He rolled over
and shut the alarm off. The battery on the darn thing was weak, had been weak
for weeks now, it wasn’t really ever going to wake him up – it let off a
pitiful squeak every morning at seven and then fell silent, cowering like a dog
that’s been beat up one too many time. His bones hurt, he had been generous
with the last couple of shots last night, but hey Jim Bean was a good mate and
keeping the last inch in the bottle was bad luck. Barney had told him that,
back in junior year.
Where was Barney
these days, anyway? He remembered a mail from him, about Sara and him finally
getting hitched. But that had been a year ago and they really hadn’t been in
touch since. It was weird. It seems only so long ago, that they had been puking
their guts out side by side after a night of drinking and side-stepping in the
melting pot and now they didn’t know in which city the other guy was. Weird.
He was just
lying there, wasn’t he? Fuck it, he didn’t feel like getting up at all. The sky
was grey outside and the only bloody sliver of light was falling directly on
his eyelids. Damn it, the curtains were useless. He stretched, knocking over
the pile of cloths that had just been washed. Fuck it. It was just Monday, damn
it. He hated himself most days, but this was more. This was like being in a
blender of detritus, sinking into shit even as it slowly choked you.
Looking for a
reason to get up, was he? Well, he had to take a dump and he was hungry as hell.
That bowl of day old insta-noodles was good for an hour and for making your
insides clamp up. So, he got up, sat hunched on the edge of the bed for another
five minutes, absently scratching the old scar on the left knee. Then he went
in and stared at the bathroom mirror, the toothbrush absently foaming in his
mouth. His hair was thinning, a prominent widow’s peak making itself known. The
cheeks were shrunken, with a couple of days of stubble, streaked with gray and
the eyes were dull. He sighed. Was he dying? He wasn’t even thirty. He hadn’t
done anything yet. And well, he didn’t know what he wanted to do. He always
drifted. He had tried studying, he had tried working. He had been drunk and he
had been high. He tried writing and he tried construction. Nothing worked for
him. It was like something was broken in him, something that stopped him from
feeling. And now he was in his seventh job in three years, fielding calls in a
call-center surrounded by giggling children barely out of their teens. He was
called Uncle, behind his back, quietly and sometimes not so quietly. It was a
fucked up job and it was a fucked up life. He sighed again. He was getting
started fucking early today, hmm? He didn’t bother shaving.
The day went
down the shithole pretty much from the start. He’d forgotten his umbrella and
the 411 was late by twenty minutes and then filled with sweaty and wet people, rancid
with yesterday’s hopes and today’s fear. Made him want to put his fingers down
his throat. He’d even tried cycling to work, but after the last near-death
experience which involved a cow and a cat and an Audi and put his arm in a
cast, he’d pretty much resigned himself to a lifetime of nausea and to holding
his breath. A bus it was, then, one that made him wait, even as it took him to
a place he didn’t want to go.
He stopped by
Leo’s after work. The day had been a doozer. That rat Iyer, a glorified
pen-pusher, a sodomizer of little girls and a filthy excuse for a human had
again called him to his cubbyhole of a cabin. The walls were paper thin and the
faggots could probably hear every word as the shithead tore into him for
‘irreverent attitude’ and ‘irresponsible behavior’ – like the bastard would
even know if reverence and responsibility smacked him in the face, repeatedly, wearing an iron glove. So, maybe he had shown
up drunk at work thrice in the past week and maybe he’d called a caller a
‘whiny bitch’ – but that woman had deserved it, too.
As always, Leo’s
was good, silent almost, the people there thought drinking was serious business.
He picked his spot, the solitary chair and the lonely stool that masqueraded as
a table. It was the beginning of the month and George, the busboy who brought
him his Vat and his cheeselets, was attentive as usual. He spent a little
longer than usual, sitting in his chair, staring at the grime colored glass
pane that blinked with the stare of fireflies as cars passed by outside. He
could get drunk here, often had, and then make the stumbling walk, smoking his
Classics, the fifteen minutes and three blocks to chez home.
It was past one
when he walked out, the last one to leave. It was raining now, again, and the
night seemed to have hunkered down, speaking to itself, the way he often caught
himself doing, that it wasn’t planning to change tonight and this was what it
was – silent, sad, long hours, hours without end. He didn’t mind too much, it
was almost as if the world was sharing his mood with him, at harmony for once
and he had learnt to shield his smokes from the rain – it was easy, once you
burnt your fingers a few times.
He took the
longer route home, getting water in his eyes and walking through the narrow
lanes that threaded through the shantytown of the menial class. The mongrels on
the doorsteps gave small, angry barks and then settled back into the cocoon of
shared heat between man and animal. And there it was, a man lying in a puddle
just across the corner in the dark. He stumbled against him in the dark and
then unable to hold his footing in the slippery mud, he fell awkwardly and hard
into the ground. Even as he fell, he could smell the vomit and the cheap booze
and the piss on the other guy. The man moaned and shifted a bit as he fell on
top of him. And then the drunk belched a
stream of fluid on him – well, rum tasted as good going down as coming up
someone had told him once. And something snapped.
He wondered
about that half an hour sometimes, in the moments that he thought about the
past. He could see himself, burning with anger and self-loathing, this mirror
of the man that he was. Could see himself, standing up, looking around dazedly,
and then picking up a fist sized brick from where it was resting, gleaming, wet
from the rain and then getting down on his knees and smashing it down to the
face. There was a soft crunching sound, curious in its normality, and there was
a harsh shuddering answering moan from the man as the blood started pouring
down from the mouth and the nose. And he just couldn’t stop pounding the brick,
pounding it till it broke and the man’s face was unidentifiable. And then he
just stood there, swaying, as he slowly became aware of his surroundings. It
was still raining, gentler now, and there were grunts of faraway trucks on the
highway. His senses were heightened, he could smell the damp in the air, the
lingering traces of fresh vomit and he felt more alive than he’d ever been.
He slept well
that night. And next morning was the brightest one he had seen in a while. And
if the world started to make a little less sense, he knew what he had to do
now.
