Deep carpeted silence. Deepest void of a moonless night. On a deeply forested mountaintop – an enchanted glow. Tribals in the outlying hamlets seized by deep terror chant trembling invocations to forest spirits.
Months later, when summer melts mountain mists they see, in the stark light of day, the mountaintop has been cleared, plundered of precious sandalwood and teak. The helpless tribals realise it wasn’t any poltergeist lusting for blood it was the even deadlier human lusting for profit.
It’s only a matter of time. This lust will reach their doors, flatten their roofs. The god of greed is the loftiest.
***
Rochelle’s prompt for Friday Fictioneers lent itself to a horror story. I even told my muse ‘it’s horror-story time’. Instead, I got a real-life horror story. Can’t complain, except I’m feeling sad now. 😦
“Where’re we going?” she asks. After picking her from the airport he’s driven into an unknown area. A shiver of fear shoots up her spine. The week spent at the conference had been fear-free. She’d dreaded returning to his violent jealousy.
“You’ll like it…” he says enigmatically.
‘It’ is a dense forest. Some distance in, she steps on leaves. Suddenly, the ground gives way. She free-falls, lands painfully. High above her, he’s now covering the trap opening with leaves. Her phone’s in the car. She smiles. Hidden in her bracelet is a tracking device. She can escape him after all.
***
Had a bit of a struggle with this one. Moody muse. Many thanks to Rochelle who, in contrast, is very prompt with the prompt every week for Friday Fictioneers. 😊
He sings to her tunelessly a popular Hindi song, as he lolls on the crumpled bed. She covers her nakedness, slowly, listlessly, with clothes. Which fails to cover or erase the shrieking shame in her soul.
“………..your petal-soft footsteps bring great fortune,
your touch turns stones into diamonds,
whoever gets you becomes a millionaire……”
Indeed, she thinks, am I not the most popular prostitute in your harem, who brings you the most money, who you kidnapped on my way to school when I was just 12.
***
Human trafficking is such a blot on humanity, it’s a shame it still exists. Each year, internationally, 3.8 million adults are trafficked for forced sexual exploitation, and 1.0 million children are trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation.
Rochelle’s photo prompt for this week’s Friday Fictioneers is so innocent, I don’t know where the heart-breaking story came from. Although the song (the original is romantic in nature) landed first and then the story followed. Been thinking too much about the injustices of human society nowadays ☹
Her throat’s scratchy with thirst. No foolhardy traveller has crossed the forest for many nights. Tonight, the moon’s being eaten. *
A twig breaks underfoot. A soft footfall. A gasp muffled. This moonless night could be her break-the-fast night. Turning into a beautiful woman, she slithers down the tree onto the path of the shadowy figure.
Her eyes sparkle, her skin glows, she places her petal soft hands on his neck. Out of nowhere, a hand appears with a nail. The traveller pierces her forehead with it, drives it into the tree trunk.
People say, she’s still captive in the tree.
***
* In the old days, a lunar eclipse was viewed as such.
** The story is about a yakshi. They are said to be malevolent blood-drinking female spirits. They had the ability to shape-shift. Sorcerers would use their powers of magic to trap these spirits. One of the methods used was to nail them to a tree trunk. Yakshi-lore was mostly prevalent in South India.
*** For more reading – In South Indian popular culture, Yakshis are depicted as bloodthirsty female ghosts who often have had a tragic human past. The actual origins of Yakshis are obscure and antiquated as they predate Vedic times. Aside from the ghoulish characterization, Yakshis were believed to be nature deities signifying trees, rivers, and hills. They were later incorporated into Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism during Vedic times and known to be secondary tutelary/guardian type deities to the Gods and Goddesses of the upper echelons in Hinduism. Their new servitude status is the result of widespread Brahmanization which led to appropriation and assimilation of indigenous culture into the dominant Hinduism fold. Thus began the devolvement of Yakshis, much like the fate of the Valkyries, Fairies, Leprechauns, and Djinns, which were also usurped by dominating religions. The misogynistic and casteist downfall of Yakshis into demonic and evil female spirits was then popularized in Kerala literature starting from Kottarathil Sankunni’s ‘Aithihymala’ to Malayatoor Ramakrishnan’s ‘Yakshi’. Source – https://brownhistory.substack.com/p/tale-of-yakshis-merging-myth-and
At the edge of her mind is a sea, a calm sea, a beguiling sea, a bottomless sea. The sea of oblivion.
She looks down at the pill nestled in the palm of her hand. A brown boat in the beige sand. A boat she’s been longing for months to take to ferry her across dazzling psychedelic waters into the depths of the sea. To lose herself. To find her free of pain self.
The kick is sudden, sharp and incisive. She lurches forward. Her hands instinctively cradle, then caress her bulging stomach. The pill has disappeared down the sink.
Back when I was a kid, I was a star student. Stars for math, manners, drama, dependability, science, smiling-silent-suffering.
Sadly, they didn’t give stars for over-the-top dramatics, gaslighting, raging hysteria…that my mother so well deserved. Add a jumbo star for ‘crushing-a-child’s-spirit’.
A-student, goody-girl, highly-paid me was the prize he won by proposing with a humungous star-shaped diamond ring. I hadn’t learned to say No.
Now, to my plush office I wear long-sleeved blouses and floaty pants. In all weathers. How else can I hide the stripes on my back and legs?
Which is why I hate the stars and stripes.
***
No offense to the people of the USA. I saw the stars and stripes and the story came along. I wasn’t thinking of your flag, in particular. Although, if you’re offended, can I please ask you to take a moment, do some soul-searching and tell me why. I’ve been doing a deep dive into the subject of identity in this increasingly polarised world.
“He was such an incurable bibliophile.” Mum says sadly, as we empty Dad’s library. “’Mary’, he would say excitedly, coming home with numerous tomes in his arms, ‘look at the treasures I found.’”
I go over and hug her. “Have a lie-down Mum, I’ll put these into boxes.” She’s taken losing her husband of 50 years hard.
I pull out several notebooks that were hidden behind the now-exposed bottom row and start reading.
Written in Dad’s beautiful cursive, each one is filled with paeans to undying love, poems of pining, long letters of heartbreak, all addressed to someone called Paula.
***
I like how Wednesday nights are meant for flash-fictioning at the Friday Fictioneers so ably helmed by Rochelle, where we write a story of not more than 100 words based on a photo prompt 🙂
(continuing the whodunit saga of The Prisoner from 2 weeks ago. The preceding parts can be read here Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5)
(100-word flash fiction)
I’m back under the bridge I left 25 years ago.
I watch as 15-year-old me sticks his head out of his sleeping bag, rubbing bewilderment from his eyes. He wriggles out of the bag, looks around, his gaze a searchlight. Even in the dead of night there’s traffic on the bridge, the light from their headlights glinting off the water casting on him a flashing, ghostly light.
His mouth opens in a call. Danny does not answer on that life-altering night of THE DISAPPEARANCE.
Danny surfaces 20 years later, on these same waters, body swollen, a bullet through his head.
There’s a barrier between the two worlds that most people find to be rock-solid but to me is porous. I sieve through it most nights happily time travelling, galaxy travelling, alternate universe travelling, a glowing silver cord anchoring me to my sleeping body.
When I return, everything seems heavy, burdensome. A dense sea of tightly packed molecules. Gravity like manacles. Except when I am drinking in my child’s laughter, the glinting innocence of her eyes, her petal softness.
Until, dreaming while driving I crash into a rock-solid wall.
Now, I yearn, pine to hold my inconsolable child in my arms.
***
Thank you, Rochelle, for hosting yet another round of Friday Fictioneers 🙂
I retch. Bile rises from my empty stomach, burns at my throat like injustice. Shackles arrest my feet in cold finality.
The priest prays, asking for forgiveness for me. I say, God knows I’m innocent.
The doctor says, only the jab will hurt, death will be swift, painless.
The newspaper headlines had been garish, “Inhuman murderer kills wife, lover and two unborn babies.” The CCTV footage-fed jury had sent me to death-row.
I focus on the blank, sterile wall as the needle enters my arm. Swiftly approaching death gifts me this blinding, useless revelation – my supposedly dead twin is alive.
Just Joyfulness 
