In Close Range

In Close Range

Posted by A Great Liar

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

1

The thing about coming back to your hometown years after you left it behind is that they are never quite the same. Not that a lot can change in ten years, not physically anyway. The only change, if any, takes place between your ears; in a solitary confinement inside your brain reserved only for memories that are meant to be locked away.

And with time, something always goes wrong there, because as you finally face up to everything that you once owned in the past long gone, none of it seem quite the way you had it remembered, in all those years you had been away.

You think you had it all figured out, but you don't; because there is a place in each of us’ brain that is ruled solely by deceit.

2

Looking at the body in the Town’s morgue, I realized how small my brother Danny looked, as if the whole of him had shrank, may be from the impact of the bullet, I am not quite sure. Because there is a lot about being shot at close range that I knew nothing about or wished to. And if I ever changed my mind, I knew there was only one way to find out; Danny’s way.

His head was heavily bandaged, strapped in white all around the temples, because the bullet had travelled its way across one temple to another, till it finally hit the part of the basement wall covered with an elaborate looking Monroe poster, splattering it with blood and everything else that decides to come out when you shoot yourself in the head in such close range, close enough to feel the muzzle against the side of your head.

Looking down on to the face, with hot tears streaming down that I had no control over, I tried to remind myself that the dead looking fella strapped in sheets didn’t look like my brother at all.

But I cried anyway, knowing that it wouldn’t help, knowing that the problem wasn’t the DNA, but my memory of it.

Tears of a Serpent

Tears of a Serpent

Posted by A Great Liar

Tears are words that heart can’t express. It is the strangest form of grief, the one that makes you cry, a strange kind of sorrow, which if you closely observe, will make you realize the truth of it, that you are merely shedding tears for someone who has been your utmost delight.

Grief can have the best of even the worst amongst us, the saint and the angel amongst us, the deer and the serpent amongst us.

You will learn to hate it, you will learn to love it, to cherish it, rage against them running down your cheeks. But you shall in each case endure them. Like you learn to endure everything that is sacred inside of us, no matter how dark the soul of man, there is something that resembles like light even in our lowliest moment that we tend to hold on to from time to time. At times, it serves as our defense mechanism in the fight against the teasing gnawing conscience.

Tears, likewise, are sacred. They are not the tool of the weak amongst us, but of a power the like of which most of us stay unacquainted with. And they speak of a love which would otherwise remain inexpressible and beyond words. And they say so much more while sparing us the frivolities of tongue.

They say that only men who are good and worthwhile have it in them the nobility to cry. And I say to them, what of the ones who had lived in the shelter of darkness most of their lives, what of the villain who has the heart to shed tears. A grief to express.

And what of the serpent we all fear and dread, the dark specter that none shall embrace. What of his loneliness and his tears.

Don’t we all look at him and say, “Here goes a bad man, here goes a man without morals or worth.”

Have not most of us facade keepers, the one who divine about faith and moralities over lavish dinner tables, have you all not in one time or another enjoyed the fruits of the dark, not served in the lair of the serpent for your own worldly gains?

Or have you no sense of gratitude. That you may now pause in your frivolities only to mock what once served in your best interest. Provided you that pillow of comfort on which you now lay your head and dream of righteousness.

It is a pity that men, often blinded by faith, may often see the worse amongst others, and not the best. May only see the serpent inside the serpent and not the tears that now forever draw him nearer to goodness than he could ever imagine.

A lot nearer than most of you could ever have been.

Because if it is noble to love a good man for his nobility, isn't it nobler to love a dark one for his fallibilities, for his torments of mind and soul. And if for nothing else, for that small world within him, a mere idea, or a world of fantasy he often escapes into and does much good; where none of his own evil lurks to haunt him, and no marks of the beast upon his reflection.  

Where, for however unreal and briefest the moments, he stays a good man…

To Love A Lie

To Love A Lie

Posted by A Great Liar

World is a facade, bounded by dyed rags around a squaw, dyed rags around each one of us, some with love, some with faith and rest with pure material pursuits.

Each of us living in a lie we would rather not give up, not because we have learned to love a lie, but because we believe there is not an iota of truth to be had around us. Because the world we live in and the world we have woven for ourselves is conceived of a lie, a lie of a wife to her husband that endures a shallow marriage, a lie of a mother to her child that endures one's upbringing, a lie of a father to the son, that endures his manly pride, the lie of a preacher to the herd of faithful, to endure a living based on the promises of the supernatural.

Or lie of a drunkard, or a rich man's, each boasting of a possession he could never truly own, neither a drunkard his wine nor a rich man his treasures.

Hence, what do we truly own in this world. What is it that is real and yet beyond ‘reachable’. That had made us accustomed to living with a lie. What are those obligations, hidden from our sight, that doesn’t allow a wife to give up on a shallow marriage, or a mother to give up on her worthless child, or a father to relieve himself from the duties of a boastful son, or never allows the faithful herd to pull away from the prospects of supernatural?

To All Things Versatile

To All Things Versatile

Posted by A Great Liar

This post is about receiving the Versatile Blogger Award, and as per the rules, offering special thanks to the one who honored you with the award, passing the award to the bloggers you hold in high esteem, (or the ones you have the hots for!), and lastly, sharing seven things about yourself with utmost honesty.

So first thing first.

Dear AL, thank you so much for the award, and for being an avid reader, simply can’t express in words how much it meant to me.

Mind you guys, AL writes at Let Me Whine! (http://al-whodoesntntgiveashit.blogspot.com/), and reading her stuff will shake all the traditionalist bones in your body, if you have any that is. Do pay her a visit.

Now moving on.

And now here are the bloggers with awards, in no particular order mind you.

Darwin Land Dropouts

Darwin Land Dropouts

Posted by A Great Liar

“Have you ever wondered what it is like to fall in love with someone?” I asked her. “I mean really and truly fall in love. Not like one of those hormonal seizures called crush or something”.

“Yes.” She replied. “Though I have a serious objection to that term you used.”

“But why?” I asked. “It’s only fair to regard it in this vein. Crushes aren’t real, I mean they are so fake that they are not even fake. It’s as if they are simply not there. Just a manifestation of one’s desire to sleep with someone one physically admires. Leaves no room for any strings attached, and the only nuisance you can think of is the blood you see on your hands accusing you in the morning light to come. But of course, one can wash it all off. I mean, with a bit of effort, one can pretty much wash off just about anything from one’s life these days.”

“Well, Lev.” She said, a touch irritated. “That has always been one of your problems, you never thought of people as people, you merely think of a primitive human model and turn it into an abstraction by stripping him or her of all human emotions.”