Nimish Batra, The Life and Times of

Outside the tattered rags covering the broken frame surrounding the shattered panes of the window, the sullen grey-green sky hangs over the glowing gray Earth, the skyline formed by the austere but beautiful concrete jungle which is the descendant of what they once called Delhi. Xzz’td draws the curtains one more time and yet, his magic will not work. Many moons ago, he remembers clearly, his incantations would turn the sky blood-blue, and the moons would become bright pink – just as the legends of times before the heavenly fire snakes descended. But now, everyone laughed at his failed attempts, and he blamed the tiny moon Floona for interfering with the large Sola and ruining his magic – why did Floona block Sola all those years ago? Nothing had worked since – his conapt now a wreck, his curtain the last cloth he owned, his destitution near complete. 12 years to a cycle, he calculated the cycle 2015 upon him, and he was already nostalgic about the 9th year of this cycle, nostalgic about the cycle 2010 when his friends say they remember the fire snakes coming and the sky turning the most beautiful chrome and purple from a pillar of platinum and gold, banishing the horrid blueness forever. He turned and saw the rest of his conapt brothers squabbling over the holy jukebox of rumination and what order they should play the hymns in. “Leukemia, schizophrenia, polyethylene,” said one of the hymns, another going, “beep-beep-’m-beep-beep-yeah.” He marveled at the crazy Predecessors – what possessed them to write such obvious madness down, this strange series of phrases that could bring hallucination, put pictures in your mind. He entered the argument and they squabbled for hours over the correct order. And again, he was denied. And now, he decided to take his message from the Gods seriously, and so he took his fist and punched in numbers rapidly by slamming down on the console, and the others, seeing his religious frenzy, bowed in reverence, and as the music began to blare out, broke into a thousand tongues, each wondering aloud to itself – “Why was the order of my playlist wrong, Oh Lords?”

7.30 pm, 22 Sep 2009.

Took about 10 minutes to write.

Posted on September 22nd, 2009 under 10 minute effort, Sci Fi, Story • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback