Sho'ah

The night stretched on, silent, like the whisper of death in Cupid's heart. It was oppressive. The kind that hurt. And suddenly like the shattering of a prism, the silence was massacred by a ghastly shrill scream, a scream of demonic quality,horror and one that filled the heart with loathing;it was the scream of a man who had just lost everything. Emanating from the seventh floor window the scream was suddenly cut off, transcending into an almost pandemonium like state of pure misery where even his voice failed him.It was the scream of a man whose wife had just succumbed to the fumes and a man who was watching his children burn. Alive.

Ghastly. The explosion had ripped through the seventh floor apartment instantly killing the servants and snapping his spine. Weaving in and out of consciousness,all he could do was scream as he watched his seven year old daughter, still asleep in her bed, being surrounded by flames. God was merciful. She died in her sleep being spared the horror of watching the flames reach out to her, until it was too late, until she filled in where he had left off, screaming. His son was not so lucky.

The now crippled father had watched his kids burn even as the paramedics rushed in. In the nick of time- for him.They pulled him out of the blazing inferno but the damage had been done. In one tragic blow, his family was gone. His life was dead. He was paralyzed neck below.

He was out for six weeks and he finally came to, screaming. The nightmare had just begun. He questioned god, he questioned the fairness of the world and most of all himself.Silent contemplation for he was almost a vegetable. He lost faith in god, in humanity and in himself. He awaited death like a parched land awaits the first rains..

God is great. He didn't die. It was just him and bitter sweet dreams. Sweet because he saw his family. Bitter because he saw them dead, burning. And Timothy, a boy of six. Six years old meant society at large and education in particular had not ruined him. He still retained that tender humanity, that basic human spirit of comradeship that we all posses but train ourselves to ignore. And this was how the old man, bald now, got a new leash. Old not because the years lay heavy on him, old because god wanted to be funny.

And through Timothy was how Dino barked into his life, a three year old mongrel and a dog who, with that basic animal instinct sensed the infinite sadness of the room and chose to ignore it, the dog who brought life into the room, the dog who connected with the old man. Finally. The dog who rekindled the dead spark in his life. The reason for his first smile in an eternity. It was an animal bond,transcending all human bonds and a bond forged not out of understanding or compatibility,a bond for a bond's sake. An ethereally beautiful connect, god's gift. A beacon of hope on a black night, the only source of light. Two hours that he looked forward to. The lighthouse and it's awkward keeper, they made his days slightly less unbearable.

But the screams wouldn't stop, nightmares of frenzied burning, like the inferno of death in his heart. And one night they stopped. Misery's nemesis; death. Some wounds dig too deep. Some wounds can't be healed. Sometimes time isn't enough. Peace, like death to the immortals. If I didn't know better, I'd say God was being kind.

The Chimera

The sunlight crept deeper into the room lighting up the ghastly sight that was his acid disfigured face, painting a vivid picture on the colorful tapestry that had been his life. The ray crept on, persistent in it's efforts to bring life and warmth into an otherwise moribund room, a tired window into the ruin that people thought had been his life. Born deaf and dumb, he lost his sight in the same accident that had disfigured his face, leaving him scarred, for life. He could not hear. He could not speak. He could not see. He could imagine.

And he'd had a lifetime to do just that, bereft of any contact with the outside world, thanks to his gifts. He was no Hellen Keller in that his imagination took no form recognizable by his fellow humans. Not that they would have or even could have understood if they had seen. Practice makes perfect they say and a lifetime of imagination had meant he had reached a stage where the sheer complexity and beauty of his dreams would overwhelm any that could understand.

He lived in a world of magic and impossibility, immense beauty and wonder. Impossible not because it wasn't possible but because it would never happen. He dreamt of the human race as it should be. Not as it is. A world without hate or prejudice. A world left unmarked by the vicious dreams of conquerors of death. A world without wars. A world without contempt. A world without form for he knew none. Yet, how is it that the dreams of one who didn't know about the sexes, one who didn't recognize god and hence didn't know religion, one who didn't know the difference between good and bad because no one had been able to teach him, and yet inherently knew what made him happy, human instinct, bare human instinct; be the perfect world?

The fantasy of someone with no knowledge, the wisdom of the combined sum of ten thousand years of human consciousness. A universe of colour, the passion of a dead man, yet a universe without form or language, technology or sophistication, death or life.

And just like that, the mirage shattered.The sun set. The ray crept away, futile in its attempts. His dream was lost. His world was dead, but even death couldn't wipe away the frown that he thought had been pleasant, his entire life.