Blahsphemy

He found his famous face staring at him in the mirror. It was a bit too much for his frazzled brain after last night's drinking binge. He stared at the face in the mirror. The face stared back. He was nauseous. The face mocked him. He banged the mirror. The face remained nonchalant. He spat at it and watched the spittle slide down the face. Yet the face stared back at him. He lost it. He punched the face hard. The mirror cracked. His fists got bruised. As he looked up, he saw a hundred faces stare back at him.  

Pain punched him under the belt. He swooned for a moment. Usually pain plays by the rules. Today, it cheated. He tried to escape the barrage by curling up. That's when the blow landed on his spine and shattered it. He was a vegetable now. He lay there smiling thinking that pain can't hurt him anymore. Little did he know that pain had other plans.

Some people are too busy with their lives. Like me for instance. Even while I am staring out of my window, I will have a million things to deal with. Right from the sun that's shining bright to the coup that's going to happen in Siberia. Damn, and to top it all, they call me god. 

So when does the sun go down, he asked. This is Absentia, the sun goes down only once a year, came the reply. He spat out the beer in disbelief. The beer landed on a one eyed martian who turned green. What followed was a free for all. All the ammunition was used up. No inhabitants were spared. True to its name, Absentia became a fairy tale. 

There was a man staring at my window. His eyes saw through me. They probed the vacuum of my mind. I, on the other hand, saw him. He was bald, bold and blind. He looked a lot like myself.    

The question stared him down. He took shelter in a mumble. Things were not that simple. The question probed and provoked. He tried his best to avoid it. It hurt him like hell. He didn't want to be confronted. His mumbling could no longer shield him. He cleared his throat and let the words flow. Each word and each sentence battered the question. Finally, it gave up and left the room. He sat alone in the darkness like a tiger licking its wounds. He could hear the question whimpering in the next room. He didn't like it. It was way too late by then, for anything to be done.

The story came and went unnoticed. Only the wind rustled the pages as they waited in vain. 

The lizard burped. The light was left on all night. Flies flocked to it. He had a sumptuous dinner. Long legs, short wings, crispy beetles... everything that was fooled by the light was there. He summed up his dinner with a dainty mayfly. He was upset when the sun came up. Now he will have to wait for another night when the light stays on till morning.

A lot of things were said about nothing. The dog seemed to understand every word that came out of their mouths. It just sat there catching flies. They went on and on about nothingness. The dog had nothing to do with them. He used to wander around trash cans during the day. He came upon them by chance. They didn't notice the dog till it yawned loudly. Then they started discussing the dog. The dog went to sleep under the bench wondering what they were discussing.   

The butcher was busy at his job. His shop reeked of blood and sweat. The houseflies were happy. They swarmed around every tiny morsel of meat and drops of blood on the floor. His lusty eyes probed everything that passed in front of his store. He didn't even spare the school girls who passed by. The story goes that one day he cut his own finger and minced it. He was too busy ogling to realize what had happened. That's why I stopped eating meat. I was a kid then. Whenever someone served me meat, I could see the butcher's finger in it.    

He was searching for his usual intros to start his story. That's when he stumbled on an old ally. The intro that his daughter had listened a million times when she was a kid. He desperately wanted to use it one more time. So he began, once upon a time...

I want to be rich and famous, his mind screamed. Is that what you really want, a squeaky conscience countered. I don't know, retorted the mind. Then shut up and stop stressing out, said the conscience. But, I want to be rich and famous, the mind whispered. 

He died thrice on the same road. The first time was when he was an earthworm happily munching away the top soil. He didn't see the road roller coming his way and was plastered on to the road that was being built. He was reborn as a dog a few years down the line. One day as he was sampling a roadkill, he saw a blinding light and a truck ran over him. As he was getting ready for afterlife, he noticed that his dog head was plastered on the same spot where he was plastered as an earthworm in his previous life. Now he was determined not to be on this road in his new life. Soon he was born as a human. He was born in another country. He didn't remember anything about the road. One day the travel bug bit him and he embarked on a trip. He reached a strange land filled with strange people. He loved the countryside. As he was walking on a piece of asphalt that used to be a road, a nearby volcano erupted and a boulder plastered him on to the road. He lay there refusing to be reborn just to...

There is a story waiting to be told. So please hold the line. If you are impatient, please hang up. If you want to speak to an author, dial One. If you want to be notified when the story happens dial Zero. Thus went the Dial-a-Story's IVR.

Darwin was the mightiest ant in the colony. He was the smartest as well. He had a weakness for sugar. He will go any length to get his daily fix. The other day he stung a woman so that she'll spill all the sugar in her hand. It was this daring that got him in to trouble as well. He died of high blood sugar.  

The matchbox fell and spilled the matches on to the floor. By the time he retrieved them, they were damp. He tried to light them in vain. Some sparked and died like politicians during the polls. Some didn't even bother. In the end he screamed all his frustrations away. He had been trapped in this hole for three days, or was it four? He didn't know. All he remembered was being plunged in to darkness on a bright sunny day. 

The written word and spoken word were brothers. They never got along well. They tried to avoid each other. One day as the written word was deciphered by man's brain, they had to come together. As they were trapped inside the man's head, they couldn't escape. As days passed, they began to realize that they were no different. They both had the same alphabets and sounded the same. Sounded? How can the written word be sounded? Well, go and ask the brain.       

The words hit the wall and exploded like raw eggs. They left a gooey trail as they dripped down. She escaped before he could hurl a few at her. She wiped off the few drops that landed on her dress. Outside his room, the world was bright. Everyone smiled. Words were handled with care. They were passed on like new borns. She felt relieved. Her friends have always warned her about his sudden outbursts. But she never thought she will be at the receiving end one day. And that day was today.