Put him to Sleep

Dali, our pet dog, has been quiet for the past two days, as if he has understood that the day has finally come. Dali is grandpa's favourite.

Grandpa spends his early mornings sitting in the lawn, throwing Dali a stick or a ball to fetch, wincing a little every time, until he could throw no more.

We are out of dog food, coincidentally.

Time sucks. It sucks away the energy, happiness and strength out of our lives and leaves us behind with the burden of the memories of all the jumping and running around without a worry in the world.

Today's the day.

We get onto the car. I take the seat beside mom in the front while Dali and grandpa are slowly settling down on the back. Mom planned it so that grandpa gets to spend more time with Dali. Nobody says a word during the entire 120 minutes drive along the coast. Neither the chirping birds from the park nor the cheerful beach-goers bring us any joy today.

We're here. It's time to say the final good bye.

Dali, the cleverest, and dearest to grandpa walks to him resting his head on his lap and avoiding to look at his face. Grandpa gently strokes his head while finishing off the formalities and signing a few papers. Once the formalities are done, grandpa gets up and hugs Dali. He hugs him so tight that we feared his ribs might crack. They know that it's the last hug and they both don't mind the pain or discomfort.

The doctors assure us that the process will be painless. And we left him in their hands and walk back to the car.

Though our hearts are troubled by the loss, we are glad that at least we put him out of misery. In the car, I turn around to look at the empty seat and let a drop of tear slide down my cheek bothering not to stop it or wipe it.

Mum stops at the supermarket to get us some supplies; essentials; soft drinks; and a new flavoured food for Dali and some new toys.

Dali will have to get used to playing with us from now.

Moon Story

Sitting alone on the beach he was trying to calm down the wild waves that beat up inside him. Knowing that he will not succeed in his first attempt he was prepared to try the whole night if need be. Allowing the sound of the Ocean's waves collide against the noise of those of his inner self and pacify them, he was making a slow progress. 'Alone' aids him in this effort. But what you desire is not what you always get. Up came a villain. With an angelic glow, quietly the moon sneaked up, throwing feather soft darts of light all over the beach. A few landed on him. He may not have liked it much. In that soft light his emotions were not visible, he was not popular for exhibiting his true emotions anyways.

Pulling out a balloon from his pocket he started blowing it up. When it reached the size that he can't hold with his one hand he tied a knot around its opening and let it go. Up and up went the balloon. Black and dimly lit by the moonlight, we may say it would be hardly visible even for him. But he knew it. He knew exactly where it was at that moment. He didn't even have to look at it to know its current spot and where it would have been at any point in time. Soaring up silently, in just a few minutes it reached where he wanted it to be.

Any romantic couple promising to seize the moon and present it to their darlings at that moment would have been puzzled, surprised, even heartbroken, for, the moon was not to be seen anymore. Growing in size even as it was soaring up the balloon reached the size greater than the moon before it reached its planned altitude. Acting as a black body that absorbs all the light that falls on it and reflects none, it stole the moon away. With his device in place and the moon shut off, he was happy to let the conversation of the monster waves resume undisturbed by any intruder.

Lake story

Nobody knows when it started. But there is a legend, according to some, a myth, according to some other, which is now called the lake story.

Have they not been told, these white hatted tourists may not be watching them pass by, like floating coconuts as they wade through the lake on a slow boat. Even now, once in a while, there is a lady or a gentleman that faints, shrieks or at the least gasps at the sight of the scene.

Floating heads is not a thing our world has come to believe to exist. Even if they try to, they cannot do so without attributing it to some dark magic or sorcery. What makes it more interesting is that their faces. All the heads have the same face. It's an unsettling feeling to see such a sight.

The locals, no more try to rest on the lakefront after a tiring day, wishing to enjoy the pleasant view their ancestors used to enjoy a few centuries ago.

Things have changed since the lake story.

Today, it exists in multiple versions that people don't know which one is true or simply don't care of its origin or authenticity. That's what happens when something is passed on for centuries through word of mouth. It branches into multiple versions, each  branch containing a taste of its narrator's creative juice, gets polluted with exaggerations, omissions, inventions and pure magic without which the younger minds would readily object and then dissect every word of it to prove it all a fantasy tale.

The lake that sees and is seen by at least a hundred tourists today, once had a single log floating on it. It was said to have been washed in by a flood that has suspiciously not revisited this land for more than nearly seven hundred years now. The flood, that replaced the land, lives and everything on this patch of Earth and thus became a lake. Here, on the log was the body of a woman, still having enough life and will to breathe but not move. The bump of belly was not hidden as was her whole self. Was she wearing leaves or was she wearing clothes woven with cotton, no clue could suggest. Nothing would have been so imperishable as her to withstand such strong force of nature.

On this very lake, the log and the pregnant woman were afloat with no direction to follow, no word to utter, no land to reach, no friend or foe come looking for; absolutely forgotten by land and all the lives on it.

A week from that day was seen the first head.

That of a new born child.

There was no body, no sign of mutilation, no wound or aperture of any kind but a perfectly round ending neck. One cannot say it was severed from a body. White, rough skin was covering the bottom of the neck as any human's feet, like it was how a human child would naturally have been born, with only the head and a round feet in place of the neck, with no toes.

Within days, there were about five heads, all alike.

Nobody dared to touch them, till today.

As days passed on, the faces start to change.

It started to grow. Grow older, and older every month. But, all the faces that were seen at any time were alike. Vacant and expressionless like a mannequin but as real as yours and mine.

Every month the faces started to age, by one year and every fifth year, they all start to decay. For a month the whole city is abandoned to escape the stench that's said to have killed a whole village in the past. A month following that, anyone looking at this lake would find it no different from any other on Earth. It looks more ordinary than any lake, until the head of another baby slowly floats to the surface, wobbling this way and that.

Tourists dare themselves to come and witness this gruesome phenomenon while the local population is slowly dwindling away.

Such is the story of the lake, as I've heard.

White Out

The day has finally come, after 20 years. There won't be any need to peer over the telescope to look at it anymore.

He still remembered the day they identified that one dot, brighter than the rest in the deep dark void.

For a few months every space research centre across the globe jumped on it and started sending out instruments to get a closer look, to pick the weakest radiation, to feel the mildest temperature or anything that they could read and comprehend.

He figured before the rest of the world that today will come, what path chosen for the future of this world and he hoped against all hopes that his observations and conclusions are somehow wrong. But, they weren't.

He looked up at the sky, and saw with naked eyes, the universally known secret, shared in silence only among the research organisations across the globe holding no information back from one another.

It would be only 10 more years when it will finally be the END.

He wished he didn't have to see the day the bright light is just over their head and the lives on this blessed planet becomes darkened.

Had he chosen to work in a coal mine, miles away from the surface from where he now saw the brightest demon smiling down at them, he'd have lived a few more years peacefully, completely ignorant of the shiny blade hanging overhead and he'd have only felt the pain of the tons and tons of earth that would have squeezed the life out him in the blink of an eye.

Alas, he is an astronomer and being the best one at it he had to suffer the weight of the crushing truth that the world is coming to an end.

Unlike the natural process that the human mind derived, the sun fading out, world becoming colder and eventually freezing out inn the cruel cold coal black space, though it still is a natural process, but against the imagining of men, the world was about to end by a star that followed all the physical laws men knew and so, exactly so, will crush world.

It didn't need an astronomer with excellence in the field to tell that the course of our planet could not be altered by setting sails or rowing in the reverse direction to avoid the hit. Like a murderous stone released from a catapult, hitting a bird right on the head, sitting unaware of the danger, the bright dot will wipe the lives out, but the only difference and the worst part is that we'd know it before hand and await it without hope.

All he wished now is that, may be, if it hit the brighter side of the planet at noon, at least the people on the darker side would have gone into a deep sleep not to wake up forever.