Crime of Compassion

I was seeing him after years together. He sat on a chair, a cloth wrapped around him. Hair which had grown long enough to touch his shoulders. A long beard.  Eyes still looked familiar- unapologetic but compassionate. The barber had just made a few strokes of the blade as his facial skin responded to it’s long forgotten touch. As he gave me an autistic look, I smiled and he struggled.

I got up and looked out of the window. Soon, lost in a reverie, some memories came rushing. Our mutual discomfort with the nobility of the world. Questions on charity and virtues of life.An everyday struggle to know that we were living, what we were not. That, Was there something missing – that we did not know, or were we just whiling away time. He had taken to the pot, in anticipation of rousing his inner self and I to the Himalayas!

Just before the barber had come, he had elucidated a stoner’s journey – how every sniff he took, made him feel like levitating in an invisible sky. The body seemed to have lost it’s weight and contours. And the consciousness expanded but hallucinating about random people and situations.Moving mouths with no utterance of a word or sound. An unconditioned happiness enveloping him all over as his limbs chilled and perspired.

Waking up to morbid feelings and longing for the experience again.

I had my share of stories too.  Mornings drunk on a concoction of low chants at the break of a dawn,  a little tiredness, unbroken silence and no purpose or intention. Silence where you could sense your organs going on in a rhythm but slowing down. I wasn’t sure about where the journey was leading me to, or had I lost my way. For the first time I felt what it was to be lost! Fear.. and more of it.. And I had chickened out.

Working for a few months at the grocery store close by has not been ‘Life’ but has been safe.. Perhaps for the reason – that it’s accepted..

He knows it so well. Our paths have been parallel, if not the same. He’s been a partner in the crime of compassion – for oneself and humanity in general..Has served his sentence well in the rehab. I’m happy that it’s his last day today.

I turn. He looks groomed. I plant a kiss on his forehead and he smiles..

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Inspired by Crime of Compassion

Speed of Dark

An hour past midnight, she lay sprawled on the bed. Eyes closed and rested without any inquisitiveness. Dressed in a dainty polka-dotted pink blouse and a black skirt, but too consumed by unconsciousness- she looked disconnected from everything earthly. The room had been dimly lit, though decently done-up.

A couple of fingers check her breath. It’s running. The hand feels her lips, slips down the neck onto the breasts as she lies without revolting. It begins to unbutton her top slowly as the noises in the room grow from curt dialogues to unabashed excitement. Soon, the frenzy begins…

He takes off his shirt and lunges on to the sublimely conscious and attractive her. Rips off her top and her skirt in a fit of madness, trying to ‘have’ her as he licks and bites her all along. Their hearts beat wildly between the moans and cheers and heavy breaths, as he gets off her mauled body and the other prepares.

Little did she know that her woman-like dreams of being penetrated by a man, would be the darkest nightmare she would ever live. She had come on a date, believing her man. Of merging into him – his world, his thoughts. Of believing him of a natural, sensitive, devotional touch where they could lose themselves, in the stillness of the moment.

But…

For him, it was just another body, which could be shared and relished to satisfy the craving of another hungry body.

The night passed by, as she lay in a pool of blood, a little aware of her surroundings. Her head throbbing with pain, still recovering of the heavy dose of Benzodiazepines in her drink. The abdomen seemed contracted and everything between her legs, hurt. An ambulance had been summoned as the doctor examined her for the initial damages.

The speed of  dark had been so great and the impact so immense, that few hours of it had wiped out all the tenderness of her life, for a long time to come…

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Inspired by Speed of Dark

Checkout

I had lost the trail I had  followed for a few hours, since my early morning trek. I reached an isolated cottage in the middle of a small vineyard encircled by an army of huge trees. The place had an eeriness of the wild, though it looked inhabited till not very long time back..Tired and hungry, I decided to stay put for a while. As I refreshed myself, and checked the maps, I decided that the digression hadn’t been huge.

The cottage had no door. I got in, rested my backpack against the wall and slouched on the bare wooden bed. As I sat, it all started.. Murmurs and whispers of people, I couldn’t see, who awkwardly sounded familiar. Much like a seeker, like myself, who had wondrous stories of  places and people to share. As I listened more, I felt I could be heard too. I narrated my own stories as they took me to their own world. It was surreal to be divided into two worlds – that of the physical in my eyes and that of the words in my ears, creating visions in the mind. I was drifting away with these nameless, faceless voices into more and more, a fluid world. Fear started gripping me as I got deeper into the fluids. Deeper into whispers that were becoming clearer. I needed to checkout! I struggled hard to just rise and leave but my eyes seemed glued. Eyelids closed beyond my will. Breathless, I shuddered with a fit of coughing, and opened my eyes to a sun-lit room with leaves on it’s floor, dancing with the breeze…

“Must have been a dream dudette! Get up and get going, before it grows more you..Long way to go!”, I mumbled and started again..

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Inspired by The Final Cut