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- Story Listed as: Fiction For Adults
- Theme: Drama / Human Interest
- Subject: Life Changing Decisions/Events
- Published: 08/14/2015
I'm sitting in my room reading Book 1 of 1Q84 by Murakami while the maid cooks Roast Chicken in the nearby kitchen, which really complements the feelings of loneliness in the novel. I can hear dogs barking from the neighbor's house. Baba never let me keep a dog because he says the barking is too loud and so he can't work in peace. When I'm reading I'm also disturbed by the noise so I've never objected, but I don't read much. The smell on the other hand helps me read. Weird. Maybe when God created the senses, he prioritized some over others? That's the type of answer Mama would give. I would bet 10 dirhams on that actually; she would definitely say it.
I fold the corner of the page and put the book down for a while, and then I decide to listen to Back in the USSR by The Beatles, but in reality, I was more in the mood for Eleanor Rigby. I had only heard it a few times but quite liked the orchestral structure of the song, its melancholy lyrics juxtaposed by an upbeat pace and beautiful string arrangement. All the credit to Paul McCartney's vocals, without them the song becomes more of an angsty boy band piece rather than a piece about loneliness. Baba didn't like the song at all; to be quite frank, he wasn't a huge Beatles fan, but did like some of their earlier stuff.
I'm bored of music now. I decide to go outside for a stroll. The maid's son and his friends are playing football near her quarters. I saw three of the boys bizarrely argue on who got to be keeper, so the three of them simultaneously goal kept and took optimistic long shots from where they stood. The goal they were using was the base of the tree in which my old tree house is. I was a little bit worried that they would accidentally knock it down (as they had almost done in the past), so I asked the maid to tell them to move, which they agreed to. Nice lads, about 2 years younger than me per person, but whenever I saw the maid's son, he would almost always greet me with a "Good evening Mr. Alex, are you well?" which strongly juxtaposed the rather quick and stuttering tongue he possessed when he spoke Sinhala to his mother. Of course, I couldn't speak a word of Sinhala; I suspect few Russian people could. Although, Baba worked in Sri Lanka for 5 years, and he said he picked up the language quickly. Baba never spoke to the maid in Sinhala though. He always demanded that the househelp maintain a formal English accent, especially when speaking to guests.
I walk outside my house to a nearby Waitrose and buy a Cadbury Dairy Milk. I wasn't exactly in the mood for it, I bought it simply for the sake of buying something. Nevertheless, I felt really happy eating it. I used to eat Dairy Milk a lot as a kid; my old friend Asher used to get them for free because his Baba worked at a chocolate company, the same company as Baba. I stopped seeing him gradually as the years went by because he moved from Jumeirah to Sharjah. Baba did not want me to be driven far away to see him, so we somewhat lost touch. But I'm smart. I know that the reason he moved was because his Baba lost his job. And because he lost his job, Asher moved to a school in Sharjah and we never spoke again. Sad.
I go to the mosque when I hear the call to prayer. I pray. I do not pray for anything in particular because I don't want or need anything in particular. I sort of close my hands against each other, close my eyes, and contemplate things I might want. It's more like a scene from Aladdin than a prayer session. I then arbitrarily pray for all A*s in my GCSEs because my results are coming soon and I am nervous, but in particular I must get full marks in Mathematics and Economics, otherwise Mama and Baba will be angry. I leave the mosque and then come home, take off my sandals, wipe my feet, wash my hands, and sit down for dinner. I am in the mood for cheese toast, but Baba always asks the maid to make roast chicken on Fridays, because he says prayers make him hungry which I find weird but I cannot tell him this. I did not see him in the mosque. Most of the time, he always comes to the mosque next to our house and next to McDonalds but sometimes he does not and does not say where his alternative mosque is.
Maybe it is in a different world? In another world where we do not eat roast chicken on Friday perhaps? I have been reading too much Murakami. Baba always says I should not waste my time with literature and should read manly books about economics and business. Sometimes I pretend to read those, but secretly hide smaller books inside the boring books, like The Trial by Kafka, or An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro. I find it weird that Baba makes me read these boring books, when once I found a big red book on his bed with a big Santa Claus in the ''about the author'' page. I don't recall the author's name but he didn't look friendly. Weird.
Once Baba caught me and pulled my ear; he got so angry because that day because I also got a B in my Mathematics mock. He got me a tutor that day called Mr. Ketan. Mr. Ketan is very boring but my grades have improved with him. Mama really likes him and says he is very charming, and so she brings tea to him whenever he comes. Mama has never brought me tea before. Maybe she also lives in a different world sometimes? Baba does not like Mr. Ketan and Mr. Ketan does not like Baba, but Mr. Ketan has been with the family for so long that he is more or less a family ''friend''. He offers himself juice and uses the fridge at his leisure, but only when Baba is away on business. Very good teacher, very boring man.
Mama says go to bed so I go to my room. I read 32 more pages of 1Q84, play some Pokemon on my Nintendo 3DS, and then finally listen to some Beethoven on my laptop speakers. Moonlight Sonata; it has a narcotic effect on my body. I only know this song because my friend, Chris, used to play it on the grand piano in the living room. Chris was nice; he would always give me his old Pokemon Cards when he didn't want them, and he would sometimes do my maths homework for fun. I think that's why I started failing maths before I met Ketan. Mr. Ketan. He liked maths a lot. But, around the same time Asher left, Chris left too, but he said he was going to South Korea, with some sort of ''new job''. He said his Baba didn't like the morals of Cadbury or something, but I was confused because Chris's Baba owned a big house in the Emirates Hils. I only met Chris because we used to meet at office gatherings; our Babas worked at the same place. I remember we once played Pokemon all day at a big party in the cupboard. He wore a green suit, and I wore an itchy red suit that Baba had tailored for me. I hated that red suit but I wore it for Baba.
I switch off the lights and try to sleep but I simply cannot. There is a sad feeling in my body. I am my body yet I cannot control the fundamental concept of telling it to "stop working". I cannot sleep. I have bags under my eyes and my joints ache of overexertion. But I am not sleepy. The sandman refuses to grant me sleep. I have lived my entire life exactly as it is, and if I think about it, it's brought me right here. Everything I've done is for this. Yet here I am doing nothing but ramble on about how I can't sleep. It's 2:45am. I want to change the world of video gaming but instead my life has decided to guide me onto the path of rambling on about how I can't sleep. Why? Maybe this is part of the path? I hear there's this lovely new beach walk in Dubai full of stalls and stuff. But if the intention is to walk, why add distractions to stop at? Maybe the stops contribute to a longer walk? Which in turns means my mother is home away for longer and can lose more weight. That is good. Yes. Insomnia adds more hours to my life. Maybe with these extra hours I'll find a way to accomplish my dream? Or perhaps like every road there are unexpected road bumps, insomnia being one of them, and my Murakami book next to me causing me to write this making me drowsy. Ha. That's quite funny. I will stop now; I am sleepy but I will not sleep, just as how a smart boy may not get an A* in his exams if other conditions bar intelligence are not adequate. Good analogy. I'd go as far as to call it great.
I hear a noise coming from the guest room. Nobody is in the guest room. I pounce at the opportunity to do something and walk out of my room. I am embarrassed because I am wearing my old red and green pajamas. I'm scared, so I grab the cricket bat in my room for self defense. Just in case. I grab it tightly and muster up all the courage in the world as I approach the guest room door. ''Be brave, be the bravest ever''; a line I kept repeating in my head as I approached the door on my tip-toes. I think it was from a Pokemon game that line, when the characters are about to charge into a waterfall. Like them, if I opened it too slowly, it would lead to my demise. They would've been swept away. I would be attacked by whatever thing resides in the guest room.
So, I take 6 steps away from the door, and prepare to charge in. I take a deep breath, and close my eyes.
With all the energy and zeal I could muster, I charge straight into the door, right hand extended forward to actually open it. Pitch black inside, but it's cold. Really cold. I hear whispers, and light coughing. I feel my way through the emptiness and my hand touches something warm. I feel it some more and realize that what I'm touching is a body. A thin, hairless man's body. I feel upwards and I get to the head. There is no face. I flinch, and jump backwards.
''Hello'' says the body, in a monotone voice, devoid of any emotion whatsoever. The room suddenly got cooler, and the warmth I felt from my hand that touched the body gradually became colder. ''Why are you so cold?'' I say. For some odd reason, rather than asking ''what'' or ''who'', I assumed all of these things abstract and asked the most random thing I could. In hindsight, I have no idea why. I wish I had asked what that body was or why it was there, but I merely asked about its body temperature. ''I am nobody. I have no face. I live in your guest room and I'm getting quite chilly, but I don't think you'll give me a blanket. I'll probably keep getting colder.'' the body replied, this time with more emotion, as though talking to a friend. There was an air of accepted hopelessness in its voice. ''Will you ever find your face?'' I asked, earnestly. In hindsight again, I sounded like I was asking my friend if he thinks he'll ever find his lost dog again. Of course he probably won't. In reality, all I was doing was reminding him of what it lost ad was making it sad. ''As long as I am living in Baba's guest room, I don't think I'll find it, no. Maybe one day. I'm too hungry to keep talking. Maybe one day I'll find some food. I'll only find my face if I find my face myself I reckon. Same goes for the food'' the body said, regretfully. A cold silence filled the room after this, only growing colder, like my right arm.
''It's getting late. I enjoyed talking to you Mr. Alex. We had a lot in common. I think we may meet again soon, but hopefully not here. Farewell Mr. Alex'' and with that, the room went from very nippy to downright freezing. My right arm felt as though an icicle was being stabbed into it, and I lost track of the silhouette of the body. I heard a splash, but I could not move; I was literally completely frozen. I then felt a cold liquid soak my shoes; the room was completely wet. I mustered up my energy's last to go and touch the body one more time, but there I could see that it was melting away and becoming the liquid on the floor. I lay down and started crying. And then these tears turned into anger. I could see a pillow nearby, so I started punching it. And then the pillow started to form the face of Chris. I kept punching. I then saw the face of the maid's son. I kept punching. I then saw the face of Asher, and as the faces kept changing in this rotation, my anger only increased. The pillow then showed the face of Baba. i stopped for a second and then my right arm started to freeze up even more, to the point where the pain exceeded anything I had ever experienced. I had no choice. I had to keep punching. I punched the face of Baba. The pillow became as hard as concrete, but I kept punching, and punching, without stopping. My knuckles started to bleed, but only now could my right arm feel anything again, so the punching continued. Eventually, the face was not visible; it was completely covered in my own blood. With my unscathed left hand, I washed the now concrete pillow with the liquid on the floor. The lights turned on by themselves. I could see my face in the reflection of the concrete pillow and I started to cry again. I collapsed on the bed and fell asleep.
I woke up in the morning by myself in my own room. My blankets were as they were when I had gone to sleep last night. My cricket bat was in its original place. What had happened last night? I guess it was all just some sort of crazy dream. I look under my sheets because it's quite wet? Could it have been the body's liquid from yesterday?
No, it was just pee. I had peed myself last night. Great. It was all some stupid dream caused by me staying up to late. I felt angry at how my body had tricked me into imagining something so vivid. It was probably caused by me reading too much Murakami. I put 1Q84 in the cupboard, and thought that I'd probably move on to something more classic, like Moby Dick. With my right hand, I reached for the bottle of water next to my bed, only to be halted by a stinging pain. I looked at my fist and saw bruise marks, and cuts everywhere.
No I didn't. I put my hand in my pocket and used my left arm to reach for Moby Dick in my bookshelf. I sat down on my office chair and read, ignoring any thoughts of faceless bodies and concrete pillows.
The pain in Alex's hand never left him, even as he became a big business tycoon. He would still see the faceless man in his sleep. Or was it his sleep? It had left a big black scar in his knuckles, which he would sometimes pretend looked "quite cool" but in reality it was just pain. It was a pain that would never leave him, ever.
Insomnia: How the East was won(Aditya Prakash)
I'm sitting in my room reading Book 1 of 1Q84 by Murakami while the maid cooks Roast Chicken in the nearby kitchen, which really complements the feelings of loneliness in the novel. I can hear dogs barking from the neighbor's house. Baba never let me keep a dog because he says the barking is too loud and so he can't work in peace. When I'm reading I'm also disturbed by the noise so I've never objected, but I don't read much. The smell on the other hand helps me read. Weird. Maybe when God created the senses, he prioritized some over others? That's the type of answer Mama would give. I would bet 10 dirhams on that actually; she would definitely say it.
I fold the corner of the page and put the book down for a while, and then I decide to listen to Back in the USSR by The Beatles, but in reality, I was more in the mood for Eleanor Rigby. I had only heard it a few times but quite liked the orchestral structure of the song, its melancholy lyrics juxtaposed by an upbeat pace and beautiful string arrangement. All the credit to Paul McCartney's vocals, without them the song becomes more of an angsty boy band piece rather than a piece about loneliness. Baba didn't like the song at all; to be quite frank, he wasn't a huge Beatles fan, but did like some of their earlier stuff.
I'm bored of music now. I decide to go outside for a stroll. The maid's son and his friends are playing football near her quarters. I saw three of the boys bizarrely argue on who got to be keeper, so the three of them simultaneously goal kept and took optimistic long shots from where they stood. The goal they were using was the base of the tree in which my old tree house is. I was a little bit worried that they would accidentally knock it down (as they had almost done in the past), so I asked the maid to tell them to move, which they agreed to. Nice lads, about 2 years younger than me per person, but whenever I saw the maid's son, he would almost always greet me with a "Good evening Mr. Alex, are you well?" which strongly juxtaposed the rather quick and stuttering tongue he possessed when he spoke Sinhala to his mother. Of course, I couldn't speak a word of Sinhala; I suspect few Russian people could. Although, Baba worked in Sri Lanka for 5 years, and he said he picked up the language quickly. Baba never spoke to the maid in Sinhala though. He always demanded that the househelp maintain a formal English accent, especially when speaking to guests.
I walk outside my house to a nearby Waitrose and buy a Cadbury Dairy Milk. I wasn't exactly in the mood for it, I bought it simply for the sake of buying something. Nevertheless, I felt really happy eating it. I used to eat Dairy Milk a lot as a kid; my old friend Asher used to get them for free because his Baba worked at a chocolate company, the same company as Baba. I stopped seeing him gradually as the years went by because he moved from Jumeirah to Sharjah. Baba did not want me to be driven far away to see him, so we somewhat lost touch. But I'm smart. I know that the reason he moved was because his Baba lost his job. And because he lost his job, Asher moved to a school in Sharjah and we never spoke again. Sad.
I go to the mosque when I hear the call to prayer. I pray. I do not pray for anything in particular because I don't want or need anything in particular. I sort of close my hands against each other, close my eyes, and contemplate things I might want. It's more like a scene from Aladdin than a prayer session. I then arbitrarily pray for all A*s in my GCSEs because my results are coming soon and I am nervous, but in particular I must get full marks in Mathematics and Economics, otherwise Mama and Baba will be angry. I leave the mosque and then come home, take off my sandals, wipe my feet, wash my hands, and sit down for dinner. I am in the mood for cheese toast, but Baba always asks the maid to make roast chicken on Fridays, because he says prayers make him hungry which I find weird but I cannot tell him this. I did not see him in the mosque. Most of the time, he always comes to the mosque next to our house and next to McDonalds but sometimes he does not and does not say where his alternative mosque is.
Maybe it is in a different world? In another world where we do not eat roast chicken on Friday perhaps? I have been reading too much Murakami. Baba always says I should not waste my time with literature and should read manly books about economics and business. Sometimes I pretend to read those, but secretly hide smaller books inside the boring books, like The Trial by Kafka, or An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro. I find it weird that Baba makes me read these boring books, when once I found a big red book on his bed with a big Santa Claus in the ''about the author'' page. I don't recall the author's name but he didn't look friendly. Weird.
Once Baba caught me and pulled my ear; he got so angry because that day because I also got a B in my Mathematics mock. He got me a tutor that day called Mr. Ketan. Mr. Ketan is very boring but my grades have improved with him. Mama really likes him and says he is very charming, and so she brings tea to him whenever he comes. Mama has never brought me tea before. Maybe she also lives in a different world sometimes? Baba does not like Mr. Ketan and Mr. Ketan does not like Baba, but Mr. Ketan has been with the family for so long that he is more or less a family ''friend''. He offers himself juice and uses the fridge at his leisure, but only when Baba is away on business. Very good teacher, very boring man.
Mama says go to bed so I go to my room. I read 32 more pages of 1Q84, play some Pokemon on my Nintendo 3DS, and then finally listen to some Beethoven on my laptop speakers. Moonlight Sonata; it has a narcotic effect on my body. I only know this song because my friend, Chris, used to play it on the grand piano in the living room. Chris was nice; he would always give me his old Pokemon Cards when he didn't want them, and he would sometimes do my maths homework for fun. I think that's why I started failing maths before I met Ketan. Mr. Ketan. He liked maths a lot. But, around the same time Asher left, Chris left too, but he said he was going to South Korea, with some sort of ''new job''. He said his Baba didn't like the morals of Cadbury or something, but I was confused because Chris's Baba owned a big house in the Emirates Hils. I only met Chris because we used to meet at office gatherings; our Babas worked at the same place. I remember we once played Pokemon all day at a big party in the cupboard. He wore a green suit, and I wore an itchy red suit that Baba had tailored for me. I hated that red suit but I wore it for Baba.
I switch off the lights and try to sleep but I simply cannot. There is a sad feeling in my body. I am my body yet I cannot control the fundamental concept of telling it to "stop working". I cannot sleep. I have bags under my eyes and my joints ache of overexertion. But I am not sleepy. The sandman refuses to grant me sleep. I have lived my entire life exactly as it is, and if I think about it, it's brought me right here. Everything I've done is for this. Yet here I am doing nothing but ramble on about how I can't sleep. It's 2:45am. I want to change the world of video gaming but instead my life has decided to guide me onto the path of rambling on about how I can't sleep. Why? Maybe this is part of the path? I hear there's this lovely new beach walk in Dubai full of stalls and stuff. But if the intention is to walk, why add distractions to stop at? Maybe the stops contribute to a longer walk? Which in turns means my mother is home away for longer and can lose more weight. That is good. Yes. Insomnia adds more hours to my life. Maybe with these extra hours I'll find a way to accomplish my dream? Or perhaps like every road there are unexpected road bumps, insomnia being one of them, and my Murakami book next to me causing me to write this making me drowsy. Ha. That's quite funny. I will stop now; I am sleepy but I will not sleep, just as how a smart boy may not get an A* in his exams if other conditions bar intelligence are not adequate. Good analogy. I'd go as far as to call it great.
I hear a noise coming from the guest room. Nobody is in the guest room. I pounce at the opportunity to do something and walk out of my room. I am embarrassed because I am wearing my old red and green pajamas. I'm scared, so I grab the cricket bat in my room for self defense. Just in case. I grab it tightly and muster up all the courage in the world as I approach the guest room door. ''Be brave, be the bravest ever''; a line I kept repeating in my head as I approached the door on my tip-toes. I think it was from a Pokemon game that line, when the characters are about to charge into a waterfall. Like them, if I opened it too slowly, it would lead to my demise. They would've been swept away. I would be attacked by whatever thing resides in the guest room.
So, I take 6 steps away from the door, and prepare to charge in. I take a deep breath, and close my eyes.
With all the energy and zeal I could muster, I charge straight into the door, right hand extended forward to actually open it. Pitch black inside, but it's cold. Really cold. I hear whispers, and light coughing. I feel my way through the emptiness and my hand touches something warm. I feel it some more and realize that what I'm touching is a body. A thin, hairless man's body. I feel upwards and I get to the head. There is no face. I flinch, and jump backwards.
''Hello'' says the body, in a monotone voice, devoid of any emotion whatsoever. The room suddenly got cooler, and the warmth I felt from my hand that touched the body gradually became colder. ''Why are you so cold?'' I say. For some odd reason, rather than asking ''what'' or ''who'', I assumed all of these things abstract and asked the most random thing I could. In hindsight, I have no idea why. I wish I had asked what that body was or why it was there, but I merely asked about its body temperature. ''I am nobody. I have no face. I live in your guest room and I'm getting quite chilly, but I don't think you'll give me a blanket. I'll probably keep getting colder.'' the body replied, this time with more emotion, as though talking to a friend. There was an air of accepted hopelessness in its voice. ''Will you ever find your face?'' I asked, earnestly. In hindsight again, I sounded like I was asking my friend if he thinks he'll ever find his lost dog again. Of course he probably won't. In reality, all I was doing was reminding him of what it lost ad was making it sad. ''As long as I am living in Baba's guest room, I don't think I'll find it, no. Maybe one day. I'm too hungry to keep talking. Maybe one day I'll find some food. I'll only find my face if I find my face myself I reckon. Same goes for the food'' the body said, regretfully. A cold silence filled the room after this, only growing colder, like my right arm.
''It's getting late. I enjoyed talking to you Mr. Alex. We had a lot in common. I think we may meet again soon, but hopefully not here. Farewell Mr. Alex'' and with that, the room went from very nippy to downright freezing. My right arm felt as though an icicle was being stabbed into it, and I lost track of the silhouette of the body. I heard a splash, but I could not move; I was literally completely frozen. I then felt a cold liquid soak my shoes; the room was completely wet. I mustered up my energy's last to go and touch the body one more time, but there I could see that it was melting away and becoming the liquid on the floor. I lay down and started crying. And then these tears turned into anger. I could see a pillow nearby, so I started punching it. And then the pillow started to form the face of Chris. I kept punching. I then saw the face of the maid's son. I kept punching. I then saw the face of Asher, and as the faces kept changing in this rotation, my anger only increased. The pillow then showed the face of Baba. i stopped for a second and then my right arm started to freeze up even more, to the point where the pain exceeded anything I had ever experienced. I had no choice. I had to keep punching. I punched the face of Baba. The pillow became as hard as concrete, but I kept punching, and punching, without stopping. My knuckles started to bleed, but only now could my right arm feel anything again, so the punching continued. Eventually, the face was not visible; it was completely covered in my own blood. With my unscathed left hand, I washed the now concrete pillow with the liquid on the floor. The lights turned on by themselves. I could see my face in the reflection of the concrete pillow and I started to cry again. I collapsed on the bed and fell asleep.
I woke up in the morning by myself in my own room. My blankets were as they were when I had gone to sleep last night. My cricket bat was in its original place. What had happened last night? I guess it was all just some sort of crazy dream. I look under my sheets because it's quite wet? Could it have been the body's liquid from yesterday?
No, it was just pee. I had peed myself last night. Great. It was all some stupid dream caused by me staying up to late. I felt angry at how my body had tricked me into imagining something so vivid. It was probably caused by me reading too much Murakami. I put 1Q84 in the cupboard, and thought that I'd probably move on to something more classic, like Moby Dick. With my right hand, I reached for the bottle of water next to my bed, only to be halted by a stinging pain. I looked at my fist and saw bruise marks, and cuts everywhere.
No I didn't. I put my hand in my pocket and used my left arm to reach for Moby Dick in my bookshelf. I sat down on my office chair and read, ignoring any thoughts of faceless bodies and concrete pillows.
The pain in Alex's hand never left him, even as he became a big business tycoon. He would still see the faceless man in his sleep. Or was it his sleep? It had left a big black scar in his knuckles, which he would sometimes pretend looked "quite cool" but in reality it was just pain. It was a pain that would never leave him, ever.
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