Mina

Mina lay next to me, still and unresponsive. She had been this way for about a month now and I was concerned, very concerned. She looked listless, my childhood friend, my constant companion;I didn't remember her ever being more than a few feet away.

I remember her always sitting next to me, at my feet, as I worked on my homework or trying to playfully trip me up during my trips back from the kitchen, especially when I had a full glass of milk or juice in my hand. She loved lapping up the spills.

As I grew up I started experimenting with the type of music that would define me and set me apart from my teenage peers, I noticed Mina's enchantment and entrancement with the loud and heavy bass thump of my music. She helped me define myself with her endorsement of Ozzy, or perhaps she just liked watching him bite off the head of a rat during his famous performance; a man after her own heart.

In our thirteen years together she had always been by my side, seeing me through every rite of passage, every youthful misadventure. I could always come home and confide in her, whisper my secrets to her as she listened patiently and non-judgmentally.

I had been upset with her at times, like the time a few years ago when Rebecca had come over to our place for a sleepover. She brought her pet hamster Hannah with her. Rebecca was never seen without Hannah the hamster, just as I was seldom seen without my Mina.

The Rebecca that left my home the next morning wore a tear stained face and bloodshot, puffy eyes, from crying. Hannah the hamster was gone, vanished without a trace.

We looked all over, under the couches, in closets, in every nook and cranny but Hannah was nowhere to be found. Then I spotted her little cage behind a couch. Hannah wasn't in it. I escorted Rebecca home; she lived across the street from me.

When I returned I walked straight up to Mina asking her to look me in the eye and confess, I noted Hannah's brown and white fur wispily coating Mina's mouth. I punished her, told her she wouldn't be allowed to leave her enclosure for a week. I am certain she rewarded me with a loud burp that followed her silent and defiant stare.

I remember her peeking out, pleading an early release until I let her out again with a silent nod to food chains, nature and the occasional craving for dessert. After all Rebecca was happy again with her new rodent-Rodin and I was determined to keep Rodin as far away from Mina as possible.

I chuckled now as I flashed back to that memory.

In two months I would be in college and I was worried. I wasn't sure the dorm would allow exotic pet companions. I wasn't sure I could handle being without Mina, the world just wouldn't make much sense without her.

Perhaps she sensed my agitation, could that be the reason why she showed such despondence? She hadn't touched her food in days. I watched her sleeping next to me. I had taken her on long walks, had tried to cheer her up, telling her I would find a way, trying to reassure her that we would never be apart. I think she answered me with a possessive squeeze, curling herself tighter around my shoulders as I patted her and muttered sweet nothings such as, "There, there...attagirl...it's going to be alright, trust me".

But her condition only worsened, she was looking pale and weak. I decided to take her to the vet. My parents came with me. We sat in the waiting room as the doctor examined her. When he came back the look on his face told me that the news wasn't going to be good. He wore a frown as he strode toward us. I tried to brace myself for the worst but the worst I could possibly have imagined wasn't as bad as what he told us then.

He told us that Mina had to go, that we had to give her away to a zoo, or a reptile farm where she could live well, that it was the safest alternative. I remember asking him why it suddenly wasn't safe for Mina to live in our home.

He looked at me funny then and after a few moments looked at my parents as he told them that our home was safe for Mina but it wasn't going to be a safe home for us if Mina was in it. He believed that Mina had been preparing herself for the big meal.

Mina, my red tailed boa, was taken to the reptile farm and imprisoned in a cage for the rest of her life.

She had been deliberately starving herself for a month and had taken to stretching her eight feet length next to my five every night for the last few weeks.

What was a comfort for me was actually a strategic move on her part, the strategy that would have resulted in us being together, forever, as I became a part of her.

[Loosely based on a true story]

HELPLESSLY WATCHING

I was headed for the bookstore, I recall. I had heard about the Oscar nominations for the French film The Diving Bell and The Butterfly, Jean-Dominique Bauby's remarkable memoir which had been dictated by him one alphabet at a time, each blink of an eyelid representing a letter. I remember thinking how like typing a text message it must have been; one letter at a time with auto-complete kicking in. His amanuensis must have fulfilled a similar function. My useless digression was interrupted by a text message at that very moment. I glanced away from the steering wheel for just an instant and then the world went black.

Bauby had suffered from the 'locked-in' syndrome, he could hear, his mind could think and reason but he was a prisoner inside his own body, paralyzed. I peered out through the slit in my cast. I was told I had multiple fractures and several internal injuries. Someone had said they had found my car wrapped around a telephone pole.

I couldn't speak but I could hear the hustle and bustle of the hospital. The doctors and nurses liked to chit-chat, the lack of response from me wasn't relevant to them. At times I felt I was glued to the ceiling above, looking down at the people moving around fiddling with the various tubes, gauges and machines all around me, at other times I was back inside the cast moving one eye around and trying to see what I could see.

There was a TV in the room and for some reason it was always tuned to the quilting and knitting channel. I couldn't look around but I imagined I was lying next to a patron of the quilting arts. I wanted to tell someone to switch to ESPN, BBC, CNN, MTV or 24 hours bowling...anything but this...but no I was stuck in a yarn, all tangled up and no place to go. I blinked a lot. Whenever I saw someone I started flapping my eyelids up and down a la Bauby, hoping the nurse would notice and ask me what was wrong but my blinks went unheeded and unnoticed.

I didn't know if my parents, who were in an eco-tourism group, currently cross-country skiing in Antarctica, had been notified yet about their suffering son; I hadn't had any visitors even though a chatty nurse had told me it was my fifth day there.

Meanwhile the knitter got a steady stream of visitors, mostly women of all shapes and sizes, some in business suits, some in casual attire some young, some old, but each carried tote bags full of yarn and needles. I could hear the constant clickety-clack of knitting needles punctuated with exclamations of awe and wonder every time an especially wondrous knitting legerdemain was executed on screen.

There was a guest on the knitting show who could knit with one hand while flipping omelets with the other - this was especially interesting to my neighbor's visitors. They kept their friend entertained with knit and purl talk from the commencement of visiting hours in the morning till quitting time in the evening.

One night my nurse picked up my chart to review and I saw her walking away with it to the nurses' station. Soon enough I saw another nurse walk in, she walked up to my neighbor's bed and I heard her lifting the clipboard out of the bed next to me. I saw her walk away with my neighbor's clipboard as well.

When your only moving part is an eyelid and your jaws are wired shut you become quite anally obsessive about things. I was starting to feel very antsy about my missing chart. I felt myself breaking into hives as several minutes elapsed and the nurse assigned to me never returned with my chart...and these were hives I couldn't scratch!

She did come back eventually and I finally was at peace. I blinked my eye shut and went to sleep.

When I woke up the next morning I heard my nurse's voice coming from the direction of my neighbor's bed. The nurse was telling my neighbor what she told me everyday, "Bet you'll never text and drive again, will you? Uh-unh, no sirree bob! I'll be damned if you ever pick up your cell phone again. You're goddamn lucky we could patch you up. Damn those things, we were so much better off without those thingamajigs! You should have seen that lady in here the other day, she came in here with her Blueberry things and was trying to close a deal on eBay for some kind of angora wool yarn...she looked like she was about to poke my eye out with her needle when I told her cell phones weren't allowed inside the hospital! Wonder why they switched you guys around last night...didn't you used to be by the door? But hey what do I know, I am just doing my job...chart says we need to take you in for surgery today..."

I heard muffled mumbles from my neighbor, I suppose she couldn't speak either! The other nurse then appeared at my bed. She was a pretty young thing and I was always distressed when I got the battleaxe of a nurse and my neighbor got the prettier nurse, and commandeered the TV for herself. I was wondering why they switched nurses on us, and mentally exclaiming at what the odds were for me and my neighbor to have ended up in bandaged from head to toe, simply because we chose to text while driving!

But I wasn't complaining. I was hoping I could blink her a message, an alphabet at a time, as she completed my words and sentences for me. I was trying my best when she said, "Oh dear! Is something in your eye, does it feel gritty, I wish I could take a look, here...let me see, open wide, try to gaze up for me...I mumbled something but it was useless, she persisted in making an effort to rid my eye of invisible grit or eye mucus.

When she convinced herself all was well with my sole moving part she moved on to raving about the Knitting Yogi who had made an appearance in the new segment the day before. "OMG! OMG!! Wasn't he hot?? Did you see how he could knit with his toes while doing Shirshasana? It was amazing! Wonder what else he can do..." Her voice trailed off as she started playing with the remote to get the Knitting Channel on again.

That's when it dawned on me that our charts had probably been switched last night. I tried shaking my head or legs, tried mumbling and of course blinking again...but the Knitting Yogi was already on as the nurse picked up my chart and started reading the instructions...she absent-mindedly informed me that I was due for an enema. I wanted to screamâ...but you know all about how clearly I had been expressing my wants these last few days. Blinking was seriously overrated as an effective mode of communication!

I suddenly realized that my neighbor had been told she was due for surgery! I panicked once again at the thought that I was probably the one who needed some sort of surgery and at the thought that I needed it and then again at the thought that my neighbor was going to be taken in for the surgery I needed!

I was wondering what to do next when I noticed a gorgeous woman walk into the room. She strolled over to my neighbor, I heard her lift up the chart and slide it back into place and then she clicked her way over to my bed, proceeding to confirm something on the chart hanging on the footboard of my bed.

I was staring, unblinking, at her when she walked up to me and told me how successful my changeover had been and that I was well on my way to becoming an anatomically correct and fully functional female after my bandages came off. She told me I would be gorgeous and that I would finally be the woman I had always wanted to be! She kept gazing at me with a beaming smile hoping I would show some reaction but I stared in shock until I resumed frantic blinking again.

The more I blinked, the wider her smile grew until she finally said, "No need to thank me, I am just following my heart and my calling to free caged birds from their confinement and let them soar as the man or woman that God intended them to be...once you're well and the bandages are off I'll come and see you again, I'll hold your hand through the adjustment period...even if this is what you thought you always wanted...there are still adjustment issues that crop up and we're there to hold your hands through that tough adjustment period...I'll see you soon Mr...er...Miss Wilson. Take care."

The orderlies arrived soon enough to wheel Mr/Ms Wilson out to the OR for surgery for God only knows what.

The crowd of orderlies, nurses, doctors came right back in about forty five minutes. It sounded like heads were about to roll. Apparently the true identity of the heavily bandaged person was revealed in the OR as the doctors discovered that the patient had already had all the surgery he/she would ever need.

I heard the doctors yelling at the old battleaxe nurse and the pretty one as they once again entered the room, this time to wheel me out to the OR to extract the scalpel that had been left in my abdominal cavity when they sewed me up.

Invisible

"Just one more day, that's all I ask. Just be invisible for one more day", she implored.

"I can't, how can I make you understand, love? I can't even do it for another hour", I replied.

"Do it for me, please Tim?" She wrapped her arms around my neck and looked up at me, reading my unseen expressions.

It had always been hard for me to deny her anything. "I wish I could, I really wish I could, but I am so exhausted, so drained. I need to come back. We need to share this work with the world. I want to marry you. Please let me come back."

"Just one more day, that's all I ask, she repeated. I'll tell him everything today and then we'll be free."

"But that's what you said last week, last month, last year-in fact you've been saying it for years. Look at me, do I look like I can take any more of this?"

"I can't."

"Can't what?"

"Look at you".

"Ha! Good one Lena. You know...I know everything, I know why you think you can't leave him...invisibility has its advantages".

I lifted up the journal, her old journal with the faded cover. "I'd be lying if I said what I read here didn't shock me...it did...but I have given it some thought since. I know what happened and it doesn't matter anymore. It was an accident. You must have been carried away with your eagerness, your impatience. He can't keep you enslaved. Now let me show you how I look."

"No, stop! He'll be home any minute now. I can't let him see us together."

"Lena, I'm afraid I must leave then. I have waited long enough. This is it".

"No! Don't go. You can't leave me, not with him".

"Then come with me, leave with me".

"I can't. You come with me, let me show you why", she said, as she led me to his den again, to a tiny room within, a record room of sorts with a couple of microfiche readers.

I ran out of her home, a few hours after spending some time in the room poring over several headlines and other news items buried in the inside pages of several newspapers.

I made my exit as swiftly and carefully as I possibly could - her voice trailing behind me, trying desperately to grasp at what I couldn't give anymore, not after what I had just seen and what she had finished telling me-the very last vestiges of sympathy, love and lust were now drained, replaced with disgust at abject failure and smooth cover ups, at the lack of remorse and contrition, at the greed, the scientific corruption and at the sociopath I had failed to recognize before. How could my judgment have been so clouded for so many years?

There was a time, eighteen years ago, before I left her the for the first time, when things were different, or at least in my view they were. We were dedicated scientists working together in the lab. Our excitement was palpable - we were closer to the finish line than we had ever been before. We had turned our first rat invisible the day before. We had watched the cage for three days and on the third day we saw the tail reappear followed by the rest of him. We knew what we needed to do next to control the duration of invisibility, to make it last as long as we needed it to last. Our present state of excitement was caused by the antidote we had developed. We had made our invisible lab rat visible once again and when we sprayed the antidote on him he reemerged, visible again.

The applications, the repercussions were going to be immense Doctors Lena Brown and Tim Hollister were going to be on the front cover of every magazine and leading every news broadcast on television the world over. The Nobel Prize couldn't be far away. Their work on invisibility was going to make them the most visible people on the planet.

And then, three days later their rat exploded. His insides splattered inside the cage. We felt as shattered as the subject of our experiment.

Lena had never been one for infinite patience. This was the last straw for her. She didn't want to try again, to persevere, until we solved the problem. She wanted to move on with her life. We were still partners but her interests had changed. She was still pleased with our work on invisibility and for some reason I was no longer able to convince her that working on the antidote was as important and that invisibility without the possibility of return to a visible state was a dangerous proposition. She wanted to tell the world about our discovery but I couldn't allow it, not until we were successful in controlling the duration of invisibility.

We had been partners and lovers since we were freshmen in college but our disagreement was festering now and turning gangrenous. I didn't trust her anymore. I started locking up our papers and encrypting all our work, I didn't want her publishing anything without my knowledge. She confronted me in the lab then. Our quarrels escalated and in a fit of rage she picked up the canister that contained the serum and sprayed it on me.

Looking back now I remember a sense of elation, of empowerment. I should have been angry, upset but I wasn't. That moment of elation is hard to forget. Lena stared at the place where I had been standing, contrite and fearful. She was asking for forgiveness, looking ahead at the spot where I had been standing until my warm breath on her neck startled her. I had walked up behind her and was slowly gliding my hands up along her sides. She arched her back as I turned her around and kissed her. She melted in my arms. All our disagreements of the last few days vanished as we made love on the lab floor, repeatedly until the wee hours of the morning.

Then reality set in as I watched her snatching the last few hours of sleep in early dawn. I saw the beautiful lines of her face stretched taut one moment and then morphing into lines that were barely perceptible and then etched deeper and deeper until she became unrecognizable as the Lena I had known. I fingered my own face then, fingering the stubble that my mind's eye saw as a dark five o clock shadow. I walked up to a mirror and I didn't see myself. I wondered how long the effect of the serum would last and found myself wishing it would last forever. I didn't want to see myself aging, I didn't want anyone to ever see me age. I felt sorry for Lena. I walked out then, leaving her asleep on the lab floor.

My invisibility didn't wear off in three days like it had in the lab rats. I woke up every morning and stared at my hands but never saw them. I checked the mirrors periodically but never saw my reflection. Several years went by. Invisibility suited me well in the beginning. The basic necessities were easily accessible now. I could pick up food in any kitchen, anywhere, and sleep in any hotel or home, unseen, unfound. Sex was somewhat tricky but I soon realized that most women, especially the married ones, were keen on invisible lovers. Their lack of surprise at being seduced by an invisible presence was always fascinating to me. They often imagined they had dreamed up the entire episode and that was just fine by me.

I lived hard and fast. I never bothered shaving, didn't see the point. My hair had grown long as well. After the first pair of shoes, the ones I had on when Lena sprayed me, wore out, I had to find myself a place to stay; a place where I could be bare feet forever. What better place than a hotel; food and shelter all in one place. I never left the Blue Orchid except for the occasional jaunt to the beach in stolen footwear, in the wee hours of the morning, before alert individuals, strung out on caffeine, hit the streets. It was easier to convince street drunks that the shoes they saw crunching along the sidewalks were visions under the effects of inebriation.

However, the novelty started wearing out soon enough. I had done the most I could do, seen things and done things I could never imagine doing if I could be seen, all my wild oats were now sown. There were no "moral" boundaries, no ethic I hadn't breached. And now I often found my thoughts traveling back to the time when I was really happy, when I was in love. I sometimes wondered if it was love, if it could have been love if I found it so easy to leave her, simply because in my youth and immaturity I was fearful of seeing myself or my love wither under the effects of age.

Then one day I saw her again. I was seated at the bar helping myself to the drink the guy sitting next to me had ordered. The tension between the bartender and the customer was steadily escalating as the customer complained about his missing drink and the bartender pointed to the perpetually empty glass. I was watching with amusement when I heard a familiar voice and smelt a familiar fragrance. It had to be Lena. She wore glasses now and those lines that I had imagined appearing on her face the morning I left her were yet to appear. She looked as striking as she had eighteen years ago.

I stared at the hand with which she raised her glass to her lips; a diamond glittered on her ring finger. She was soon joined by the man who must have slid the ring on her finger. I knew him. He was our rival. I still kept up with the journals and I had read some of his papers where he had shamelessly taken credit for much of my work since my disappearance. Dr Rukanick's name always appeared next to Dr Lena Brown's. I had never realized they were married.

Lena looked on with amusement at the escalation of tensions between the bartender and the unfortunate customer whose drink never seemed to arrive. I couldn't tear my gaze away from her. A glass that raised itself unseen, its contents emptied, didn't escape her amused glance and then she looked straight at me and smiled. Her hand rested on my bare thighs. She turned toward Rukanick and excused herself with a slight peck on his cheek and we took the elevator to her penthouse suite.

I realized I had never stopped wanting her. She left in the morning. The scientific convention they were attending had ended the night before. But she returned often. I went back with her to her home the next time I saw her. She asked me to move in. I couldn't refuse. It wasn't as if I was in any danger of being seen. Rukanick didn't mean much to her, or so it seemed to me.

I was in love again, it was as if the eighteen intervening years had never happened. Lena and Rukanick slept in separate bedrooms and rarely communicated. I asked Lena why she hadn't continued the work we had been doing together, why she abandoned the project. She told me she was heartbroken when I left. She had regretted her actions and her heart just wasn't into the work after losing me. She had felt alternately angry at me and upset with herself, at her regrettable actions that had rendered me permanently invisible.

I told her I was ready to take up our research again, that I was ready to be seen again. A life unseen had lost its charm for me. I wanted a normal life, a family with her. I even asked her why she continued what seemed an "arrangement" at best with Rukanick. Her face always clouded over at that question as she sought ways to evade or obfuscate. She always found a way to leave my question unanswered.

We carried on for a couple of years. She had given me access to the labs of the vast scientific empire she had founded with her husband and I devoted myself to the search for an antidote once again. I was close, again. I had tried the antidote on my big toe and had watched it emerge once again after all these years. The effect lasted for twenty-four hours and the toe remained unexploded and intact. I knew what corrections needed to be made to the formula; I saw the solution with immense clarity.

I was excited. I felt more alive than I had in the past several years. I tugged at my invisibly flowing beard with unexpected force, I wanted it off, I wanted to restore normalcy. I wanted to finish the research, publish my work, see it celebrated, collect accolades and then settle down to living the rest of my life with Lena.

I asked her why she didn't divorce Rukanick. I told her how close I was to regaining visibility and that she would soon see me again.

She told me to wait, to not be hasty. She told me she had a few things to straighten out before we did anything like that.

Her reluctance soon became clear to me. One thing that makes invisibility worthwhile is the ability to snoop unobtrusively. One can always be the proverbial fly on the wall. My curiosity led me to snooping and I soon learnt the reasons behind her reluctance, her desire to keep me hidden and the hold that Rukanick had on her.

I learnt that I wasn't the only researcher at the forefront of science to have disappeared without a trace in the last few years. There had been a couple of others who had simply vanished or stopped all work in this field. Lena had continued her work on finding an antidote for the invisibility serum after I left, but in her eagerness for results, she hadn't been able to resist human experimentation. She had lured a homeless bum into the lab one day and had first turned him invisible and then administered the antidote. Rukanick had witnessed the unfortunate explosion and had spent many hours helping her clean up fragments of human brain from the lab walls. It had been the secret that bound them in these unbreakable bonds since that fateful day.

I knew this now because I found a journal where Lena had kept her notes in the days leading up to the experiment. I found it in a safe that was hidden behind a painting in his den. He checked on it every night and it wasn't that hard for me to observe his nightly routine and to memorize the security code that opened the safe.

I confronted Lena that night and told her everything I had learnt. I told her that she didn't need to spend another minute with the slimy creature; that she could leave that very second.

And that brings us back to the present with me out of her life once again. The reader will wonder why I left in a hurry the second time around and that's because I haven't shared with them the fact that Rukanick didn't just know about the disappearance of the homeless bum who had disappeared, there were many other clean ups in which he had been of invaluable assistance within the stiflingly white, disinfected walls of the lab where I found my antidote. This had all been revealed to me that night in the room where old newspaper articles illuminated by microfiche readers told a tale of treachery that I can never forget.

I am visible now although the world thinks I am dead, she has announced me dead and conducted a memorial service in my honor. I can't reveal myself or what I know, not as long as Rukanick and Brown are out there looking for me. I escaped an explosion that day when I ran out of Rukanick's den; still invisible and trying my best to dodge the spray from a hose containing a deadly mixture that had been pointed in my general direction.

But I am alive and I bear secrets that beg to be told...

Strangled Awake

The door creaked open and an anxious face peered in. He looked around, inquiring if anyone was in, then entered, taking in his surroundings. He slid a finger along the table, glancing at the dust that rode up on it, he wrote his name in the dust. He walked through the narrow entrance into the kitchen, flailing at the cobwebs that ensnared him, heading for the sink, the water faucet. It spluttered to life, some rust colored water splattering the sink. Shrugging his jacket off, he ran his fingers through his long and stringy hair. He glanced down, taking stock of his grimy clothes and disheveled appearance, he was beyond exhaustion. He needed rest.

He pulled open the kitchen cabinets; the rusty water, the dust and the cobwebs appeared not to have killed any expectations he had of finding something edible within. He found a can of spam, sending armies of cockroaches scurrying away as he reached for it. He twirled it in his hands; he still needed a can opener. He opened up all the kitchen drawers trying to find one and then he saw it, the dagger. His body went still and then he picked it up. He looked at the intricately filigreed cover and then unsheathed the dagger to examine its edges. Then he plunged it into the can of spam.

He walked up the stairs then and into the bedroom which looked out upon the woods. The previous owners had left behind a four poster bed. A shimmering veil appeared draped over the four posts. He examined it, perhaps to draw it aside and test the mattress. The veil couldn't stand his touch; it crumbled, leaving a stringy film around his hands... more cobwebs. He pumped the mattress next, it seemed firm enough but one of the legs gave way as he stood there, taken aback. Then he kicked off his shoes. He was going to turn in, even if it meant sleeping on a three-legged bed surrounded by cobwebs. He would write the next chapters of his life tomorrow. Tomorrows always arrived in twenty four hour intervals unless... they had transformed themselves into an endless stretch of eternity.

Rosa would be here soon, just like her mother... all those years ago. I had stumbled into the shack then, down on my luck, seeking cover from a world that sought to destroy me.

The reviews had all been bad. It had taken me five years to write my 900 page epic. I had given it my all but in the end it just took that one word, a word I had dreaded since my youth: MEDIOCRE. That one word in one scathing review from the most vicious and feral critic in the land and my novel didn't stand a chance. Every paper, every literary rag, every journal had picked up on that foul word that rang in my ears every waking hour, accompanied by that gruesome image of a black cloaked, hooded figure shoveling dark and slithery sludge onto a boat...Modern Short Stories...required reading for 11th grade English, and the only short story I could never forget... about the ambiguous fate of mediocre souls, shoveled into nothingness, made to set sail on a boat to nowhere.

I dreaded that word and had dodged that label all my life until the day my worst fears were realized and the world branded me thus. I slipped into an alcohol induced haze, became a walking disaster area. My wife took the kids and left me. I slid deeper into the bottle and then a few good friends forced me into rehab. But the cloaked and hooded man, the shoveler of mediocre soul piles, never stopped tormenting me, gaining on me. So I ran through the woods behind the sprawling grounds of the rehab center. I ran for three days straight, from myself, from the dark shadows behind me and finally to this shack in the woods. I had entered it twenty years ago, just as the young man did today, his insecurities and fears etched as clearly in the lines of his face as they must have been on mine. He was running from himself.

Lily, Rosa's mother, had strangled me awake that day. Sometime during the early hours of the morning I had felt a crushing weight descend on me. The room was swimming, my windpipe was being crushed. I felt the cold fingers of death around my throat... and then it was all over. There was peace, a glorious silence, the demons were gone. The room was filled with fragrance and I glanced up to see Lily, a vision in red, a red hibiscus tucked behind one ear. She appeared to float around the room and then I saw her sitting on the ledge of the window in the room with the four-poster bed and the view of the woods. She smiled, welcoming me to a new world, a world where the colors were sharp and rich, a world of light and fragrance. I was drawn into her arms; I only had eyes for her. And then I turned my head and glanced back at the room. The bed I'd been on was now shrouded in grey and appeared far away, in black and white, seemingly encased behind a glass wall. I glanced at the mirror on the dresser against the opposite wall. I wasn't casting a reflection. I opened my mouth to speak but I felt Lily's cold breath upon me, silencing me, whispering in my ears that I never again needed to worry about mediocrity and its consequences. She had rescued me.

The shack was suddenly full of music and people. I recognized a few of them myself. There were many writers here, some painters, their gaunt and hungry looks unmarred by the wholesome effects of the rescue. They welcomed me. There was a stunning looking young girl there too, a vision in purple. She was introduced as Rosa. Rosa was Lily's daughter. She had failed to earn a scholarship to Harvard. No other university was good enough for the school valedictorian. Her dad had urged her to consider other colleges but his pleas had fallen on deaf ears. Rosa had locked herself in her room where she lay on her bed clutching her dead mom's picture close to her heart. Her mom had always pushed her to do her best, coached her, ridden her, had demanded her very best, until the day she was fired from her CEO position. She had been found dead in her bed the next day. Young Rosa was now here with them, just as she was a gilt-framed picture on a wall in her dad's study in her old home. Her mom had gone back for her, had rescued her.

Death became this crowd.

Rosa would appear soon enough. Word had been sent. Her lonely days were about to end. I had Lily- Rosa would have this young man. We had overcome mediocrity and now we had to address loneliness; they often went hand in hand.

Rosa's young man was waiting for her. I heard the kitchen drawer being opened, the dagger being unsheathed, and there she was, in violet, the dagger poised right above the sleeping writer's heart. Tomorrow the young man's debut novel would still be in the bargain bin at the front of every bookstore but his hands would be in Rosa's.

Rains and Freezing Rains

His windshield wipers were useless now. Coated with ice, they were like foot-long icicles making 180 degree sweeps of his windshield every couple of seconds. The freezing rain continued its relentless pace, sounding like the crackling of minuscule pebbles pelting his car from all sides. He couldn’t see more than a foot ahead of the car and the bald tires would skid on the icy roads if he had to tap the brakes even once.

He couldn’t go on and decided to pull over by the side of the road. He would stay there all night if he had to but he couldn’t risk driving around in this. So he leaned back in his reclining car seat, folded his arms behind his head and prepared to wait out the falling sheets of wintry mix coating everything.

They were supposed to meet for dinner at the Red Garlic Thai restaurant tonight. They had made the date a month ago, adding the date, time and venue to her Blackberry and his tattered appointment book, as they sat up in bed, wide awake, trying to have a conversation about growing irretrievably apart. It was a cathartic night. They had suddenly rediscovered themselves, come to the shocking realization that they did indeed live in the same house. They had stayed up all night reminiscing about the early days, about sharing everything, about going off on one madcap adventure or another and about the halcyon days when every decision was spontaneous and impetuous. They couldn’t pinpoint the time when things had started changing, it had been gradual until that night, one month ago, when they suddenly realized how far apart they had traveled.

A tear crept down his face as he realized that he was going to disappoint her once again. He pictured her seated at the restaurant, repeatedly glancing at her watch. In his mind’s eye she was gazing out the windows and he wondered whether she was annoyed at his absence or concerned about his well-being. He thought it was a shame that after fourteen years he still didn’t know her well-enough to fathom her state of mind.

He closed his eyes as scattered images of their first meeting flashed across the celluloid of his closed eyelids. She had been huddled under the gray awning of the local bidi shop, trying her best to stay dry. Her clothes were wet and clinging when he caught a fleeting glimpse of her through his auto-rickshaw. Her discomfiture was obvious to him even as he spotted her through his moving vehicle; she had been trying her best to maintain a stoic demeanor as the bidi shop clientele tried to huddle close, using the rain and the limited shelter provided by the awning as an excuse. Something about her compelled him to stop. He felt inexplicably drawn to her. He stopped the driver so he could offer her a ride to wherever she was headed. He opened up his umbrella and ran back to the bidi shop, offering to share his ride. She hesitated at first but then agreed.

It was a memorable, rainy day, auto-rickshaw ride. They had hit it off so well. She had told him she had been observing, rather intently, this carefree, fearless kid on his bike. He seemed to be headed for school and was undaunted by the pouring rain, the flooded streets, he was riding his bike standing up, the rain didn’t bother him one bit. She had told him she couldn’t recall when she had ever been so foot-loose and fancy-free. She had said it in a tone that had flooded him with feelings of tenderness. He wanted to do that for her. He wanted her to feel not one but several carefree moments in her life. He wanted her to feel that he would always be there for her.

That was fourteen years ago. The lashing but harmless Bombay downpours. Here he was now, in a car that wasn’t equipped to handle the harsh northeastern winters in this country. He missed those warm rains now, the joyous monsoons, that special rainy day smell. He had chosen this world over the one of his childhood and youth. He had been chasing the elusive American dream and the more he chased the further away it drifted. Successive lay-offs from three companies following the big IT bust in Silicon Valley had left him scrambling for his next paycheck. His Toyota Camry had 300,000 miles on the odometer and four bald tires. He couldn’t afford to buy himself a new car and couldn’t accept her buying or leasing one for him. His pride always got in the way.

Her career had taken off. She was an EVP in a multi-million dollar global corporation. She was always short on time and was traveling more than she was home. She had become a stranger in her own home. Yet, she had always been encouraging to him. She had always told him not to worry and that things would look up for him, sooner or later. But there had been times, he admitted to himself, when he had chosen to read condescension in her words. He had wanted to protect her, shelter her and give her a carefree life and in the final analysis he had only succeeded in driving himself away from her.

A scraping noise on his window finally shook him out of his reverie. He opened his eyes and sat up to see a familiar and beautiful face peering inside through a patch of ice that had been scraped clean with an ice-scraper. She had been concerned about his well-being after all, and had come looking for him on eastbound Route 80, the most logical place for her to have any luck finding him. He had never felt happier than he did now. They had kept their date after all.

Wish You Were Here

It was a familiar image, the startling blue sky, the sea and the pristine white buildings against that Aegean backdrop. It was an image he associated with her. Whenever she had opened up her locker at school he’d caught a glimpse of the posters lining the insides, the flashes of blue and white. Nicky Stavros – always surrounded by friends, always laughing, the center of attention, and the world at her elegant feet.

He sat there in the comfort of his leather couch, tapping his feet to the disco beats of 1987, sipping his ouzo and swiveling his head from floor to ceiling and wall to wall of his one room apartment. There she was laughing, pensive, sleeping, walking, running, dancing, bathing, dressed and undressed - the wallpaper mosaic a painstaking result of ten years of passion and obsession, his life’s work, his Nicky - his to have and to hold. He hadn’t found anyone; no one had ever matched up to Nicky.

There were several young women resplendent in bouffant hairstyles and satiny gowns with puffy sleeves in several shades of pastel – that was prom night, 1987. The planning had gone on for the past several months as girls looked longingly at the boys that were of interest to them. One by one they had all been asked to the dance. Sadly he had not been at the receiving end of any of these long lashed, veiled looks and coy smiles. And he couldn’t have cared less. He was mustering up the courage to ask Nicky. She was waiting for Mark to ask her; Mark, the tall and broad quarterback of the Langston Lions. That Mark would ask her to the prom was a foregone conclusion, no one else dared ask Nicky. And then Mark injured himself at football practice. He had several concussions and was in no shape for prom night. This was his chance. He had to summon up the courage to ask her, he had to make it happen.

That day he took pains over his attire, he wore his smartest pair of jeans and his favorite jacket. He even washed and brushed his long and usually stringy hair. Nicky Stavros was going to be his date.

He spotted them at the bench underneath the old maple tree. As always, she was surrounded by ten other girls, some eyeing her shoes, some her dress, the others just happy to be sharing her space and breathing the same air as her. He walked toward them with determined steps. He was going to ask her today. Before he knew it he had closed the gap and was now standing facing Nicky.

He stared at her perfectly symmetrical face, unable to tear his eyes away from her gaze. He felt he couldn’t breathe, he opened his mouth to speak but words failed him. He swallowed and then he opened his mouth and swallowed again. Then she spoke and her voice was like tinkling, shattering crystal – girls let’s go feed the fish - and they left…leaving him standing there, nervously tugging at the sleeves of his jacket as they walked away giggling. He felt humiliated, his ears felt warm, his face flushed.

He never did forget standing near the punch bowl all night, watching the shimmering colors of the disco ball above reflecting off Nicky’s radiant face and the more he looked the angrier he felt at his humiliation. He was torn between an intense desire to take her in his arms and never let go, to squeeze her so tight, so tight that her ribs cracked and her breath came out in gasps until it never came out again, at all.

That summer she didn’t notice him. It was Langston, PA, population 8,000. Everyone knew everyone else. She was all over town, riding around in her Dad’s Thunderbird or waitressing at the local diner and bartending at the local pub at night. She was still the talk of the town, flashing her baby blues and radiant smile at everyone. He felt like the only invisible resident of Langston, PA.

But invisibility has its advantages. An invisible photographer is never noticed, an invisible neighbor is never acknowledged, not when he rents the apartment across the street and not when he buys and trains a telescope at the uncurtained window of the most desirable woman in the town. He can watch her dress, watch her undress, sleep with her and wake with her. He can even follow her out of town, several paces behind the trail of confetti that litters the Greek Orthodox Church at the edge of town, invisible in his little utility van that quietly follows the car that loudly proclaims the “Just Married” state of the couple within.

He had spent many years of his life in quiet pursuit - the telescope his only companion, the darkroom his only real refuge – the one place where he could surround himself with Nicky. This was the tenth anniversary of his failure and humiliation and this was his chance.

The picture postcard was perfect - a photograph of the Greek landscape that graced the back wall of her bedroom - the fresco that her husband had so lovingly commissioned for her 28th birthday. Tomorrow she would open her mailbox to retrieve the perfect postcard that would read “WISH YOU WERE HERE” in a strange spidery scrawl that she would never recognize…

Shadows Die on Moonless Nights

The cherry blossoms were in full bloom and there was colour all around. I could hear the faint koto strains of an ancient spring song filtering through my consciousness, taking me back to the ill-fated visit to the jungles of Iriomote-jima where I had gone camping with Haruki. I shuddered as I tried not to remember what happened to him that spring, thirty years ago.

Life flowed all around me like a river in spate as I tried my best not to be swept away by the flood of memories that threatened to overcome my very existence. I headed for the bench underneath the cherry tree and decided to catch my breath and recover my bearings. There were other joggers in the park; spring time brought them out in hordes. A couple of young girls jogged past my bench without a second glance as I looked on after them. It felt good to be alive, to have emerged unscathed.

I was startled by a loud chirping sound and looked up to see a pair of Eurasian kestrels. They appeared to be saying something; I sensed an urgency, a slightly discordant note in their song.

There were cyclists, jugglers and roller-skaters in the park, an ever changing tableau of springtime festivities and yet my sense of foreboding grew, it had formed at the pit of my stomach and was rising and growing.

I decided to resume walking. I got up with the help of my cherry wood walking stick, my fist closing over the screw top dragonhead that served as its handle, seeking reassurance. I slowly made my way around the curved path, gazing at the fountain and the little kids trying to float their toy boats in the little pool surrounding the fountain. One of them appeared to be having some trouble trying to keep his little kayak afloat, it kept flipping over and floating face down. I decided to help him. I walked up to him and lowered myself down on my arthritic knees with great effort, smiling at the boy as I took his little kayak from his tiny hands. I flipped it over to shake out the water inside when a little parchment scroll fell out. I asked the boy what it was but he merely shrugged. So I wiped it dry and opened it up to see what it said.

The words were sharply etched and clear, “Remember the Shadows on Moonless Nights”. I looked up again; the boy was nowhere to be found. I stared at the toy kayak in my hand, it was covered in blood.

I looked all around me, nothing had changed, the cherry blossoms were still swaying gently in the wind, the young joggers were back, about to commence their second lap around the park. The Sakura-Sakura song still filled my ears, its notes closer together, frenetic, as I looked around in a panic, looking for other signs of impending doom. There were none. It was time to head home.

As I walked home, I couldn’t stop myself from reliving the moment from thirty years ago, when Haruki and I had gone camping. We had marched in step to the Sakura song, lugging a kayak across our shoulders. We were young and fearless then, Haruki more so than me; adventurous and always willing to push things to the limit. He wanted to plod through the mangroves behind the lagoon and then follow the river up to the base of the falls in the kayak we had been lugging all day. It was his idea to pitch our tents by the Urauchi-gawa River, in the heart of the dense jungle.

At nightfall the wind was still and nothing stirred that moonless night. There was a chill in the air despite the early onset of spring, so we lit ourselves a fire. It was rather eerie for me and I wanted to turn in early. The yamaneko had been known to jump out at unsuspecting travelers. I told Haruki I wanted to get inside the tent and secure the flap. He looked at me with condescension and dared me to stay up with him. I did. He told me I needed to learn to live a little and to take chances. He told me life would pass me by if I didn’t shrug off the comforting mantle of my secure existence, if I didn’t feed the person within: the shadow that sought resolution. I listened, mesmerized. Haruki’s voice had the power to bend anyone to his will.

During the course of our conversation by the fire a strange lightheadedness descended upon me. I stared at the dancing flames lighting Haruki’s face from below, the flames dancing in his eyes, giving him a surreal and other-worldly appearance. And then, as I continued to stare I thought I saw a second Haruki sliding out of the one I knew to be my friend. I thought my tired eyes were playing tricks on me; I really needed to get some sleep. We had another long and tiring trek ahead of us the next day.

I interrupted Haruki to tell him I was ready to turn in as I started to get up but I didn’t get too far. Haruki’s clone was by my side in an instant, pressing down on my shoulders as he looked into my eyes. Those eyes were black as the night, their menace intensely terrifying. I summoned up all my strength and managed to get up. He followed. I ran toward our kayak. He was gaining on me. Somehow I found the strength to pull out one of the wrought iron tent pegs and as he closed in on me I stabbed him with it. He fell onto the kayak, lifeless. I blacked out then.

It must have been noon when I came to, the sun was beating down as I squinted up through a throbbing head. I was on my back staring up at the branches of several trees, their branches meeting. I spotted a pair of Eurasian kestrels chirping in that strange way, declaring spring. I heaved myself up on an elbow. There was a collapsed tent on my right, a charred pile of twigs on my left and a dead Haruki, stabbed through his heart, lying sprawled across the kayak. I walked up to his dead body. There was a yellowed scroll of parchment next to him, it simply said, “Shadows Die on Moonless Nights”.

I stumbled upon a rock; I had walked into an isolated section of the park as I reminisced. There wasn’t a soul around. The branches above were still filtering the remaining light of the evening sun as I watched my lengthening shadow. I wasn’t too far from my apartment; another thirty minutes would see me there. I quickened my steps hoping to be safely inside by nightfall. I got there just in time, the doorman held the door open as I entered and headed for the elevator down the hall. Then I heard it: the sound of determined footsteps filling in the gaps between my own. I turned around to see the doorman holding the door open for others while his shadow focused its menacing black eyes on me and my fist tightened over the screw top dragon head of my cherry wood walking stick…