neighbours’ everyday – interested, curious, terrified neighbours.” All at once, realising his tone and relapsing.

“Those people you beat up, they can’t beat you back!” He said, and patiently waited for Howard to react.

Howard thought antagonistically. He knew he was intimidated by him. He also knew that Dan could see that in his eyes.

Howard felt ashamed as was clear when he started to speak, “But this is not poker and I am not that tough to play it.” Howard said with complete reluctance, defending his stand and trying to break away from his grip.

Dan was trying to make a point. He had gripped Howard, with both of his shoulders in between his strong hands, while he himself, stared deeply into his eyes, looking for answers. Or at least tried, as Howard was constantly shaking his head in embarrassment.

Howard was trying very hard not to look at him directly, and his discomfort was maturing by the minute. He was unable to free himself from Dan’s grasp. Howard tried shrugging to show his displeasure. It was not physical power that held him. Howard knew he was athletic, but Dan had a powerful mind, as his talk usually stood morally corrected. He wanted to make a point to Howard and he mostly did a good job, when needed. A corporate style strength was beaming from him, the kind that is noted when a boss fires his staff member caught embezzling funds.

“People like you never believe in oneself, very troubled, unconfident, and are always wrong, making the same mistakes again and again ...” Dan’s dissatisfaction, thoroughly distinct.

“They, people like you, always take the allusions they have or what others make for them. No one is that creative in these times. Who have you taken for a master these days? Tell me Howard?” Dan continued angrily.

Howard was an angry kid; he got into trouble with the law for common and occasionally aggravated assaults. He was unhappy with his life in a way and he invariably focused his anger randomly on people by hitting them or scaring them away. Dan just brought him back from the police station for the third time this month, and he knew it wouldn’t stop there.

“One knows that he can feel love in the eyes of his lover when he sees it. He just knows it. But he can never sense the betrayal when it comes from her. Betrayal’s worst disguise is love and more love, don’t believe what you feel all the time, Howard, if it is about a girl be careful, she might mislead you.” Dan earnestly told Howard, with a hint of sarcasm and irony, as he screened Howard’s face closely from left to right.

It wasn’t about his anger, but about how Howard felt and how to reach it, Dan calmed himself down. Dan would usually inflict his thoughts into Howard, by using verbal tactics and screen the surface for the dent it ensued. This in fact worked; at present, it conceived doubts inside Howard’s head about his actions.

“That is not true and that’s rude…” Howard evoked, passionately unsatisfied.

“But is that okay… to love… Does it even exist?” Dan pushed on overlooking Howard’s intercession; he thought he was getting closer to the problem.

Dan had tested multiple ways to make Howard right; he now thought that it was better to be ingenious in his concessions and conversations. Decisively using his lucrative cooperative style that he usually dawned himself in at his multinational business.

“Betrayal?” Howard opened his mouth in awe.

“How can a person make the person who loves him the most suffer like this? It is not possible.” Howard uttered with dislike and loathing on his face.

“Maybe, he will never know it. Maybe he does not want to know either.” A smile lit up Dan’s face as he continued, using his hypothetical third person to put forward his agenda. Dan couldn’t exactly pin point the area of Howard’s manipulation, which pushed him to commit these aggressive incursions. There was definitely someone who was talking nonsense to Howard and Howard was buying it. Dan wanted to change it, once and for all.

“It is all an illusion, Howard. God’s main realm for his creations, which makes a thing or an emotion exist or non-exist, be seen or unseen. It’s all in the mind my dear,” Dan in a state of tranquillity, as he proceeded with his hypothetical theories to hit a mark in Howard’s arduous mind, or so he thought. Dan speculated perhaps, Howard suffered from hallucinations or schizophrenia at one point. Dan’s talent was to rationalize the irrationality, to put a perspective in place, that’s how he made things move onward and galvanized people to bring in huge numbers for his company.

He took a deep sigh; he thought he was being too hard on Howard for his behaviour tonight.

“The understanding goes to as far as being reasonable and comprehensive. Can anyone picture paradise?” Pausing momentarily before continuing.

“People have depicted a virtual image of heaven and hell based on the insight they have of things. And mostly filling in the void with objects, they see fit around themselves.”

“What are you talking about?” Howard asked again, with a little reluctance, confused and irritated.

“People have used the same things they have seen, felt and tasted, and modified them to a better point to look good.

That’s paradise for them,” said Dan, neglecting him habitually and going on with a natural sense of confidence in his voice.

“Or debased it to look bad, just like a nice illustration of hell in our drawing rooms or the city museums,” he expressed, pointing towards their own paintings in the house.

But now Howard tried refuting the argument. “A person’s deeds always incline them towards their this understanding. Hell is for bad people. Heaven is a reward, it keeps us wishing for a better tomorrow, an afterlife without sorrows,” Howard exclaimed, curbing an urge to refute everything Dan had said.

“There is no such thing as heaven or hell,” Dan said with a raised eyebrow and awaited Howard’s response to this statement. A lesson on reverse psychology was clearly being read here.

“It is a mere reward... it... it’s... it’s just a hope,” stuttered Howard, and then feeling a little sluggish.

“Hell assures us that bad people will get what they really deserved,” – the sense of fear was well reflected on Howard’s face. He thought he was going to hell.

“A metaphorical error, is it?” Dan remarked, cutting him off in the middle.

“Understanding has limits, but imagination does not.” Dan was not a man to beat when it came to coercively making you accept the things that he believed by employing his mind gaming arguments.

“Man has gone by to live with real things to the level that he has stopped to think outside the box,” shouted Dan, finally releasing Howard’s shoulders from his grasp and instantly raising his hands upwards, as if he was finishing the show on a stage.

Then Dan turned on his back to move to the centre of the room, where a cosy sofa awaited him, leaving Howard baffled still maintaining his familiar ‘Dan speech.’ (As Howard and family referred to it.)

“He lives with facts and things that exist in an actual physical state, rather than conceived in the mind itself. He has made the illustrations of heaven and hell because he desperately wants to believe they exist. But what do they consist of? They use the best things available to us, surround us, and put them in their illustrious paradise. And they do the opposite for hell.”

He turned around, as he approached the sofa and he seated himself snugly. “When man started drawing lines between superstitions and reality, he crossed some of the amazing stuff to the other side.”

“Well…” said Dan, feeling a little comfortable on the sofa.

“He has however not been able to interpret the thing that controls us the most, very existent but unreal. An emotion.” He sighed.

“An emotion is what makes a man to exist or perish. A human is ‘love’ to one person, yet he is hated by many, and still to others that same person can be perceived as ‘jealousy’ or ‘envy’ or multiple other emotions. Or anger, as is your case.” He pointed his right hand towards Howard, as he relaxed his back to the sofa, while picking up a pack of cigarettes from his left.

“Hence, each one of us exists mostly in those same or different colours to the people around us,” he went on.

“What define a society are rules!” Howard, his last try, bemused.

“Aha!” Dan exclaimed.

Quite obvious that Dan wanted Howard to correct himself morally, more or less.

Dan gave a casual shrug and lit his cigarette, and after taking a strong drag, he went on again, looking at Howard from a distance.

“These threads of emotions that exist for every person, when interwoven with random other’s perceptions create sparks of varying intensities. And these threads lie on the base of such delicacies, and when broken lead to violence, death, sometimes life or mishap.” The smoke expelled from his nose and mouth as he spoke.

Shifting his cigarette and holding it between his forefinger and thumb, he brought it in front of his face looking at it with limitless satisfaction.

Then he shifted his glance to Howard, standing in the middle of the room.

“The point to note is we never see this cloth around us. The cloth woven by bits and pieces of these emotions that wrap our body or rather our souls – changing the colours of its thread every now and then. Perhaps, it doesn’t exist as the words ‘life and death’, which are just petty words describing something so profound that when unleashed, can engulf the other.
The powerful always prevail. This is also the power of an emotion. We are either clothed or naked.” Dan nodded, as if he was convincing himself altogether.

“Words can be created,” he went on, taking a strong drag on the cigarette again.

“‘Assassination’ was a word coined by Shakespeare?” he said, with the expression suggesting he wanted Howard to reaffirm the fact.

“We give names to them, ‘Life’ or ‘Death’.”

‘Life’ or ‘Death’, he repeated, as he shifted his stare from the cigarette, now in between his lips, towards Howard.

There was a sense of threat in there. Howard imagined himself in a play, the main character, who unexpectedly forgot all the memorized lines that he was supposed to say.

Howard was a good speaker otherwise, but he hardly stood a chance when it came to Dan. He tried rehearsing what he should say and what he shouldn’t before his usual strife with Dan, but it all came down against him always.

He knew what Dan implied and he always started with his manipulative speech.

“They, the people,” – sounding obvious and breaking a momentary silence he initiated, as Howard, still standing there, looked up towards him, still trying hard to make eye contact.

“Describe them with adjectives and verbs required for them. People call someone alive because they watch him every day, listen to his voice, and can feel his heartbeat when near to him.

And when the heart stops, he is laid in the room of total darkness, a definition we give – ‘death’ or so they say,” he mockingly ended.

Oh, so it was a talk about life and death now, great! Howard wondered. How ironic of Dan, he thought. The man who hadn’t lived a normal life does not deserve to talk about life and death.

In the meanwhile, Dan continuing...” He speaks no more, nor does he move just lying all the time with no heartbeat.”

He made no sense anymore to Howard; it was just his way. His implication was strong and he never thought he was wrong. He had an experience he, himself alone believed in, Howard thought.

His eyes narrowed. He moved forward in his sofa and looked at Howard intently …

“It is an Illusion, God’s main realm,” he now moved towards the conclusion.

“What is it, which counts so much?

The reality, the hyper reality, or just an illusion?” Dan explained using hand gestures, initially cupping his hands together and making his hands wider and wider after each phrase.

“The question is why do we trust our eyes, ears and the rest of the senses so much, and if we do, then why do we apply the equations used and bestowed upon us by our ancestors?”

“Why don’t we use our own imagination of things rather than understanding it from another person’s point of view?”

Was Dan trying to beat moral conscience into him by implying that there were bigger things in life, which needed more attention or bigger threats to worry about like not to trust anyone no matter what they say. Or was everything that he just said beating around the bushes?

Howard grew up around him and he had lost that battle of words long ago.

“There are people, very rare ones, who think outside the box and those my dear write history. It was Lincoln who thought outside the box and reformed the thinking of people.”

“It was hard for the people to contemplate,” he moved his head in agreement, as he extinguished the cigarette butt in the ashtray.

“It was hard because it was well against their ancestral passage. But he did it anyway, he went against all odds.”

“The question now remains: have we been unknowingly dependent on everything that has been set straight for us by the people, who have already perished?”

“Now this was deep,” felt Howard.

Howard felt Dan’s words sink into him, he understood that we perceived things thoughtlessly because they were so common. If we turn back the pages of history some of those common things for people then, were unlawful now. The people did not amend themselves. There were a few, who changed the course of history. And they did not have an easy life to achieve that.

So, now the question is ‘are the prevalent views, which are held in high esteem by our very people morally, ethically, or politically correct?’ ‘Do we still think for or about them with our own imagination?’

Dan had struck a chord in Howard, he had rightly asked if those views held by our predecessors stand corrected for us? Are we victims to common sense?

Howard thought that if the answer was yes, then we have no justification whatsoever for war and killings in the past. Slaughtering thousands for a piece of property or a mere ego point that needed fulfilment, which the ones who carried these out wilfully themselves knew it or at least felt it somewhere in themselves that they had to give up all of it one fine day when death comes knocking at their door.

It’s better to give these worldly egos up totally on the moral development and one’s conscience rather than being snatched off it by the destroyer of all pleasures – ‘death’.

Dan had got up from his sofa and came towards Howard with a convinced look on his face. He knew Howard had given in; he could tell it from the eyes. He always played smartly with others’ cards.

Then, Dan slowly came near him trying to look into Howard’s eyes, Howard trying his usual hard to avoid Dan’s.

It was their usual father-son talk.

“A man is ‘love’ to someone at one point of time and one fine day he becomes ‘hate’ to that same person.