The Lost Sanctity

She carried on her journey, walking past dead human beings, walking past live beasts, walking past the light house which was as dark as it could get. She wandered around in the narrow streets, roamed through eerie alleys and narrowly escaped dozens of savages. Light was nowhere to be seen, shadows were surrounding her, silence was following her and life, well that she never had. As she entered the ciudad dé entierro- yes the city of funerals, a sign board read:

“Welcome to the River Town”.

“Oh! So they have a river in there as well. That is going to be fun.” She murmured.

Fun, felicity, ecstasy; these were the very things she had been running after through out her journey- a journey she was reluctant to describe as life- a journey that had taken her through the unconscious mind of a child to schizophrenic one that she possessed now.

“The journey never ends.” She remembered her son, who was now dead too, quoting a Gandolph dialogue from the famous movie “Lord of the Rings”.

“How very true it is!” She thought.

She was in the down town now, around her were towering minarets built with dead bodies- corpses not even stinking- corpses looking as if they were euphoric- corpses bound together with one single string- corpses… There in one corner, I stood above a rock. She looked into my eyes, I looked into hers. Lightening crashed- her eyes got closed again. I knew at that very moment, that I don’t have to keep my eyes open as well; so closed they got. My mind was blank and black as a night in Brazilian rain forests- nothing can be seen- beasts roar your heart apart- still your sense of adventure makes you do things you never would do in your sane mind.

Refusal- I wanted to open my eyes again- but refusal was all I got from my eyelids. Why? I wanted to ask- but refusal was all I got from my brain. I wanted to breath- but refusal was what I got from my lungs. So, I finally wished for my heart to burst into pieces- wishing that it too would refuse to obey me, but it never did. There I was, lying on the floor in hundreds of pieces.

She opened her eyes, looked at me again and smiled for the first time, may be in her entire life. I opened my eyes too, looked at her and smiled as well. This time it was not me alone repeating the same exercise; there were hundreds of other pieces of me, the mirror, doing the same as well. She turned her back at me, and walked towards the corpses again. Another beast she is, I thought and became the shining star in the sky above.

She was now walking amongst beasts, more alive than anyone else in the entire city. They never said anything to her, never even stared at her. They were all so busy- all so fuzzy- all so occupied- that nobody even noticed her. She felt embarrassed- she had always thought that her stupefying good looks were more than enough to catch even the brutes’ attention. Now she was traumatized, she wanted to know- wanted to know why all the humans are dead, and why all the beasts are scurrying and rushing past her. She asked a beast to stop, and it didn’t even listen, snubbing her wholly. And then she saw it; every one was rushing towards a building across the block. She went close to have a look for herself.

The board on the top of the building read:

“Sanctity of life lost. Awards Ceremony”

She ran inside and joined the race to get her own award for her part in making it conceivable.

The Arrival

Finally it had arrived. Five years in the mental asylum, five treasured years, had passed since he had been wishing for it. The arrival hadn’t been foreboded, yet there was something deeply auspicious about it. The man lying at the centre of the universe marveled- marveled how all of this could be true- marveled if he was really the centre of the universe or not- marveled how he could have neglected all of it. The winds were blowing, and blowing hard; sky was roaring, roaring loud; world was whirling around him. He knew it would come, but five years, three months, twenty two days, 15 hours, 34 minutes and 19 seconds, had made him forget if it really was there or not.

Screams- screams were closing in from all directions, silence- no where to be found. He wanted to close his ears- wanted to shut his eyes- wanted to embrace what had arrived- wanted to… He wanted to think; think once in his life. He had spent all these years without thinking about anything. It was as if he had lost his ability to think- to wonder. He wanted to think why? Why is it now that the thing, he had wished for during past five years of his life, had arrived; he wanted to run away from it. Blank- that’s what his mind had turned into- a blank piece of NOTHING it was.

Moments, memories, reminiscences and memoirs; did they ever exist? Not that he wanted to have them, but not having them made him think even harder. He had spent his whole life in this mental asylum, a mental asylum that we so proudly call our world, without any hint of impression, sensation, emotion or an association with anyone. He was alone, he was euphoric, he was quenched, he was… Everything seemed to be disconsolate and surreal around him now. The very things that he adored about himself now meant nothing to him, or were, may be, disastrous- ruinous and catastrophic to him.

Answers- still not arriving. The time scampering past him, or may be he was scurrying past time. Time stood still, the world stood still. It was he who was modifying. But then he was also a part of the world, so if he was changing then the world must change as well- this mental asylum should loose one of its psychotic as well; this psychosis had to come to an end. But the world stood still, as if snubbing him completely, indulging in its own routine of ritual killing. He wanted to break the silence around him- he wanted to scream to overcome the sound of screams inside him. Foolishly helpless- yes that’s what he thought of himself at that moment.

Finally, he had stopped evolving, stopped changing, and stopped enduring. Now he stood still for the world. Answers to his queries never arrived, yet the arrival of death had made him still and stagnant, though he would have preferred being still by getting the answers to his questions. He passed away; confused, baffled and bewildered as never before.