Jan 17, 2018 Original Flash Fiction, Original Short Story
The Shadow Who Wouldn’t Be King
(Edited with some additions and subtractions, and corrections – because I wasn’t satisfied)
(Edited with some additions and subtractions, and corrections – because I wasn’t satisfied)
(A Story Response to Laura Packer’s Prompt on Facebook)
©January 17th, 2018
By Vijaya Sundaram
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(Laura‘s prompt: #storyseeds: The king considers her advisor. “But sir—” says the Minister of Pebbles. The king waves him to silence and watches the shadows skitter across the floor.)
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My response:
The shadows have come, unbidden, into her kingdom, and followed the sounds of people’s heartbeats until they’ve found the main one, and are drawn to the royal heart, whose artery reached all its subjects, and pulsed evenly and calmly through the flurry of daily activity.
The Minister of Pebbles is incensed. *His* heart beats more rapidly these days than usual, and visions of love from before have given way to visions of power which have held him in their thrall more than once in his sleeping and waking hours. He has seen the king, a stately man to whom he had sworn allegiance, go from being a man to a woman, and the transformation is shameful to him, for somewhere there is a large knot of love crushed by shame. He still insists on calling her, “Sir,” and the King doesn’t object. Nor does she object to being called the King.
At the moment, she is spellbound by the shadows.
“Look at this one,” she says, laughing, and points.
The Shadow skitter-dancing across the floor stops and looks at her, then turns, and looks at the Minister of Pebbles.
A cold hand steals across his heart, when he sees the face of the Shadow.
“Stop it from looking at me!” he exclaims.
The King, a sudden knowledge growing inside her, says, “Stop looking at him, Shadow.”
The Shadow looks away, and resumes skitter-dancing across the floor, but it seems to be larger, a little less harmless, a little more imposing.
The Minister of Pebbles says, “Sir, I have misgivings about these Shadows. We know not whence they’ve come, and we know not their purpose. If you have the power to bid them begone, please exercise it. The Pebbles await me. If you will excuse me.” And he backs away from the royal presence.
The King watches him thoughtfully, as he strides off after the correct amount of backing away from her royal presence.
The King calls the main Shadow to her, and it approaches.
“Follow the Minister,” she whispers.
The Shadow nods, and calls the others. They skitter away in the direction of the Minister’s departure.
The Minister has gone to the seashore, and is collecting pebbles, as well as ordering others to collect pebbles, because that is his job which the new she-King has bestowed upon him like a dubious honor.
If he collects enough pebbles, he is to be promoted to Minister of Stones, and after that to Minister of Boulders.
The King had had to create this job to keep him busy. Their land lies lower the the rising seas, and she has told him that he has to ensure the safety of their people by building levees all along the seashore. He’s assembled a task force of thousands. He enjoys lording it over them.
The King has known what he’s been planning ever since she ascended the throne, and, using all of her cleverness, she has distracted him from his fell purpose, which is to ascend the throne.
Now, as he collects pebbles, and shouts to his minions to keep up the hard work, he thinks to himself, “All I have to do is to make these men loyal to me. Then, I shall take over the throne.”
The Shadow comes up to him just as he thinks this.
“Drop that thought,” says the Shadow in his mind.
“Who speaks? Get away from me!” shouts the Minister, spinning away wildly from it, his face contorted in dread.
The men around him pause in their work, and stare, horror-struck.
“I cannot. You know I cannot,” whispers the Shadow, “You brought me and the others into existence.”
“I didn’t intend for you to come alive! I just thought of you – how did you emerge into the daylight? Can’t a man have his thoughts?” said the Minister.
“Yes, you did, but in the process, and we do not know how, you created us, and brought us before the King. We have seen the King’s heart, and it is pure. We have seen yours, and it is not. Yes, we are from you, but you have to be wiped out, for you do not toil for your people – you do everything with another motive. We are ashamed to be of your essence. We need to die, and you need to die with us.”
The Minister, drowning in terror, lashes out at the Shadows. He flails at them, yelling incomprehensible words. His workers look at him, thunder-struck. All they can see is a man shouting at Shadows, but they cannot hear anything except the shouts of the Minister of Pebbles.
The shadows shoot out ropes of light, and hold him tight, and march him down the street into the presence of the King.
Seeing them approach, the King says, “Ah, yes! It is as I thought, is it not?”
“Yes,” says the wretched man, hanging his head.
“You intended to assassinate me, and ascend the throne?” she asks coldly, quietly.
“Yes.”
“Why?” she asks. There is no anger in her expression. For she is, above all, curious about men and their motives.
“Because, because …” he splutters, and the King’s Courtiers sit still, waiting.
“Because you changed!”
“Because I went from being a man to a woman?” she asks.
Her heart is heavy. He lowers his head, shakes it, mute.
The King approaches the man. The Shadows, which have been holding him, release him.
“Do you see you couldn’t have done what you desired?” she asks, tenderly.
The Minister is still mute.
The King turns to the Shadows. The resume their skittering, their dancing. She raises her hands, and they stop. The main Shadow goes up to her, and bows. The others follow. Her face is impassive, carved from stone.
The Minister falls to the ground, weeping. Then, rising, he bows. The shadows turn, walk up to him, and lead him away to the shores of the sea. The people of the kingdom do not see him again. They assume he has died. No one grieves him. The King does not mention him again, but her heart is sore.
The years roll by, and she rules over her people with a calm assurance, and they accept her whole-heartedly. No one gives the Minister of Pebbles another thought, because of his treachery.
Sometimes, though, if the night-clouds are just right, and the shadows lengthen when the full moon’s light strikes the land, and if you happen to stand silently between two silver shafts of moonlight, you will see him there, still, collecting pebbles. He pauses in his labours, and falls to the ground in a paroxysm of sorrow and regret. A single Shadow lifts him up, and commands him to keep working.
And behind a large boulder, you will see the King standing still, tears glittering in her eyes.
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Sep 17, 2016 Original Short Story, The Daily Post
Slog
©September 17th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
Jonah stood at the window, and looked out at the harvest moon. Tears glittered in his eyes, and he brushed them away absently.
“Come back,” he whispered into the night. No one answered. A night bird called somewhere. A breeze ruffled his hair, made him look vulnerable and younger than his thirty-three years.
Jonah hadn’t expected to live that long.
Nothing was ever easy for Jonah. He burned with an incandescent rage, and anyone who came close to him shied away from the sheer force of it.
As a young teen in a body crippled by spina bifida, he saw the handsome, strapping teenage boys around him, and wanted to strike out at something, anything to rid himself of the rage and sorrow, and bitterness that ate away at his base of his soul, which was raw like the tip of his spine.
It didn’t matter to him that he was capable of great humor, or talent in art, or eloquent in his use of words. He didn’t see the value in what he had, and craved what he couldn’t have. Looking at the beautiful, nymph-like girls in school made him want to spit. They would never look at him, would they? No, they’d go for tall, blond David, or muscular Jonathan, whose cool gaze made the girls giggle in high school. He didn’t consider his pale, haunted face, with the piercing hazel eyes, the slim cheekbones, the sharp chin, the mop of unruly hair to be attractive.
He would gaze up at the ceiling of his bedroom at night, trying to quench his desire for what he could not have, throttling his urges with contempt and curses.
His mother had grieved when he was born, and grew steadily distant from him as he turned into a mulish and angry teenager. His father, grieving equally, didn’t give up on him. Instead, having read about how marijuana could ease certain kinds of pain, he introduced his son to the joys of dope.
Jonah took to it instantly. Somehow, he passed his eighth grade, scraping by, giving his female teachers the finger and much grief, because they knew he could do so much better than that.
Jonah spent his high school years in a haze of smoke. His glassy gaze alerted his teachers to his drug use, and he was repeatedly called into the main office, and had his locker searched. He was too bright for them. They never saw where he hid his stash.
Time marched on, as it does. Somehow, he passed high school, went to community college, then to art college, and landed a job in a copy shop, all of this in a haze of pain and smoke. Then, he met Nina. Grey-eyed and dark-haired, she combined talent and beauty and was kind to him. Against all expectations they fell in love, and he loved her with a passion that scared both of them, but was exciting for her. Then, his rages began.
And now, the one woman he had ever loved had handed him the ring he’d given her, and told him she would never see him again, and that he didn’t know what it meant to have respect for women. The bruises on her face had stood out starkly in the harsh overhead light right outside the door, while she’d made harsh remarks about his grotesque body with the tears running down her face, slurring her mascara, and making her look garish and racoon-ish. He was tempted to tell her so, to hurt her. Before he could, she turned, and was gone.
Jonah thought she would return. He waited in his dark living room. He called her cell phone. He dragged himself to the window on his crutches. He looked out at the harvest moon from his second floor window. The moon seemed to beckon to him. A river of milk flowed from the sky. Inexplicably, he thought of his mother. “Mom,” he whispered, and wept.
Then, he pulled himself up on the table near the window, and stood on the narrow sill, swaying a little. It wasn’t easy.
He stood, moon-silhouetted against the darkness.
I want to jump, he thought. And waited. Many minutes passed.
After an eternity, he climbed back down, slowly and painfully. Then, he slid to the floor, and passed out, amongst the bottles of beer that were strewn around him.
Rage had seen him through thirty-three years. Perhaps, sadness would see him through the next three decades.
A long slog awaited him. Nothing had ever been easy for Jonah. Nothing would ever be so.
As he dozed in a beer-haze, the moon poured down her milk over him.
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Tags: #DailyPrompt, #LoveandLoss, #OriginalShortStory, #Postaday, #Spina bifida, #TheDailyPost
Sep 8, 2016 Original Flash Fiction, Original Short Story, Uncategorized
Dark-Side Priest
©September 8th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
It was the night of the lunar eclipse, and the earth had come to a stillness that boded no good. All living things had gone into their dens, or lairs, and nothing was abroad. The ocean struggled in vain with the wind, and all humans were within their little caves, sensing Change, but not knowing what it was.
As the eclipse began, a collective cry arose from the cave-dwellers, a cry of alarm and despair. What would they do without the moon?
Then, one man stood up, tall and heavy-browed, his club over his shoulder, and his animal skins hanging down his emaciated shoulder. He strode to the mouth of the large cave, where several of his family and tribe members sat huddled. As they watched him, a muttering arose.
He saw the shadow get larger, and guessed that it would cover the whole moon. Still, he reasoned, if it were a moving shadow, then it would move on, away from the moon. Of course, he had no real words for this, but his logic led him there.
And with that, came an idea.
He needed an animal.
He found one with his unerring spear. He dragged its thrashing body back to the cave. The muttering of his tribe became louder, but also appreciative.
He motioned them to stand back.
He needed a fire.
They had a small one going inside the cave. He strode in with an broken branch, strode out with a glowing stick, and fanned it into flame.
The others watched, pushing and shoving, wondering what he was going to do.
He stood over the fire, placed the carcass of the dead animal, turned it this way and that, and muttered unheard syllables, gazing up at the now-blacked out full moon in the sky.
Then, he paced around the fire, waving his arms one way, then repeating the motion the other way. His face took on an eerie glow, and his voice was harsh.
A delicious smell arose. The animal was cooking well. It smelled tantalizing. His family and others of his tribe felt their mouths watering. Some tried to approach him, but he waved them back with warning shrieks.
After taking some blackened bits of wood and making marks on his face, he began dancing around the fire.
His tribe watched, mouths agape. They were now both befuddled and afraid.
The man looked up, and saw that the shadow on the moon’s surface had been shifting steadily, and that some of the her silver glow was returning. His tribe members noticed this, as well, and their fear and bewilderment turned to awe.
The man stamped out the fire, and picked up the charred animal, and waved it at his people. They roared in approbation.
Then, he put it down, knelt, as if offering it to the moon. A gasp of admiration swept through his people. After this, he tore apart some of the deer’s flesh, and ceremoniously ate his first cooked venison.
Thus, the first Priest of the Tribe was born.
And he always got the best meat.
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Tags: #DailyPrompt, #Eclipse, #OriginalShortStory, #Postaday, #PrehistoricTale, #TheDailyPost
Aug 15, 2016 Original Short Story, The Daily Post
Song-Bird (A Fragment)
©August 12th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
Every day, Kavita sat at her window, and gazed out, waiting.
What she was waiting for, nobody knew – not her mother, not her father, not her sister, or brother, who were twins, and five years older than she was.
Kavita was five years old, and mute. There was a sweetness to her, an air of abstraction, and her family was protective of her. They had already decided not to send her to school, and since they lived in a part of the country where nobody paid much attention to whether children went to school or not, they were safe from the prying reach of a meddlesome school board.
Kavita would hum tunelessly under her breath, and trace little patterns on the wall with her finger while she waited for her father to come home after work. She would hum tunelessly while watching for her elder brother and sister come home from school.
Kavita watched the animals on the street go about the business. Dogs running, barking and defecating, cats strolling with tails high, leaping onto walls and glaring balefully at everyone, cows strolling about, secure in their holiness, but starved just the same, eating whatever little grass they could scrounge up.
Dabbawallahs would sail by on their bicycles, carrying tiffins to schools and offices. An occasional fight would break out on the streets, and people would intervene in the dusty scuffle and flying of fists.
And Kavita would hum.
Her mother watched over her. The humming did not bother her. It was like the music of her days.
Kavita would turn to her mother after the midday meal, and point to the back door of their one-story house. In the back, outside their high back wall, a gutter flowed, filled with stinking sewage water. A few white hens with red eyes and red crests puck-pucked, rooting about the dusty soil inside the yard, bored, but ever ready to eat bugs. A few, straggly tomato and brinjal plants grew there, and a jasmine bush was heavy with flowers. They had a little patch of spinach growing, too. There were chilies and capsicum, too. Her mother had grown up in a village on a small farm, and knew about growing food. This brought relief to their family, because her father worked as a clerk in an office, and brought in just enough to keep his family housed, fed and clothed. Thank goodness, they owned the house, which had belonged to his father and his father’s father before him.
Kavita, pointing, would ask to go out to the back, and there she’d sit under the shade of a dusty mango tree, and watch the chickens and their three goats. Her mother knew she was safe there, because the wall was high, and there was no gate in the back, so she’d let her sit there, while she went about her chores, washing the clothes, hanging them up to dry, sweeping out the house, watering the plants.
No one knew quite what Kavita was thinking. She hummed and hummed, and did not say a word.
Her mother would listen to All-India Radio while she did her chores, and the sound of it soothed her tired spirit, for she was always tired. The constant worry about her youngest child, a worry which she hid from Kavita made her bones che. She’d sing along.
And Kavita hummed along.
Music flowed in her body like a river. She was surrounded by it, she thought in music, she dreamed in music, and loved in music. And she loved her mother for giving her this music that poured out from the magic box, and made her happy.
And unhappy.
For she wanted, more than anything, to sing.
(Perhaps, to be continued)
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Tags: #DailyPrompt, #Obsessed, #OriginalShortStory, #Postaday, #TheDailyPost
Aug 7, 2016 Original Flash Fiction, Original Short Story, The Daily Post
Stubborn
©August 7th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
The five-year old child stomped his feet, and cried. He didn’t want to take his bath. His mother, Rachael, a harassed, overworked nurse, who’d come home from her evening shift just in time for the babysitter to rush out, wanted to get him into his pajamas, and tuck him in bed. She tried to sing to him, reason with him, cajole and coax him. Nothing worked.
Finally, she gave up in exasperation. “Fine, then, let’s just comb your hair, like this. Now, let’s wash your face and ears with a wash cloth like this, scrub your hands, like this, and rinse your feet in the tub. I’ll pour water from this watering can. You can pretend to be a tree. Come on now, Russ, you can do it!”
“I won’t get in,” yelled Russ. Sighing, his mother perched him on the edge of the tub, and rinsed his feet with a jug of water.
While she was helping him into his pajamas in his bedroom, she said, “Why didn’t you want to get in the tub?”
“Because of the monster,” whispered Russ, with his fingers on his lips. The monster doesn’t like me washing in there. The monster gave me a warning twice already. That’s why I wash in the sink. I don’t want my feet inside that tub.”
“What monster, sweetie? There aren’t any monsters here. And besides, you didn’t put your feet in the tub,” said his mother.
Just then, she heard sloshing and stomping sounds coming from the bathroom. For a mad moment, she thought … then, she looked at her son.
His eyes were wide, as he looked at something behind her.
Rachael froze, and something prevented her from looking around.
“I’m sorry I washed in that tub, even if it was only my feet. I promise I won’t do that again,” squeaked Russ to the thing behind her.
“This is your final warning,” bellowed a terrifying voice.
Rachael fainted. When she came to, Russ was asleep in bed, and she was lying in a chair. It was just a horrible nightmare, that’s all, she thought. And Russ is too stubborn for his own good.
She got up to go out of the room, and get to sleep. She was exhausted from a long day at the hospital.
As she went out the door, she thought she heard a sloshing in the vicinity of the bathroom. Her heart thudded.
I will NOT go and investigate, she thought. She turned right around, walked into Russ’s room, locked the door, pushed the dresser against it, and fell back into the rocking chair near his bed.
She lay awake for an hour, and her last thought before she drifted back into an uneasy sleep was, Thank goodness my son’s a stubborn little guy! First thing tomorrow, we’ll leave this god-forsaken place!”
She thought she heard the drain gurgle in the bathroom, and it was music to her ears. Then, she fell asleep, and knew no more.
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Tags: #FlashFiction, #OriginalShortStory, #Stubborn, #TheDailyPost
May 24, 2016 Original Flash Fiction, Original Short Story, The Daily Post
Dream-Song
©May 23rd, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
Out of the dust rose Dream.
And Dream held in her palm a flower of darkness, gathering her raiment of chaos around her body. She stood tall and black, full of stars in her pockets, and full of inchoate longing, for she was all alone, and loneliness wasn’t yet born.
She looked around her, saw no one, and yearned blindly for that which had no name.
A song arose in her, full of hunger for someone to hear her.
And Dream sang a song that wound around all the worlds there were and the worlds to come, her song a whispering thread of shining silver that edged the darkness, to light the way for Someone.
Her song held stories that stirred in many minds, stories of things to be, stories of love and death, and suffering and peace.
One day, her song came whispering into the mind of a man who had no eyes to see with. He spent his days begging on the streets, singing a tuneless song about loss and loneliness. Out of pity, people fed him, and clothed him, but they would have no more to do with him, for they feared his misery and his loneliness, for these clung to him like a shadow.
Into this mind, Dream blew her song, and into his lap, she dropped the flower of darkness, and the man who was lonely now knew he had found someone.
And Dream wound lovingly into his world and brought him the gift of seeing into, and beyond, what was there, so that when the blind man lay down at night on the wretched sidewalk where he spent his days begging, he saw stars and a sky that went all the way into him.
And his song changed.
He sang of the beauty of life, of the beauty of love, of his companion whom no one could see. He sang of stars and sky, of the universe and of friendship. He sang like one possessed, and now the people reviled him, saying, “Surely he must be mad, for he sings of things that he cannot see, nor know nothing of.” And they beat him about the head and shoulders, even as he sang.
He cried out at first, but they didn’t hear, so loud was the clamour around him. He sang louder and louder. They berated him loudly and beat him some more. He sang louder still, with broken and bleeding voice, about mercy.
Now, tired of beating him, the people went away, saying, “He is possessed of the devil. See how he sings about that which he cannot know!” They cautioned children to stay away from him, when some, touched by his song, and moved by his plight, tried to go close and listen.
Nobody fed him any more, for they were afraid of the blind man with his unending song. And now, they felt a darkness closing in on all of them.
Bloody and crazed, the blind man sang in sun and darkness, in rain and wind for seven days and seven nights. Now, his song changed, and he sang of blood and war, and spite and hatred.
Dream watched from afar. And she suffered, because she knew what he was becoming, and why. She had no way to stop him, and her heart was sore. For, she had sung to him, and caused him to sing.
On the seventh night, the man died.
The people of the city caused his body to be thrown far from the city gates for the vultures to feast on. They were afraid, and did not know why.
And Dream watched, with quickening breath.
Suddenly, there was movement beside her. She turned, and caught her breath. For there, in front of her, arrayed in gold and red, bigger than the worlds she saw, stood the blind man whom she had driven mad. With smoky eyes, he smiled at her, and held out his hand. She stepped back.
“You came to me,” he said, and his voice was soft. “You sang to me. I am yours.”
“What do you call yourself?” asked Dream.
“Ah, but surely you know the answer to that!” smiled the Man.
And she did.
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Written in response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt: Dream
Tags: #AllegoricalFiction, #DailyPrompt, #Dream, #OriginalShortStory, #TheDailyPost