Here be Dragons

Here be Dragons

Posted by A Great Liar

After the sun goes down and the surrounding forest becomes quite dark, you begin to hear noises of almost innocent birds or mammals. They may sound strange to you, but the cynic within would holler and pretend they are nothing. The left hemisphere of your brain, the curious Sméagol within, seeks solace in common sense. As you prepare to sleep and lay your head down, you hear a spine-chilling wail almost like a coyote.

With his one good eye deeply shut, the old man could see them, and deep in his sleep, he hears the whispers of the specter in the remote wanderings, closing in with its weight, with the bones of the universe breaking, giving in beneath its feet, and the silence holding the woods deep in its snare. The imprints left on the patch of barren gray, sulfuric and they glowed against the dark.

You don’t come out into the Pine Barrens for a nice camping trip.

He spent most mornings hiding from the sun, while the heaven beyond the stone-age roof of his abode is stirred by the endless flights of nameless birds above. His starved fingers groping, fumbling into his cowboy leather saddlebag, gaping holes and all, taking out the yellowed bunch of parchments he had long discovered from his deceased grandfather's basement, locked and forgotten in their revered family vault. The parchments looked old, older than the world as the man had always known it to be.

A World in Black and White

A World in Black and White

Posted by A Great Liar

[The following is an excerpt from a currently undergoing novel, 'Requiem for a Vertical Man']

One quick glance at Raspil and you would suspect that he was a rat who has learned to evolve with the passage of time and exposure to human bondage. Learned to speak rather than squeal and to walk on two, a lone survivor distinguished from the rest of his clan beneath the swells and filth of the life underground; a labyrinth of dark sewers populated by the blind seers that feed upon the human waste, and look upon them as would an ill-treated disciple upon the Godhead responsible for their little misfortunes.

He entered the East End of the city, after one long hour of walking, an abstract figure with his head down, with usual brisk strides. Just one of his daily night walks.

Raspil has always felt more at home in the suburbs of the low, with the weakly lit street lights, and poorly maintained houses with broken porch stairs and the fuzzy window panes with secret messages scratched all over its glass. The old bricks that have witnessed millennia of living their lives, never to stir a limb, or utter a whimper of complain, for the years of inhuman conditions it has endured, forever plunged into the sinful cycle; the livelihood of the East End inhabitants.

The usual expressions stayed frozen for ages on the heavy laden doorways, made of thick wood from which arose a dull odor of ennui and old age, and men who appeared out of them every morning, leaving behind a stupor to join the squalor that they have grown to love and hate in their own peculiar ways; the way of an East Ender.

Silly rabbits seeking heaven in the most unlikeliest of the rabbit holes, behind dark lanes of the slums and dwellings, at the Hogan’s Alley, with years grown immune to the stench and foul odor of the little dens carefully tucked in between the residences of poverty, where strangers made merry on most nights during the week. And come every weekend, it was a mass requiem of the sinners and the unfaithful, men with prospects of syphilis, and the painted fairies of the dark who much appreciated their penchant for doom and feasted on it.

The Ghost of Winter

The Ghost of Winter

Posted by A Great Liar

The rustle of midnight leaves against the winter wind isn’t the only sound outside his cottage in the wild.

Despairing against the liquor bottle fast drying up, he heard the faint footsteps approaching, realizing that the darkness has come for him.

Gripping the sledgehammer in his hand, he waits for that knock on the door.


This post is written for the Best 55 Fictionist Contest, hosted by Sasikumar Raja Blogs at Beginner

Of Patriotism and Other Diseases…

Of Patriotism and Other Diseases…

Posted by A Great Liar

I sat quietly in front of the TV set, listening to the harmonized rhetoric from a happy idiot lip sucking the seemingly endless series of lyrics that smacked of patriotism and the much needed melodrama accompanying it, as always.  

From the corner of my eye, I had an obscure vision of Ammo entering the lounge, with the usual evening ammunition of pot and weed candy in her hands, all ready to suck in the marijuana once again, her nightly occupation for as long as I have known her.

She fixed herself a cigarette, and eventually noticed the popular song being played on TV, and exclaimed. “Holy friggin’ crow, Lev. Since when were you a nationalist soul?” A smile of amusement beginning to smear her face.

I gave her a look of horror, meeting her eyes, the bleary look within an evidence of the fact that the magic weed has finally started to weave its spell on her, and said. “You greatly disappoint me Ammo, not for the life of me will I ever stoop as low as that.”

She frowned. “What are you implying exactly?”

Against the Day

Against the Day

Posted by A Great Liar

I

Under the relentless Sun, a little boy was down on his knees, and with his trembling finger drew what looks like the letter U, with the tip of his finger fumbling, trailing imprints of a deeper hue on the sandy surface.

The letter was done, if not too well done, and the little semblance of memory stored, bit by bit, though as yet a beginning.

Satisfied, the boy gets up and continues to walk the aimless path, with the breeze of the ocean against his fair skin. A wary soul in a middle of a land that did little to comfort him, his mere consolation being that name the boy held close to his heart, a name from the past that he had sworn to immortalize till the end of time, against all odds.

And against the call of the deep now at hand, beckoning him, asking for the final remittance for the life as yet held unaccountable.

II

Zakaria, the boy heard the call of the dead, the wind carrying his name, hissing, speeding through ... that dreaded whiz of the thousand ghosts in unison bringing chill to his bones.

Time is not an enemy, he told himself repeatedly, time is not a friend, and began to pace faster. Behind him, the thousand footsteps of fear growing distant, allowing for a temporary respite, if not an outright reprieve.

Few paces further, now running a little short on breath, he halted and went down on his knees, fighting the tremor that has by now become a part of his soul, refusing to let go, and his little boy's hand swaying in protest against the soft land, leaving yet another imprint, a single letter, a faint but beautiful whisper to withstand the finality close at hand.

And as soon as he was done, the boy heard the wind closing in again, that roaring raving thing gone mad, covering the distant in haste with the progress of the boy on the temporary standstill, ripping through time and space with its sole emotional derivative being that of a predator for its prey; no love lost between them.

Zakaria was on his feet again, skinny legs galloping on a damp surface, now racing once more against the ghostly waltz.

III

Men greater than Zakaria have feared and eventually lost to the harrows of the Deep, faces before him who have looked for too long into the infinity of the mother ocean, spoken to the very souls of their ancestors from the long past, till each one of them at last joined the infinity within, embracing the roaring waves masking the quiet within its deep.

They all float down there, down the bottom of the sea where time doesn’t fly and future doesn’t breath down your neck, whispering no lies.

The deep would bring all things to naught, the little boy knew, remembering the thousand faces of the dear ones lost, smiling, crying, in love and in anguish, in youth or in old age, each one of them eventually lost to the ocean, and wishing if only there was a little magic in this world.

And with the end drawing nigh, the little boy with blue eyes found himself running short of time, the strength of the living slowly leaving him and the entire universe shrinking, eager to pinpoint all its destructiveness against that unfortunate ingénue.

IV

And as the day drew to a close, the little boy cried like he had never cried before, his heart storming its way to a grief strangling him, a grief that wasn’t quiet but had no sound.

The tears flowed, uncontrollably and the breathing became irregular with time, the boy breathing heavily, in and out, in and out, as the soundlessness of death tightening its grip.

The tears blinded his vision as the boy lay face down on to the shore, barely able to move, his fingers now mere limp, numb and drained of will, lay half buried within the wet surface, with no letters drawn, no semblance of the memory stored, as our boy was not made of steel anymore; never had been.

He felt the void growing around him, as the ghosts finally caught up with him, now whirling him to the deep, where it lay in wait for all things great or small.

And as the world grew smaller right before his eyes, Zakaria wished if only there was a little magic in this world still, or if only the dreams were not made of clay, till he felt the thousand cold needles of the first wave, and the growling hands of the sea to follow.

Till all that was sound and all that was sight, in conscious remains as conscious subside.

[Do leave a comment, it matters...]

A God Dances Through Me (a short story)

A God Dances Through Me (a short story)

Posted by A Great Liar

“I betcha don’t believe a word am sayin’. You one of them city boys who believe God won’t push the button nomore.” The old man said. “Well, you betcha sorry ass He has.”

Crazy people tend to prey on the fears and vulnerabilities of the other people. Most of them could smell that in their prey like no other animal.

I told myself not to panic. A single click of the ignition could be all I need to put it behind, and a bit of faith that broken down vehicles in the middle of a highway have a way of sorting themselves out on the first sign of trouble.

And the old man was trouble. He was trouble all the way.

Feeling nervous, I asked. “And when do you reckon He did that?”

“It’s been two days straight, or a little over. When did you last switched onto your radio?” He pointed to the car radio. “Or does the damn thing work?”

The damn thing that the old man referred to did work. My Sony car radio looking a touch too battered by years of neglect. 

He began pleading, as if reading my thoughts. “Yo’ sti’l plann’ to head north, arentcha? Like the rest of them fools.” He paused, half expecting me to panic and race off. “God’s finally made up His mind to get back on us you see. You ever seen people meltin’, that’s what it looked like to me back there. And most of the newborns lookin’ half finished too.”

“You been in some kind of trouble, old man?” I asked, losing my patience. “Back there where you from.”

Finity of Sex and Death

Finity of Sex and Death

Posted by A Great Liar

 

I quickly entered my apartment, hoping for a reprieve against the cursed Karachi showers, and predictably found Ammo sulking in her private studio, in a middle of her artistic endeavors, her loose Victorian sleeve dress looking rather loose and shabby on her painfully thin figurine, and tears on her deep narrow eyes, giving a slight bluish tinge to it, however slight.

I dutifully inquired the cause of her current predicament, while taking off my heavily dripping raincoat, which is now partially ruining the rug.  

“What’s the matter dear?” I asked, partly believing that one of her recent residue of boyfriends have dumped her, yet again. Of all the women in the world of Karachi, Ammo had dated just about anything that walked or crawled or could merely breath like a Stonehenge on this land, ranging from a bad ass hip hop richer-than-thou sun of a gun to a male version of femme fatale.

Metempsychosis (a short story)

Metempsychosis (a short story)

Posted by A Great Liar

(Metempsychosis (Definition) : the passing of the soul at death into another body either human or animal)

I hear them through the looking glass, watch them flock around. I know them well enough; they never like to be alone. Peering. Eyes like legion smiling down at you, their innocence can drive you mad.

I stand up and walk about the room, shaking my head, hear things moving within. Things that don’t look too good, don’t sound neither. They croak and squeal their way around. Bolted eyes grilled on restless heads, arched figures with talons shifting gears on the narrow strip of the concrete ledge. Like empty shells carved to look like monsters.

It’s the chorus. It’s the singing at the window. There is a language in it for you to understand; put the voices together, many chords once played in unison start to make sense. It jangles my nerves, bouts of electricity piercing through my veins. Like a pendulum against my head, making it hard for me to stay still. There is another life pushing me beyond the edge of sanity, that indiscernible line. To pulsate like a ticking bomb.

Do they know what they are doing to me?

It didn’t matter. 

Unbearable. Dreadfully unbearable are the things they speak to me. I find myself a corner in the room, down onto my heels, holding my head against the temples, fingers probing nervously the throbbing hidden nerves. Trying to keep the head together, calming it down. It protests too much these days.

Announcement

Announcement

Posted by A Great Liar

A short story of mine, titled PERDITION, is recently accepted and published at MUDJOB, a blog space by Michael D. Brown, renowned short fiction writer of the modern day.

http://www.mudjob.blogspot.com/2012/08/javed-baloch-leviathan.html

Looking forward to your feedback,

Thank You

The Boy Who Knew Death

The Boy Who Knew Death

Posted by A Great Liar

As the sun rose each morning, so did the lonely old man with it; a sad limping figure strolling across the front lawn with a cigar tucked in his mouth, lighting fresh candles here and there, perhaps on an imagined grave of some loved one long lost to the infirmity of time and age.

A young boy living across the street, with an unusual pastime for a rather simple minded 12 years old, watched the old man out at the porch each morning, raving and talking to himself or the ghosts surrounding him, with his eyes staring wide and in excitement against the narrow scope of a binocular.

At times, he saw the old man going down in a fit of wild cough, settling against the neatly layered grass and spiting what looked like blood from the distance. The boy would be disappointed each time it happened, since it almost invariably spelled an end to his little morning show.

But it was never the cough or the sight of blood that bothered the little boy, the idea that the old man might die one of these days; because in his heart of hearts the boy also had a secret about him, a secret he had sworn to protect till the end of time.

___________________________

And then one fine day, when the old man began to cough incessantly, fell down, and remained unmoved for minutes on end, the young boy threw the binoculars down, got hold of one of the little Stickman Sam dolls stolen from his younger brother and ran for the house across the street; knowing that time was the enemy to all the magic in this world.

Because our little boy knew how to cheat death, though the only thing bothering him was that he just hasn’t quite perfected the art yet.

Once there, he leaned down and was relieved to find the old man with his eyes wide open, echoing loud irregular breaths.

There is still time. The boy realized; his young heart now a lucent dream in the wake of this newly found hope.

And with his eyes closed a little too tight, the little boy pressed the Stickman Sam against the failing heart of a dying old man and made a wish.

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Every Writer’s Room

Every Writer’s Room

Posted by A Great Liar

1

Under the pretext of writing, every writer worth his salt has come to know himself through the greater pain that drove him, the ever blind literary godhead oblivious of the pain of the underdog at its disposal, all the while knowing little of it as the hammer does of the nail.

Zoom in to read if you may, and you would know that every writer but strives to write his own epitaph, the glorious finale that will outlive the skin and bones, because who knows it better than a writer that how much has been forgotten in the name of remembrance.

Memory that finds itself on the paper, however inaccurate, is infinitely superior to a truth unknown, an over settlement of grievances between a sterile truth and the blind propensity that drives to bleed on the sheet of paper.

All writers want a thousand pages that will tear this planet in half, more halves the merrier.

2 

Under the guise of writing, there is a cold calculating act of telling people who they really are, to make them choke on their convictions, dissolve the molecules fretting about in their brains.

Most writers think better in the sunniest hours of their every day life, because that’s when the show is on at its incredulous best. Every man caught on the mystery camera, a victim of his surrounding, wary dissatisfied soul in civility and in rage against the reason of his age.

Reflections against the window view of every writer’s room and nothing more, with every man on the street being a well known superstition in abundance, offering a higher form of poetry, more in motion than in verse.

Requiem for the Vertical Man

Requiem for the Vertical Man

Posted by A Great Liar

To be dead is to escape accountability; no more squinting into fold-out maps to make a living, in apprehension and fear, for the errors and failings don't cling to you the way they did back home.

Good old days with life giving orders to the unshaped and the un-orderly, creating constellation within and around its many followers, with the entire mechanism of the host geared to accommodate the travelers adrift across continents and languages, floaters wrapped in the dull overbearing gaze of a sound thought.

A case of freedom boiling down to a pattern, a level and a norm; when to reach out to the man next to you, the buddy floater, was to violate the rules of the constellation within and without; and would he ever get to hear you, and in which language?

That is the mathematics of individuality wearing itself out, burning down to sheer multiplication of seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years, decades; each withholding a broader freedom within a nutshell.

Take a picture along now if you will; bring it down with you if it serves anything at all. Make it vertical, clad in fabrics making waves, now mere ripples silhouetted in memory.

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A Case For Suicide

A Case For Suicide

Posted by A Great Liar

“It’s nothing but a tale of the living and the dead, and the ones in between.” I watched the main street from the window of the apartment, thinking out aloud. “It’s funny that each man now walking across this street, is merely following the long lost trails of his ancestors who must have walked the same line, trudged on the same cobblestones and occasionally admired a fleeting beauty passing by, some whistling and rest in awe.”

Ammo replied. “Have you never no hope, Lev? You know you ought to say something nice tonight, it’s your birthday, for creeper’s sake”. A half burned cigarette dangling from her left hand, a thinly clad wrist with white hairless skin and bones strikingly jutting out. The many misnomers of drug abuse blended with hours spent in artistic torture.

I continued on, for a moment mindless of her incitements of hope. “And the ones before them, and before that, and so on. Hence the ironic cycle of life, and God’s great cast of actors and actress upon this planet.”

Ammo replied. “Don’t you think that it’s a blessing that most of them, including you hopefully, will live to see another year.”

“Yes, though I hardly consider it a cause of celebration.” I replied. “Living is but one of the strangest acts of suicide, Ammo.” My voice low enough to qualify as a whisper. “It’s an acknowledged descent into the abyss, self willed, but done with hope, with flair, and in high spirits. An act of self annihilation done in extremely good taste.”

She said. “Perhaps you need to live a little more, Lev. And need to see beyond the veil of your opinions.” Paused. “Perhaps you also need to take into account the very possibility that you and your cockamamie opinions about life and the rest of the haberdashers surrounding it could be wrong.”

A Thousand Pig Heads On Sticks

A Thousand Pig Heads On Sticks

Posted by A Great Liar

It’s a day to be quiet; spent in anger and disguise. Because it’s a kind of day that scares you, scares you deep, and scares you good, real good I mean. When you are afraid of nothing more around you, but only yourself.

Afraid of what you have become, if only for a day.

And so you take a day off, a day off from yourself. The trick is to just take a back seat and watch the world go, like a small tin can rolling down the slanted street.

And if you would watch it for too long, you would realize that it’s never rolling in, nor rolling out. Because it never grows too near nor too far, it just rolls.

So what do you do?

You just light the bloody cigarette and take a walk down that street. You simply roll with the can, and never take your eyes off it. You watched it dance, and follow suit. Watch it pull every god damn trick from the bag that is there to be had, and you watch. And ask no questions.

No questions ever. Because there are no answers to be had.

And once you have walked far enough, long enough, you realize you are not alone. No way near! There are people, and always more people. It’s a form of rejoice, a bloody festival out there. Like an ugly welcome, watching them grinning, or somber to the core.    

Walking down the street, filled with walking sticks, moral harelips and hunchbacks, people all around, it was like watching a thousand pig heads sticking out of thousand human torsos, made me feel like a captive walking down an Indian gauntlet, walking down to the scaffold. 

And continued on. Walkin’, and humming, trying not to finish my cigarette in a hurry. Trying to make every moment count. Knowing this is as close to fun as I am capable of being.

And then, from the corner from my eyes, I see a beggar approaching. A beggar with a shine. A physical matchstick of a man with perhaps only enough blood pumped each day to keep the chest heaving.

As the beggar neared, smiling, I spotted a set of healthy white teeth unveiled as his lips widened.

What a smile? I wondered. Now realizing where all the blood in his veins was spent. Like every fiber of his body and soul, the heart, the bones and the blood, committed for one jingle of glory; to keep the teeth shining.

And I moved on. Ignoring him as soon as I first noticed him.

Straight down my eye line, a mother is comforting a little punk ass of her son, a fat round spoiled brat who had just found out that the world isn’t something to be taken granted for. While mother cuddles him, telling him things that like most parents do, things that little punk ass kid like this one has no use for, nor the care.

I watch the kid sobbing, making economical use of his limited set of tears. Spending each with prolonged intermissions, while filling the gap with noise that, with their varying ebb and flow, perhaps represented more grief than there was a genuine case for.

And the woman with expensive embroidery around her hanging cowish motherly skin, the kind of skin that has given birth to hordes of such brats, one too many perhaps, and dark eye shades, kept telling him to trust her, and to have faith in God, though which of those statements she actually meant to be true, it was hard to guess.

Apparently the little kid has taken a fall, face first, into the hard concrete ground, chasing a wild puppy in the street, apparently meaning more harm than love to that innocent creature of God.

And his nose bled, and the bleeding wouldn’t stop, and each drop only brought him closer to death, closer to the unknown, or so the fat kid in big shorts thought. Knowing that he only meant harm to an innocent soul, to a puppy that was now nowhere to be seen, and there would be hell to pay if he dies now, without repentance.

And deservingly so. I mused and moved on. All men should burn for what they do. 5 years old or 85, what’s the difference?

Leaving them to their perils behind, I reached for the cell from my pocket, wishing to make a connection. Recalling an earlier conversation I had, or the lack of it for that matter. Because a phone call spent in silent misunderstanding is not conversation.

Make a connection. But with what? I fumbled in my thoughts. It’s hard to understand the man who woke up in my bed today, it’s hard to look him in the mirror and reach out.

I slipped the cell back in my pocket, wishing nothing no more. Afraid of the disappointment that might await me on the other end of the frequency. Because a hope of being loved, and of being understood, of expectations, bring along with them a hordes of fear and apprehensions.

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A Little Scared Boy (An Excerpt)

A Little Scared Boy (An Excerpt)

Posted by A Great Liar

(The following is an excerpt from the currently undergoing novel, The Liar's Lobe)

At first, it seemed the descent would never end as a little scared boy trailed down the wooden stairs. Then his stumbling blind feet hit the surface and the boy took a sigh of relief.

The earth beneath his feet felt hard and cold as he took first couple of steps. Feeling his way in, swallowed by the blind eater that masqueraded as dead darkness all around him.

Have mercy! Something in him screamed. Part of him that was wallowing in hopelessness since the day Grandpa has passed away.

Watching someone die like the way Grandpa did was like catching someone with his pants down. Stripped of all human dignity, and Danny didn’t think you are ever forgiven for that little sneak peak into reality.

He recalled the time when he saw the thing from the Grandpa's room for the first time, a night after Grandpa's died, a thing that walked and even made itself sound like Grandpa used to, approaching his room in the middle of the night, his back against me, and it starting to turn around.

And it was just as well that Danny got scared and ran back before he could face him. Deep within he knew he could never face Grandpa again, not even when it wasnt quite Grandpa that he had to face, but something else, something that only walked and talked like his Grandpa used to. 

From above he heard Jimmy calling out for him. He sounded worried. But Danny chose to stay and begged for darkness to feed him. He had come too far and there was no turning back.

His patience paid off as it seemed that the darkness finally listened to him. He began to see. The cellar was a small round sphere surrounded by layers of thickly infested dust and cobwebs. Against the wall on his left he saw shelves with portholes carved in them.

Most of them seemed empty, except couple of them as Danny poked around in the dim light.  

A square looking black object seemed to peek through the shelf’s opening.

Danny thought the little thing smiled at him.

He didn’t think when Lewis Carroll dreamed of rabbit holes of his own, he ever believed it could prove to be a doorway to things so demonic and destructive. He had thought rabbit holes to be fantastical apertures to other worlds, where life is full of color and magic. Warped in a strange but nice form of reality that make our most outrageously enlightening dreams seem like a discourse into dullness.

When Danny first laid eyes on the book, he forgot to breath. The blood underneath the skin slowly flushed out of his face, his eyes unable to focus on the black leatherbound book he found from the secret cellar in our backyard, stranded in the cobwebs and layers of dust.

Because for one brief moment, what Danny saw wasn’t some old book from the Grandpa’s past, but a thing born of darkness, of Danny’s worst nightmares and most secret dreads. A dark and slimy thing crouched in one of the portholes lined up against the wall of the cellar.

Who are you? Danny choked as the words he began to speak only succeeded to echo deep inside of him.

I am you. The dark-thing said and gave him a winning smile. Danny believed the things had eyes watching him. Weighing him down with a lots of love, the kind that gives you goosebumps and makes your blood run cold. 

I am you. The dark-thing repeated.   


[Do leave a comment, it matters...]

A World Without Air

A World Without Air

Posted by A Great Liar

The world of dreams is a silent facade, a showy misrepresentation intended to conceal something unpleasant, something that we have all heard of, and strive for, and none achieve. If time is the big bad ball of ice rolling down the giant snow peak in clockwise motion, then the hope for happiness is the antithesis of it, an anti-clockwise act of desperation, of human struggle against the pitiless Void of creation that some call Nature, and others God.

The point is the absolute pointlessness of the whole thing. The point is not the snowball falling down the mountain, the point is why it is there in the first place.

And the point is, if there is a mysterious Machinist responsible for all the existence in the earth and beyond, a Machinist hidden to the common eye behind the veil of infinity, call it Nature or God, would it suffice as good enough explanation, a justification of sorts that everything that is there, or isnt there for that matter, is but a willfull act of Divine Providence, as it were.

But irrespective of all that, of whether we need, or could, justify anything that there is to be justified or not, the fact remains that we all live in a world without, rather than in a world within. We humans are mere entities of self denial, in a way that we forever refuse to acknowledge or be at peace with what we are, instead are in constant striving for what we arent, or dont have.

Every man or woman, no matter how mundane a soul he or she is, or how insufficient in imagination or ambition, seeks to do an act or follows a trail of otherworldiness, of that most beautiful of all that is unreal and fantastic, better known as the pursuit of happiness.
  
We are all fiddlers, freting their way into the unknown future, curious and babbling, lauging and crying, loving and hating, but always seeking to divulge from our own present form and circumstances. Whereas the ones in light seek the dark, and spent their lifetime doing it, like poor old saints trying to become clumsy sinners.

And the ones in the dark forever crave for the light, stumbling to light candles of hope, never realizing that it is not the darkness they fight against, but the very absence of light in their lives.
 
And all the while, the ball keeps rolling down the peak, and hence the pointlessness of it all.

Though we choose not to hear it coming, we choose instead to keep looking for a whiff of fresh air in a world devoid of the very substance that we call air.

We chose to do the impossible against the face of nothingness, because it is only human to do so.

We chose not to await the ball to finishing rolling, but to try and live in this world without air... 


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Spider

Spider

Posted by A Great Liar

25 years, a life span most of the mygalomorph spiders are expected to share, years spent in captivity of the predatory inclinations inherent in my kindred; catching the unexpected prey with a silken smile, O the irony of that; I have never been fond of non-predatory feeding, if there is such a term.

With fangs that inject venom to a mere wanderer in my parlor, a Sicilian death kiss most of them find a little too sticky, though they never complain, was a necessary predicament of my livelihood; feeding my little young ones, like a good mother that I am; always making a point of eating the eyes off my prey, for my little ones did not deserve to see the glimpse of darkness in the dead eyes; the accusing look that dwells there forever.

Death was a necessity, I once thought, and was proven wrong in the course of my lifetime; the long tedious hours spent in the hollow shade of wait, watch and wait, soundless and like a shadow that casts no suspicion to the unsuspecting prey; it became a pleasure.

I have stared down many desperate faces, in fear and hopelessly deprived, throbbing and pulsating from the sigh of the silent specter before them, some begging for mercy, others dimly hoping for it, none ever appreciating death; the value they put on their lives ……

‘Is it a bad thing’, one of my young one once asked me, having watched me taking the life out of one of my victims, ‘to make a living of their lives’; ‘No’, I told him with a smile, ‘once they are caught in the silken fate, it is all right to feed off them’; a curious babbling fledgling he was, soon he will learn the underlying principles of death and dying.

Soon I will too learn the fears that enveloped my prey, now having grown in both wisdom and age; a little too much of both is a luxury none can ever afford; waiting … waiting for a silent silken kiss.

God's Business

God's Business

Posted by A Great Liar

Blood came spurring out of the wound as if finally relieved of its tensions, of all that tension of living in a state of war. The little green man fell haplessly on the ground; his blood curdled eyes staring at my lily white face - the last thing that lucky commie bastard would ever get to see in this world.

Down onto my haunches I searched the body and found nothing to my liking. Like most of his kind, he lived in the teepees and humped in the bushes - now just another slit-eyed creep with his throat gashed from my bayonet.

War is murder in wholesale, somebody once said, and I say the hell with him, because we are at war. It’s the natural order of things, and you never ever fuck with nature.

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We move on, like a bunch of best trained sniffers a country at war could ever hope for, slashing and moving our way in, deep within the forest.

Look behind every jumble of bushes and you see a commie either breeding, or smokin' leaves, or doing both. Keep the trigger pressed for long and it doesn’t feel so cold any more. Doing God's good work on this earth makes you feel like one lucky bastard on this cursed land of tropical horrors, where sometimes the rain and mosquitoes seem more evil than the commies.

But we move on anyway, because that is the only way, because we ain't fighting this war to win; we keep on because the job needs to be finished off. We ain't no quitters, no siree, not we; it’s about finishing what you started and moving on to better things in life.

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The cigar stays tucked in my mouth as I walk. ‘Watch out for the commie dirt’, someone shouted. It's the brains splattered on the ground, mixed with a lot of blood and stuff, mostly from the guts; the other green stuff that always shows up every time we fry a commie family of four or more with an M1 semi-automatic carbine.

That’s the one to look out for, its heathen blood and its fucking contagious once you catch it; because then you can’t get it off your skin. And aint that the proof, like someone said, proof that there aint no humans around in this island till we first landed.


Good Lord has shown us signs, the right ones, and only the weak and the faithless will ever turn away from it; and once they do, they are as good as the dead commies, 'coz we need to tell the world that it's God's business we are here to mind.

Born Down In the Dead Man’s Town

Born Down In the Dead Man’s Town

Posted by A Great Liar

We are all born down to the dead man’s town. Where each of those good old skunks was once a man of worth, till he learned to have an opinion.

Where they all kiss, smile, and die henceforth, some by chance, other by providence.

Where the wise men have a crack at Divinity and the mere average souls strive for immortality within their shaded abodes. Some worship the Seen, some Unseen, and the rest who could do with neither, followed none but their own shadows.

Some had Gods sculptured in the shoddy back lane shops, others strove for them in the towering erected domes.

And some dreamed of heaven above, while most strove to erect One of their own devices, heavens bricked with concrete and blood of their fellow beings.

But each man is born to burn in this funny little town, is what none of us realize, not in the nick of time anyway.  

An Unkind Birth (An Excerpt)

An Unkind Birth (An Excerpt)

Posted by A Great Liar

(The following is an excerpt from the currently undergoing novel, The Liar's Lobe)

(Narrative by Martha – Danny’s Mother)

Danny was disposed off the Heaven as if treated as a mistake.

It was as if the child would break into pieces any moment. He wasn’t too well done as a creation. Came off a month early, my Danny did.  
 
But Danny did make it home. After months of labor, which Good Lord has devised in His plans for women to bear, he made it soundly. Unlike many newborns I have seen, Danny didn’t seem to have enough tears to shed. It’s as if providence do away with him in some urgency, disgusted or repelled by what it has got at its disposal.

The little child Danny was hardly complete when he was first unhooked of the meaty strings. Hardly breathin’. Looking starved, and not much stirring, puffing noiseless in the well lit room surrounded by faces indecisive of whether to rejoice or be alarmed.

I am just a mother. Now bearing a child that I could never save, knew the moment I lay eyes on him. He demanded too much work than a woman of mortal capacity could muster. Faith’s a thing plenty, but it ain’t enough to save everybody.

My suspicions were confirmed when, days later, baby Danny first opened his eyes, his dark black eyes just like his father’s and the busy brows. Those were beautiful eyes and what lurked beneath the early years of innocence was sea of lies waiting for the right moment to gush out. 

Much as I loved him back then, and did for the rest of my life, for I never stopped loving him, even when the moments when I looked at him with nothing but spite and wish nothing more than to ram the dagger down his baby chest and let him take it down to his young grave, I never stopped loving him.

But the dagger moments were too many and the love at times was forgotten in the moments of intense hatred and enmity in the air, though it continued to exist.  

But there were no surprise, because even as a young baby, my Danny had a look of a liar in his eyes. If eyes are windows to the souls as some wise mouth cracks it out to be, than my baby had a soul prone to deceit, fallen already at the time of its awakening, fallen to the touch of the devil.

I had no chance. What happened probably wasn’t fair, but who am I to complain. All I can say is that Good Lord in the sky has created angels, demons, and men, and everything in between that walks upon two or four legs in this world.

And then He goes on to do the inexplicable; He creates Danny, my boy.