The Elusive Writer

Inspired by the elusive Thomas Pynchon, the fictional Ben Narendran and the imaginary Benno von Archimboldi.

 

 Literature is rife with stories about writers and their various quirks and eccentricities. Hemmingway never talked about writing fearing he would jinx his ability, Joyce wrote with crayons and so on. Some are true which reflect the peculiar nature of genius while most are nonsense cooked up by admirers during cocktail parties. There is a particular story though, one so stark from the rest that it represents the essence of literature. That is the tale of the elusive writer. The writer we don’t know anything about. He only talks through his works, save them he is nothing. This complete shunning of fame is commendable as it prevents the writer from becoming ‘an institution’ as Sartre feared. But no one has taken the idea of anonymity to the extreme like Francis Drake.

 His first work came 20 years ago, a tame novel called ‘Mad Cows’. Mad Cows wasn’t a great success. It turned a few heads, but gave no glimpse of the impact Francis Drake will have on literature on the years to come. In retrospect, Mad Cows for him was a sparring arena where he sharpened his skills in novel writing, a whet stone where he rubbed out the rust on his craft as he prepared himself for the one book all great writers must write, the book that was to define him, the book that will be him in all ways a book can be a man. It came out 4 years later, called ‘Dead Gods’. It was no sprawling epic but a small 300 page work battling with the definitions of God and the effects of that on the life of man. Dead Gods shook up literary circles like no other, reviews heralded it as the novel of the generation (actual reviews, not the atrocities they quote behind paperbacks and dust jackets). More importantly Dead Gods grounded literature, it threw a heavy anchor over the edge of contemporary literature which was rising higher and away from things that mattered. It was as if, Francis Drake, through Dead Gods was shouting. ‘This my friends, this is what matters! Fuck the rest! Fuck the inconsequential shit. Burn them in your fireplaces on chilly winter nights, tear out their pages to wipe your shit. Because none of it matters, not even one bit!’

  

As Francis Drake’s stock grew, so did the mystery surrounding him. Nobody knew him, no one had a number, and no one had an address. The publisher had never seen him in person (so they say), prizes were always collected by lawyers authorized by him, prize money always ended up in numbered accounts in Geneva. Other novels came out after Dead Gods, hitting the stands in a quasi-regular frequency of one every 3-4 years. They weren’t as good as his magnum opus, but they were still a lot better than what his contemporaries were writing, and they cemented his position as a magnificent dark obelisk in the literary universe.

But his admirers (me included) were living on the edge. Who was he? How old was he? How many more years of writing can we expect from him? There were a thousand questions about him that needed answers. Once in a while he would write a newspaper column, a book review, do a cameo on a TV show as a voice without a face, giving glimpses of himself outside the bold letters on the cover of his novels. He teased us with his anonymity, like a ghost in a haunted house, making the floorboards creak, rocking the chandelier, whistling in the darkness and then going back into silence only to reappear after a nervous wait.

Then I met Francis Drake.

I was given the difficult task of writing a feature on him by my editor. Even though I wasn’t expected to catch hold of the man himself (Better journalists have tried and failed he said), I took it upon myself to track him down and do an interview. My search started with great enthusiasm, weeks wore on, clues and tips led to dead ends, I grew wary and my search looked destined to end as a fruitless embarrassment. Then I got another tip that Francis Drake (hopefully) goes every week to a small café downtown to write. I wasn’t very hopeful but still went to the café and talked to the waitress who was on duty. She confirmed that a gentleman comes there to write every week for a couple of hours. My hopes where up once more, what if… I gave her a 10$ bill and asked her to call me the next time he came. I told her specifically to call me only after he was done with his writing. The last thing I wanted to do was to irritate him by interrupting his writing schedule.

A few days later I got her call. When I got to the café he was the only person there, neatly arranging his papers and checking what he had written. I sat down opposite to him. He was a black man in his late 40s completely different from how I had imagined him. He kept on doing what he was doing ignoring me or perhaps so blissfully immersed in his own work that he failed to notice me. There was a great vastness separating us, wider than the table in between. I attempted to cross it with a question. 

‘Are you Francis Drake?’ my lack of tact surprised me. I had planned to talk to him as if all of this was serendipity and to ask the question later. But on seeing the man himself I lost all composure. I felt like a teenage girl at a Beatles concert, hell I would have even pulled his tee shirt.

 He looked up and smiled ‘Yes, yes I am’

I was completely thrown off my guard. On my way to the café I had simulated in my mind numerous possibilities our conversation could take after the question, and all of them involved me coercing him to reveal his identity. Even if he was Francis Drake, I didn’t expect him to concede it so easily. But now, like a naughty wavefunction, he had collapsed on the most unexpected possibility imaginable. I could only muster some obvious words in response.

‘I have a lot of things to ask you’

‘So many people want to ask me a lot of things’ he said.

He then slid his stack of papers into his satchel, flung it over his shoulder and got up to leave. I rose to my feet as if in a dream ‘But I was not done’ I said.

‘I know, I know, but I don’t have time. The van driver is going to be pissed’ he said

  I followed him out and he didn’t seem to mind. My aim was to find out where he lived. He then turned a street corner and there was parked a white van. He opened the back door and got inside. As I got close to van and saw what was written on it I realized that once again nothing was going as planned, ‘St Mark’s Hospital for the Mentally Deranged’ it said. But it also made me excited in a certain way. The great Francis Drake, a mad genius! What a story that would be! I could see it in my mind, Drake in his green hospital robes, sitting in his room, white tiles on the floor and on the walls, the whole room smelling like medicines and denatured alcohol, and there he was writing his great works with a felt-tip pen, not a normal pen as he stabbed a nurse with it once, gouged out her eye balls and stuck it in her ears… There he was writing, writing…

The engine of the van was trying hard to cough itself to a start. I banged on its body and shouted to stop. I reached the front and asked the driver ‘How long has he been in there?’

‘Who?’

‘Francis Drake of course’

‘Who!?’ the driver seemed more confused. It occurred to me that the writer might not have heard about Francis Drake as he didn’t look the kind of person who would read serious literature. So I proceeded to educate him on Francis Drake.

‘The man you have inside is the greatest writer of the century. His stature in literature eclipses…’ I realized that I have no way to express the greatness of Drake without running into generalities, so I resorted to a rather crude measure to quantify his importance ‘He could win the Nobel Prize this year’

‘You don’t say!’ the driver exclaimed.

He got out of the van and opened the back door. Inside Francis Drake was staring at the ceiling, lost in thought.

‘This guy says you are some writer called Francis Drake’ the driver shouted.

He turned towards us with blank eyes, his face was expressionless. ‘Yes I write by that name. Have published a few novels’

‘Looks like you are right’, the driver said to me. He then shouted into the dim interior of the van like a lumberjack ‘This guy says you are James Joyce’

‘Yeah, I write by that name too. Mostly unreadable rubbish’ he replied

‘He says you are Salman Rushdie’ the driver shouted again, now laughing heartily.

‘Shh.. Keep it down. I pissed off some guys in Iran with my works. Now they are out to get me for it’

The driver turned to me, his eyes red and teary from laughter. ‘Anyone else you need to find? He works for politicians too.’

I could only shake my head.

‘He is a pretty harmless guy. We bring him out here once a week for some fresh air. He has never tried to run away’ he said. I couldn’t muster a single word. He patted me on the back, got into the van and drove away.

‘Thanks for bailing me out there Joe’

‘Don’t mention it Francis’

‘Say, have you read Joyce and Rushdie by any chance?’

‘Yeah, ambulance drivers in mental hospitals get a lot of free time’ 

AJ

                                    

 

The Homophobic Boogeyman

‘I keep seeing it…. Everywhere now’

Dr. Chakrapali leaned back in his chair and scribbled something on his notebook before looking at the man lying on the couch in front of him. The man’s right arm was over his eyes and he noticed the bulging muscles on his forearms. Neven was a perfect specimen of the male of the human species and Dr. Chakrapali imagined what he would look like naked. His mind drew a picture that was entirely pleasing to him.

“Is it here now?’ Dr. Chakrapali asked.

Neven removed his hand and looked around the well lit and tastefully decorated room.

‘No.’

‘So this thing doesn’t appear everywhere then.’

‘But most of the time the thing is there doctor.’ said Neven putting his hand over his eyes again. ‘Most of the time…’

‘Did you see him yesterday night?’

‘Yes.’ He gulped. ‘Martin and I headed to his home from a party that one of our friends had thrown. We were pretty drunk and we had a fun time. We started kissing and climbed on to his bed. I was taking his shirt off and he was kissing my neck when I saw it again, standing by the closet door.’
‘So what did you do?’ asked Chakrapali. He realized he had an erection and crossed his legs in an effort to hide it. In his mind he was kissing Neven.

‘I was not as frightened as I was before. Like I said this has turned into a regular occurrence. But it did put a damper on the night. I pushed Martin away and he knew almost immediately what it was.’ Neven turned to look at the doctor. ‘He turned on the lights and went to where I said I saw it. Martin was standing right there, right next to it yet he didn’t see or feel it. He tried to reassure me that there was nothing there. But I could still see it doctor… I could still see the Boogeyman.’

‘Hm…’ Dr. Chakrapali shifted in his seat trying to adopt a more comfortable pose to alleviate the throbbing in his pants.

‘What do I do doctor? Please..... I can’t live like this anymore.’ Neven’s voice was choked. He was close to tears.'

‘Like I told you before Neven, you are sick. Your homosexuality is a mental disease. The hallucinations are merely a symtom of this underlying disease. It can be cured.’ He leaned forward taking care to place his pad on his lap to conveniently cover his throbbing erection. ‘Listen to me and check into the Betheslam Institute. You will be fine in no time. I can refer you even; my very close friend works there. In fact I will oversee your treatment personally whenever I am free here. Though it is totally unnecessary, Dr. Szchteck is a brilliant man. He has cured homosexuality cases time and again.’

Neven sits up on the couch with his gaze fixed on the floor.

‘I don’t believe I am sick doctor. I don’t believe it. I’ve always been gay, it can’t be a disease..’
‘That’s what every sick person afflicted with this barbarous disease thinks. Take some time and think about this. I strongly suggest you go Neven.'

Dr. Chakraplai knows that Neven will leave now. He is anxious for him to leave. He is thinking about the porn he has hidden deep down in his computer’s drive. He can see himself sitting in front of it and easily imagining that the two men having sex on the video is him and Neven. It is in fact too easy to imagine.



‘You have got to stop seeing that guy. You aren’t sick. You are just gay.’

The flickering of the TV, the only source of light in the dimly lit room, highlighted his pale face and bloodshot eyes as he sat on the couch with the phone pressed against his ears. Opened and unopened bottles of beer littered the table with a bowl full of popcorn as the headpiece. The random shouting’s of a game show host permeated the room.

‘Still…. Martin, I think I may just check myself in…’

‘Neven! Will you just listen to me! You don’t have a disease! You are not crazy!’

The couch creaked as someone else sat down on it. Neven turned to the side and saw the Boogeyman sitting on the other side. His pale bluish skin seemed bluer under the flickering of the TV. He was dressed as usual in a black coat all buttoned up. On his head sat a black top hat covering his shaggy black shoulder length hair.

He was watching the TV so Neven couldn’t see his face but he knew what he would see if it turned to look at him. A dry cracked face with that bluish skin stretched over where his mouth should be, a red pupil in an eye that was darker than the night. Neven found the absence of the mouth the most disturbing facet. It always sent a shiver down his spine.

He rubbed his eyes and turned back to the TV. The game show was gone and there were only grains where it was.

‘Listen Martin…. I know but… you don’t know what its like’ he hung up without waiting for a reply.
From the corner of his eyes he saw the Boogeyman reach for an unopened bottle of beer. The skin on his index finger had peeled off showing black flesh underneath; decayed and defiled to the point where even the worms avoided it.

He hears a tearing sound and looks to see the Boogeyman’s skin ripping apart where his mouth should be. He can see the jaws opening inside the mouth, the muscles pushing it open wider so the skin can tear itself and reveal that gaping maw. The Boogeyman tips the bottle and drinks for a while, then turns and looks at him.

He sees blood red gums and darkness where his teeth should be. A darkness as rich as the void. The Boogeyman is grinning. The air is suddenly penetrated by the sounds of people moaning. It is coming from the TV and even before he turns he knows that those are moans of pleasure.

The grains are gone. Instead there is a video of two good looking men having sex with each other. Their faces are contorted in pleasure, ecstasy rules over them.

‘Disease.’ the Boogeyman whispers.

‘Disease.’

His lips aren’t even moving.

The scenes in the TV change. Now it’s a man and a woman having sex. She rocks back and forth crying in pleasure.

‘Healthy.’ again that damned whisper. ‘Healthy.’

The scene switches back to the two men but this time the sound that comes from the TV is not their moans of pleasure but the Boogeyman’s whisper.

‘Disease. Disease. Disease. Disease. Disease. Disease. Disease. Disease. Disease. Disease. Disease. Disease.’

Neven starts to cry holding his head in his hands.



Dr. Chakraplai was wrong about one thing. It wasn’t curable. What he had was chronic and he had to carry it with him for the rest of his life. There was no cure for what he had.

He had cut all contacts with Martin the day he checked himself into the institution. He didn’t know whether Martin had come looking for him and now healthy as he was he didn’t care. He was going out into the world to lead a normal healthy life. Emphasis on healthy.

He had learned to control the urges he felt which were of course brought on by his chronic disease. There were ways to not let it ruin his normal healthy life. The doctors had given him a flash drive full of what they referred to as ‘Video Symptom Alleviators’ to store in the deep dark corners of his personnel computer. They were his medicine to control the urges.

He was free, he would lead a healthy life. His face was somber, his mind was shattered and his mouth was sealed.

He stood at the nearest bus station after being discharged from the institution to take the very next bus back to his home and to his normal healthy life. The bystanders didn’t spare him a second glance.
‘Why should they? But still I can’t believe they can’t see it’ he muses.

In the shiny metallic surface of the shelter under which he stood he can see his distorted reflected image. What he sees isn’t the Neven he is used to seeing. What he is seeing is his pale blue skin, his cracked face and his blacker than night eyes with the red pupils. What he sees is a man in a black coat and top hat.

That was him all right. This was how he looked cured. He was always supposed to look like this.

How wrong he was. Boogeyman? Nope. Neven, good old Neven.

He smiled tearing his skin and showing black teeth.

The bus came and he got in.

-Rohith

The Conference

The first conference on the encouragement of procreation in humanity was accredited as a milestone in human history as it managed to get together both the scientists and the ecclesiastical of the church, including the Pope, under one wing. The aim of the conference, attended only by the major policy makers of the countries which had the biggest nuclear weapon cache, was of course the encouragement of human procreation as was depicted in bold red paint in all the banners and flags hung around the venue and the pamphlets handed out among the street which asked people to engage in procreation more.

The act of procreation was being practiced less and less by the people of the world as it was a tedious, time consuming and moreover painful process that was more of an irritation and inconvenience than anything else. The orgasm produced at the time of ejaculation or at the time of culmination of the sexual act made one writhe around in excruciating pain. And this on top of the fact that successful insemination led to the birth of tiny little things that required one’s constant attention and ruined one’s sleep with incessant bawling for some reason or the other instead of saying what they needed out loud in a languages that could be understood by every other human being led the well educated and practical people of the day and age to abhor the sexual practice. For all they cared it didn’t matter if the human race became extinct.

The church, always pro sex, was currently experiencing a huge decline in attendance and recruitment numbers. People were attending church less and less and even less people were donning the cassock. All men and women donning the cassock where required to have intercourse and have at least a minimum of 5 children. This according to the church and the sacred book of God was the duty of everyone who believed in God and it was clearly marked so in Lolitus 15:9 “Thou shalt have carnal relations aplenty and populate the world with more children as it the wish of thy Lord and the ultimate sacrifice that one can make him.

The scientific community was baffled as well when they realized that if the trend kept up of people refusing to have sex then the human kind will cease to exist and for them it was a horrendous result. They still had the many mysteries of the universe to unlock. They adopted a policy similar to the churches forcing all scientists to procreate and make at least 3 or more progeny so that the there will always be someone to carry the torch. But of course they quickly found that statistically the most brilliant of minds always came from progeny of non scientists. So the rapid decline in sex among the common individual was a cause of concern for them as well.

The policy makers to their credit tried everything they could to increase the act of procreation among the public. From advertisements aimed at inducing procreation to free marijuana and morphine during procreation to reduce the pain that was generated. But alas to no avail.

And that is finally what led to the conference on the encouragement of procreation. After everyone had gathered and sat down, the shouting of banalities and mild violent assault began among the church and the scientists. The organizers had already reserved time for this eventuality. The hatred among the scientists and the church was common knowledge. Until a hundred years ago, the church had set fire to scientists aplenty and even though it was banned now, still lobbied the government to bring it back stating that the sheer entertainment potential would drastically improve the countries morale and revenue.

The confrontation lasted longer than expected and started to get ugly. The scientists accusation that the so called God of the church had apparently been an absent minded and idiotic creator to have made the process of procreation a painful one by switching 2 simple nerve structures in the brain didn’t go over well.  The pope, Jacqueline XVII, immediately condemned the scientific community as devil worshippers for trying to disprove God and for having found evidence that God like humans could make mistakes. This she said was the reason for the obvious decline in the acts of procreation recorded worldwide.

As the accusation began to fly and fist were raised with the Pope landing a flying kick to chief scientist’s jaw while the moderators and policy makers looked on making bets on whether the pope would be able to able to get another kick on the chief scientist, there was a sudden flash of light and a cherubic presence of non evident gender appeared before them.

“I Michael” said the angel “come here under the orders of our great father..”

His sonorous booming voice was cut short as the entire religious side of the table erupted in jubilant shouts. The Pope threw the Mitre in the air and danced the robot as the scientists looked on dejectedly at the apparition. The cardinals convulsed in laughter as they pointed at their scientific counterparts while they hung their head low. The chief scientist even tried to slip away under all the jubilant ruckus but realizing that the door was locked made it back to his seat saying he was looking for the bathroom.

Michael the Angel, good humouredly allowed the celebration to on. After everything had subsided and the Pope got the Mitre back on her head, he stuck his tongue out at the scientist mockingly before continuing.

“The father wishes that any and all measures be adopted to ensure that the procreation of the human species continues. He considers the willingness of any human to practice sexual intercourse as a sign of great devotion and that that man or woman shall be immediately accepted to heaven on his or her natural death. He says it is the Anti-Christina’s deepest desire to ensure that man and woman does not have sex with each other and the pain of orgasm is his way of deterring God’s greatest creations from living and proliferating all throughout the world until all other species, which are the direct mischief of the Condomos, the fallen one, is obliterated. Set out people of God and spread this message far and wide.”

After the above mentioned discourse the halo around him brightened incredibly and the scientists already blinded by their hands with which they covered their eyes to not see what went against their belief rushed out. The Pope of course stayed back and took a selfie with the angel and posted it on twitter with the hash tags ‘#angel’ ‘#godwantsyoutofuck’ and ‘#christiancelebrity’.

The scientists outside, after huddling up around the chief, got their confidence back and started berating the cardinals who came out with their logic.

‘The entire thing was a shared hallucination.’

‘It was probably a dream state induced in our brain by the heat of the room’

‘Our brain was probably looking for a way out of the problem and made up the image to soothe our conscious minds’

‘Human mind is truly incredible and you guys are shit!’

The row was reaching its summit and the Pope who was still engaged in small talk with Michael the Angel over how his predecessors were doing up there turned towards the door hearing the shouts of the disgruntled cardinals outside. The pope was about to rush out when Michael stopped her.

‘Listen I gotta run. But you gotta solve this problem some way or the other. It’s too much of a nuisance. And to let you in on a secret, God did screw up. If anyone asks, you didn’t hear it from me. What with all the rush during the creation of the world and all, he accidently switched the pain and pleasure centers of the brain when it came to orgasms. But hey he’s the head honcho and he’s testy. If this doesn’t sort itself out he is gonna put the blame on either me or you and fire us. Even then he may not get away scot free and the board may end up firing him and replacing him with some other God like the old Egyptian ones or the Greek Gods. And let me tell you, you don’t want that. They require sacrifices and stuff, bloody mess really.’

‘Don’t worry I’ll take care of it. I have already uploaded the video of your message to Youtube. It just got a 100,000 hits.’ Said the pope giving Michael a wink.

‘Thank God…. Phew… I really like this job you know. The company wings are way too good. Fast transport, luxury… the whole thing. Well then see you upstairs when your successor kills you or something…. Toodleeoo’

And with that Michael vanished in a flash of light.


-Rohith

The First, Last and Greatest Work of Sabastin Dolmce

Only later did he come to know of the period of his incarceration, and that to by pure chance. Rifling through the basement of the The Grand Tomorrow he came up on some papers dated nearly 200 years back. Rotted, invaded by termites and dampness they were only hanging together feebly. And it was in one of these papers during a cursory glance that he came upon a faded photograph that resembled his image in the mirror. In a forgotten language there followed a whole article underneath. Time had done what Ipthakir had not and had taken away the last evidences of his infamy and he let it be. He wasn’t anxious to scratch at healed wounds.

His new life can be said to have begun on the day that the sea won the battle over the walls of his cell in the Ipthakir penitentiary. The darkness that prevailed in that room for over 200 hundred years was cut through by the rays of the sun that fell into it. Mikel Honbrot though did not realize this. He had only been conceived at that instant; he still had to become conscious and self aware. In the absolute solitude of the cell he had forgotten his own existence. And so he lay there oblivious to the crash of the sea from an outside that he didn’t even know existed with the sunlight slowly falling on his pallid emancipated body. The sea, relentless in its forward march, continued its push on to the land and ventured farther and farther into the cell. And finally one day a huge wave rolled in up to his feet, soaking it in that bluish frothy permeability for the first time in 200 years. The waves slowly washed over his body embracing him in its wetness and in a stupendous thundery afternoon with all the noises and yells and screams of labor, it dragged him out of the womb and set him awash in itself.

He floated like that for days on end oblivious to everything. Born but unable to do anything for himself. He watched the fishes floating in the sea, the life teeming beneath him and he still could not bring himself to believe in his existence. But then one fine day the sharks that prowled the depths swarmed about him, sniffing and poking and prodding. And finally one of them came and took a bite out of him and then suddenly in the blinding presence of pain, he understood that he existed. His existence was affirmed by the existence of the sharks that viewed him as their prey. The next shark that came close to him- he peed on its face; sending it running scared, pained and with the salt of a hundred seas in it eyes. The other sharks withdrew from the horrendous apparition of the man who squirted poison deciding to find more lucrative prey.

Mikel Honbrot meanwhile started to swim. He didn’t know his name or anything about him. All he knew was that he existed. But when he opened his mouth some crude words came out of him and he recognized them to be some form of language. With the aid of this sounds he knew that he could find his way in the world and thus started to swim towards an unseen land on that heaving breast of eternal life.

He walked on to the shore naked, to the amazement of Derrick Longhill and his family who were sunbathing on the beach. He walked by them without a second glance and headed straight to town. There he sat down on the sidewalk and decided to beg.

Ocindia Juarez taking pity on the despondent state of the man gave him her husband’s dresses which had lain unused in the bottom drawer of the Persian chest ever since he had gone off to fight for Pedro Garcia and had decided to settle in the island city of Sevonu. She had decided to rid of his memories by ridding of his dresses so that in the twilight of her life she could take part in all the revelries that were denied to her by the adolescent infatuation which had spelled disaster for her in the form of Frederico Juarez and the 15 children she begot him.

With just the clothes that he had on his back Mikel decided to move on and find somewhere that he could rest and enjoy his new life. A steady job is what he desired, something that brought forth no memories and something so simple yet so restricting that he couldn’t have moments for idle thought which as Octavia Juarez had told him before he left town as a last piece of advice where the abode of the raccoons that eat health and shit diseases.

Along his travel to find a home he came upon a fork in the road. A weathered sign on the side said that the right path led to the town of Jose Enrique. He felt a shiver run through his back. Somehow the name of the city engendered in him a deep and dark foreboding. If he had taken that route he would have found out all that he ever was but in the end he would have ended up back on this same fork in the road, in the same condition as he was in now. He turned his back on that accursed place forever and walked along the path to the left and his wanderings finally led him to the city of Quetzcal.

The city of revolutionaries, conservatives, scientists and philosophers welcomed him with open arms. In the fumes and the heady beat of the city he felt in himself a craving for philosophical diversions and yearnings for words strung together with invisible threads set from the yarns of an unknown melody. And so he settled down in Quetzcal as a bartender in The Grand Tomorrow. This meeting place of the intellectual, revolutionary and conservative elites of the city nurtured him and made him forget his beginnings. It was here that he heard of the endless revolution and the endless reprisals of it. Of the meek surrender of the state to its own in contrivable cruelties. Of a civilization that rose above the ashes of another one as the world itself was evaporating bit by bit.

He met the greatest and most respected men of Quetzcal which included the ignoble Marcel Pitt;the colonel of the revolutionary party who had survived 8 bullet wounds, 2 of which had went through his head, because of the simple fact that his head was filled with clay;the reporters of the yesterday who were the only people in all of Quetzcal that knew the ancient languages of the bygone era; the scientist Jin Hin Jingua who was obsessed with the creation of a door that need not be opened to enter a room; the philosopher Fernando Musliera with whom Mikel now under his chosen name of Alejandro Yepachin had  a heated argument one day when Fernando stated that the land was slowly being eroded by the air when in fact, as Alejandro advocated so vehemently, all the erosion was done by the sea.

It was among this motley group of men that Alejandro finally came into contact with Sabastin Dolmce. Dolmce was an uproarious and self-taught scientist who with the same vehemence with which he searched for the next big scientific discovery was also looking for the next big bar brawl. His heart was a fickle one and after just one drink he would renounce his own father as a bastard that couldn’t get his stick up even if the Queen of Amoria danced the samba in front of him naked. But even in his fickleness Dolmce showed a rare lucidity at times and it was in one of his drunken diatribes that the esteemed scientist Jin Hin Jingua finally unlocked the secret for the door that need not be opened. So many men gathered around Dolmce whenever he came to the bar to have a good laugh as well as to listen closely to his ramblings as there were pearls hidden in all the muck of the oyster flesh. They would buy him drinks which sometimes back fired tremendously on the generous sponsor especially once when he called the Chief Inspector of Police who had bought him a drink a hooker worse than the whore of Babylon and told him the only reason he always stayed ram rod straight was because he couldn’t bend over after the president had raped his ass with the flag pole.

Some days, after having his usual drink, Dolmce would start his diatribe and make Alejandro his prey. He barraged him with a lot of consequential and inconsequential ideas, and the words never seemed to choke in his throat. They were like a gigantic bout of diarrhea that wearied the neighbor rather the one who was contracted.

And it was among one of these diatribes or barrages upon the patience of Alejandro that Dolmce denounced Einstein. He had of course started the day by praising the man who he considered, which he repeated again and again, as the father of modern physics. The man was a genius and rightful of being placed ona throne and worshipped by every man who ever decided to pick up the torch which was in fact handed down by him. But as he piled drink upon drink into his supremely arrogant liver which believed in its immortality along with him, the diarrhea of words went from praise to blasphemy. He ended the night by holding Alejandro close and shouting in to his ears that Einstein was a fool and imbecile for ever having thought the blunders he did and should not only be forgotten but his honor besmirched by the lowliest of accusations.

After this particular night, the mere mention of Dolmce was taken by the scientific community in contempt and he was frowned upon and avoided whenever possible. Dolmce never had any shortage of benefactors though and there would always be someone ready to buy him a drink or two in The Grand Tomorrow. Dolmce continued to inhabit the bar as usual but as the days wore by Alejandro saw less and less of him. He noticed that Dolmce was absent more than he was present and that even when he appeared he managed to go home not drunk or without having taken a single drink at all. Soon the people that shared the mass abode of alcohol lost interest in Dolmce as their pastime of the torrent of a blubbering fool, was denied to them.

But one day, about a year after his final drunken debauchery, he burst into The Grand Tomorrow as if he had never been away. He started a drunken bout and was even generous enough to buy everyone assembled a drink. A toast was raised then to the return of the singular man, hailed as a blubbering fool by many, to raucous cheer. After which he called Alejandro over and told him over the ruckus that the man he was looking at was going to change the world. That Dolmce would be hailed as the best of the best soon enough.

But as fate would have it, that night ended disastrously. Because of his abstinence from liquor for so long he got rowdier than usual and ran out on to the street and climbed on top of a tree and started shouting out revolutionary propaganda. He managed to incite everyone, who had gathered under the tree to watch the deranged spectacle of a drunken man’s boisterousness and his equally shaky wisdom, into a kind of mass hysteria. The police was quick to respond, and their response was as expected. Raising guns and bombs against flesh and bones they quickly managed to reduce the riot to a panic stricken marathon of people who were trying to remember the vestiges of their life before they had been incited by the tumorous wisdom of Dolmce. In that panicked fleeing, Dolmce was shot 5 times. Twice in the stomach, once in the back, once in his neck and another in his right leg. The sixth and final shot that was intended to have come off a soldier’s rifle which was aimed at his head was stopped by the Chief of Police who recognized Dolmce and managed to get him dragged out of the mob and sent to his home.

There the doctors who treated Dolmce managed to pull out 4 of the bullets that had entered him but were unable to find out the one that had entered through his back after much poking and probing. Finally in their consternation they accredited the missing bullet to the fact that Dolmce was spineless which was made as a passing comment by his single servant Priyo, who cleaned his house once a week. The spine, which should have stopped the bullet, being absent, they announced that the bullet could be anywhere within the body and thus could not be found.

Dolmce lay thus, confined to his bed, trying to breathe his last day after day but finding that each of the breathes he was counting even in is sleep where not is last. He marked off 846720 breathes before deciding that within the day he would be dead and he requested Alejandro be brought to his bedside before his death.

Alejandro to respect the wishes of a dying man appeared at his bedside as soon as he could. Dolmce didn’t look any worse off than he had been yesterday but he was convinced that the time of his demise was near. He asked Alejandro to open his bedside drawer and take out the papers that contained his life’s work.

‘Alejandro’ he said. ‘That work is the greatest thing I ever did in my life. I think I was only able to stay alive this long so that I may pass it off to you. I dare not give it to any other as they may strike out my name and publish it in theirs to garner all the fame. But you I am sure will never do that. Remember what I told you on that day long ago about how Einstein was an idiot. I couldn’t get it out of my mind. So I set to work to prove this and I have proved it. That is my life’s work. Publish it after I die so that the whole world knows that a great man has departed them forever.’

Alejandro nodded his ascent at what he thought were a dying man’s final delusions and got up to get going when Dolmce suddenly grabbed his hand.

‘Remember to publish it Alejandro.’ He said hoarsely. ‘Else I will haunt you till the end of days.’

Alejandro retired with the papers to his house where he set upon the task of trying to make a cursory run through delirium as he believed it. But when the bells rang and the messenger boy came to his house to inform him that Dolmce had passed away, he found the delirium saner than he could have ever imagined.

In alengthy introduction to a mathematical paper on his idea, Dolmce had propounded that the universe was infinite. If it were just this, the paper would have no merit as it had been postulated a hundred times over. But what made this paper different was the fact that he had set out to prove this by proving that light, that phenomenon that was said to be the speed limit of the universe by Einstein, was infact a variable.

The theory of the expansion of the universe was something taken for granted, but Dolmce asked why everyone turned a blind eye towards one of the natural consequences of such an idea. If universe was constantly expanding, then light which travelled through the universe was also expanding as well as it was an integral part of the universe as such. This of course would mean that the expanding light is travelling more distances than before. In an expanding universe the light was by nature of its extensions covering more distances that it should if it had a finite speed. So therefore the speed of light must be a variable. In effect the speed of light was constantly increasing. He surmised that we could live in an infinite universe and be unaware of it because light would also attain a speed that would make the infinite appear as finite. He then set out to prove it mathematically and seems to have arrived at the same conclusion which he had postulated. But Alejandro who wasn’t a mathematical expert could not say how correct his calculations where but the mere hypothesis frightened him.

His philosophical mind took the ramifications of the hypotheses to its extreme. His mind conjured up infinities that appeared finite. And what pained him most was the haphazard and fleeting memories of the Ipthakir. If the cell in which he had stayed was infinite how was it be possible that he had ever escaped it? He could still be ina part of the infinite cell and being infinite himself he could not fathom it. The philosophical implications boggled his mind and as thoughts of Ipthakir crowded around on him he felt like he couldn’t breathe and things he had locked away in his mind forever started coming to the surface. Old wounds were being scratched at. The feeling of non-existence began to overpower him again and he couldn’t bear it. He stood up and lit a fire with the sole aim of getting rid of the apocryphal document.

From nowhere a wispy figure appeared by his side and it’s boomed around in the room.

‘NO ALEJANDRO! DON’T! If you do that I will haunt you till eternity’s end. I will drive you mad. I will make your life a living hell.’

Alejandro looked at the ghost of Sabastin Dolmce under the steady flickering light of the fire and whispered.

‘Some infernos are worse than others.’

He tossed the papers into the flames and watched them burn.

-Rohith