Dark thriller.

1. Crazy
The craziest thing crazy people do is to hide their
craziness. Alex knew all about it. He was crazy. We were slumped
in our seats. Our faces covered in blood and shards of glass
from the broken windscreen. The dark brown mahogany colored
dashboard was lined like a runway strip with glass and blood.
Our blood.
When you are in an accident, the volume gets muted and you
develop synesthesia. Your ears block out all auditory signals,
and your eyes get hyper sensitive to light. Cars whizzed down
the highway in sync with Doppler and his effect. Some slowed
down to survey the wreckage, but none stopped. Nobody wanted to
stop. Not at this time of the night. Not on the highway. Alex
had counted on that. Being a “Good Samaritan” is overrated. When
push comes to shove, you would rather be the one doing the
pushing than the one being shoved. It was just a question of who
would make the final push and who would stand up at the end of
the night.
Alex was crazy. He always has been, ever since we knew each
other as kids.
‘Mike’ Alex gurgled.
Blood and syllables dripping out of his bleeding mouth. His
shirt was getting a quick and dirty crimson dye job. When you
watch enough television, you learn that the standard seat belt

2. in a normal sedan is meant to ensure that you don’t suffer from
massive cranial injuries in high impact car crashes. The seat
belt however in eight out of ten cases is found responsible for
broken collar bone, broken ribs, punctured lungs and ruptured
spleen and kidneys.
‘What?’ I coughed.
‘Mike… The headless chicken…’ He grinned.
Mike the headless chicken had managed to stay alive for two
whole years after having its head chopped off. The axe had
missed hitting the jugular vein, leaving just enough brain stem
attached to the neck for him to survive. For two whole years,
Mike was fed and watered with an eyedropper. Mike gained three
more kilos after he got his head chopped off. I knew what he was
talking about. Alex knew all sorts of things. He knew the kind
of things which you wished you could learn just by watching
television.
Blood had started to coagulate on his face, a messy bed of
crimson lava hardening itself on soft flesh and tissue. I looked
at myself in the rearview mirror. Alex grinned. You can taste
fresh blood, but can’t really smell it. Not till it begins to
dry up and congeal. There are varied accounts as to how blood
really smells like. It smelled like copper to me and tasted
ferric. Alex lifted his hand, the shards of glass twinkled under
the streams of flashing headlights. He unbuckled himself from

3. the deadly seatbelt and clutched at the open gash on the side of
his torso.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’
Alex laughed.
His heart excitedly pumped out blood.
Alex coughed.
There were way too many openings for his blood to stay
contained within his body.
I knew what he was thinking. I always knew what he was
thinking.
As long as he felt pain, he knew he was awake and alive. He
grinned some more. He was trying to keep himself awake. Flecks
of dried blood fell down amidst shards of glass to show more
fresh blood.
Alex was as crazy as crazy gets.
He wasn’t always crazy. Not till he wanted to kill me
anyway.
We had been friends since we were kids. Best friends.
Inseparable. I thought we were friends. Best friends. But now, I
was confused.
One moment we are pleasuring each other. And the next
moment, we are bleeding to death, in the car.
The vehicle’s stability around turns is directly related to
the probability of the car being engaged in a rollover accident.

4. This stability is determined by the equation between the center
of gravity of the car and the distance between the left and
right wheels. A high center of gravity and small distance
between the wheels, makes the car extremely unstable around fast
turns or sharp changes of direction. Like an extremely drunk
elephant with its legs tied together. It is bound to fall down.
That’s what happened to the car we were in.
I knew all this, because they had done a special program on
the increasing number of rollover accidents at high speeds. Alex
still explained all this to me as my feet pushed the pedal down
harder till it could go no further south. The speedometer needle
raced.
80 KMPH.
90 KMPH.
100 KMPH.
110 KMPH.
The car groaned, reminding you that you were traveling well
over hundred kilometers per hour inside a metal cage. The needle
shivered with excitement as it inched slowly but steadily closer
to the 120KMPH mark.
Alex knew exactly what he was doing. He knew exactly what
would happen when he reached out and pulled hard at the steering
wheel. He had explained it hurriedly and in detail. He knew the

5. kind of things you wished you could learn just by watching
television.
As the car tipped, I understood Einstein. I understood the
relative bullshit about time and space.
Alex was crazy.
Bat shit Fucking crazy.
My vision was getting obscured by big black colored
balloons. The effort to keep my head straight seemed too much.
Blood dribbled out some more onto my shirt as my chin fell down
on my chest. I pressed down hard against my wound. Pain would
keep me awake.
‘You still don’t get it do you?’
Alex chuckled, spraying blood down his chin. With his free
hand he reached inside his pocket and fished out a cigarette.
The broken, brown stained paper stick dangled from the corner of
his mouth.
There was still hope.
The only question that remained unanswered was who would
stay alive when the medics did come and get us.
‘To be OR’ Alex coughed some more blood, ‘not to be. That
is the question’ his eyes held up the challenge, waiting for me
to accept.
I couldn’t die.
A girl like me.

6. Not like this.
Period
In 1946, Walt Disney released, ‘The story of menstruation’,
as an education aid for sex-ed classes. It was most likely the
first film to use the word ‘vagina’.
The first time I met her, Irene was bleeding between her
legs. She had many questions. But one question shadowed them
all.
‘Why?’
She was in pain. A lot of pain. The kind which makes you
want to break things. The kind which makes you punch yourself in
the gut. The kind which makes you want to curl up and hope for
the bed to swallow you.
And that’s how I met Irene.
It starts with a light heaviness in the belly. The
heaviness turns into a dull throbbing disco ball of pain. And
then the party really kicks off.
Menstruation comes from the Latin word, ‘menses’, which
means ‘month’.
Menstrual pain is lot like a drunk on a binge. He starts
off with a slight buzz, a dull ache from the first couple of
beers in the lower abdomen and pelvis. He steps out and meets
few people he knows. He spreads all the way to your lower back
and legs. He really begins to party hard. Pounding beer after

7. beer. After the first couple of hours, he forgets what he has
been drinking all night and starts to mix his drinks. He just
wants something liquid and yellow to guzzle down. Anything to
keep the buzz going on and the party rocking out. Before he
knows, the buzz gets too much to handle and he vomits. You
vomit, he makes you nauseous. You throw up all over yourself.
You feel really ashamed. This is the first time you have hosted
a party in your groin. And it hurts.
A lot.
The drunk makes you promise, never again. Never, ever.
Women lose an average of 4 to 12 teaspoons of menstrual
fluid per cycle.
I call the woman. The woman, who Irene insisted on calling
as ‘mother’. The woman rushed into the room, screaming in shock
and surprise. The woman clinically ordered Irene to go have a
shower and change into fresh clothes as she pulled clothes off
Irene’s back. She changed the stained duvet cover, and threw it
aside along with Irene’s dirty blood stained underwear, while
muttering holy incantations. I stepped out of the room. In the
evening the three of us, Irene, the woman she called her mother
and me went to see the doctor.
‘There is nothing to worry about Mrs. McBain. You should be
happy that there are no complications given the resident

8. condition. It is only normal for a girl her age to menstruate’
The doctor smiled as he scribbled in his notepad.
‘There is absolutely nothing to worry about. Here, these
should help with the pain. One after dinner and one after
breakfast’ he instructed and chose to ignore the shocked look on
Irene’s mother’s face. Irene’s mother asked both of us to wait
outside while she finished talking to the doctor.
Periods tend to be heavier, more painful, and longer in the
colder months. This was November. The cold wave was just
beginning to arrive.
‘You feeling alright?’ I looked at her contorted face. She
was cute, small and waif like.
She nodded with a smile. Her cheeks blushed.
When we blush, our stomach lining turns red too. I showed
her the pair of syringes I had picked up from the doctor’s
table. She smiled despite her pain. I followed her eyes which
seemed transfixed with the nurse drawing blood from one of the
patient’s arm.
Long after dinner, long after everybody had retired to bed.
We searched the internet to know more about menstruation. It is
not every day that somebody starts bleeding from their privates.
I was curious and anxious. I didn’t know women bled between
their legs every month. This biological revelation made me feel
extremely uneasy.

9. Aunt Flo, On the Rag, At a Red Light, Surfing the Crimson
Tide, Checked into Red Roof Inn, Curse of Dracula, Leak Week, My
Dot, and Monthly Oil Change.
The nicknames didn’t help either.
A regular human has 46 chromosomes. A fertilized egg with
two X chromosomes will grow into a girl. A fertilized egg with
one X and one Y chromosome will grow into a boy. Gorillas and
potatoes have two more chromosomes than humans.
‘Do you think we can see those chromosomes in our blood?’
Irene excitedly waved the dirty sanitary pad around as she
jumped up and down.
I wasn’t sure. But there was always a way to find out these
things. And we had the required tools. We tore the plastic
wrapping around the syringes. We exchanged gleeful smiles in the
bathroom mirror. We rolled a rubber band over our forearm,
bunched our fingers in a ball and flexed our arms. The same way
the nurse had instructed the patient at the hospital. The arm
went numb and heavy, like it belonged to somebody else. The
slimy green colored vein over the elbow, turned a shade darker
and swelled like a lonely noodle gone bad.
When you try to draw your own blood, you learn about
pressure and force. You learn which side you favor. You learn to
love the sweet tinge of pain as you struggle to pull the plunger
and the needle shuffles underneath your skin.

10. I favored my left.
The first time the needle hadn’t penetrated deep enough. I
tried again. This time, I was rewarded with the sight of the
thick viscous cough syrup colored liquid fill up the syringe.
The syringe had markings.
5ml.
10ml.
15ml.
20ml.
I stopped when I had 15ml of blood. 15ml of my own blood.
The first thing you notice is just how thick and dark it is. You
look at it, expecting answers.
‘Maybe we ought to keep it aside for the night. Maybe we
can see more clearly in sunlight’. Irene suggested.
It had seemed like the only thing to do. I certainly didn’t
want to squirt all this blood into the sink.
I was mesmerized. I lay awake in bed replaying the image of
blood filling up the syringe. There was something beautiful and
cool inside the syringe. I felt compelled to draw more blood.
I was too excited to fall asleep. I switched on the
bathroom light and pulled the needle out of the resting syringe.
I pricked index finger and felt the now familiar sting. A small
bubble of blood erupted from the perforation. I pressed the base

11. of the puncture to draw some more blood. It was fascinating. It
was pleasurable. It reminded me of the times I felt happy. Truly
happy.
My psychiatrist tells me that I exhibit masochistic
tendencies. He says that I use pain to both reward and punish
myself. He is right, for once.
Payback
Alex was never like the other kids. He was what the
neighbors called as a problem child. Alex fancied himself to be
a young William Blake. William Blake was many things. He was a
poet. He was a painter. He was a printmaker. Alex believed that
he was just like William Blake. A misunderstood visionary. In
1809, William Blake held a one man exhibition, prompting one of
his critics to call him a lunatic.
Lunatic.
Mad.
Weird.
Psycho.
Names Alex was referred by when people spoke about him in
third person. But all these words were a bit too highbrow for
college kids in his class. The name calling slowly and steadily
descended to something more in line with an average college
student’s IQ.

12. Alex never made any friends in college. He was a loner. He
liked being alone. His only connection to the outside world was
me. There were days when didn’t feel like going to school. So I
would get him proxy attendance. He worked all night at the IT
lab and would sleep throughout the day. The best part about
college was that we got to share a small house on the outskirts
of the city. The commute was a bitch. But we didn’t care. For
the rent we were paying, which was almost nothing, it seemed a
steal. Alex was extremely happy with the place. It was far away
from campus, far away from people who knew us.
And that is where he and me were different.
I couldn’t be a loner.
I wasn’t like him.
I was a girl.
A girl has to have friends. That’s what you learn from all
the movies and television you watched. I loved television. You
learn so much which regular college doesn’t teach you. College
meant that you spend time with friends. You get into all sorts
of mischief. You fall in and out of love. You learn all about
loyalty and learn to deal with betrayal.
On the days when Alex did have to go to school in the
morning, he would return angry and upset. Despite all the books
that Alex read, he didn’t understand people or why they picked
on him. Boys picked on him, girls found him creepy. But I

13. managed to make few friends, despite everything Alex did. Alex
liked being alone. Alex thought he was William Blake.
Just like William Blake, Alex got called names too.
Fatso.
Fatass.
Faggot.
Freak.
Elephant tits.
Hippo.
Each of these names soon began to be prefixed or suffixed
with a creative usage of the word ‘Fuck’. He kept quiet, burying
himself in his books, scribbling things down in his little
notebook. The name calling got nastier. It wasn’t long before
they physically started picking on him. He stopped attending
classes altogether. He got the notes and lectures from the
online archives from the IT lab where he worked at night. He
would take the first bus of the day from campus and sleep. Sleep
for hours. Sleep through the day and wake up at night.
‘You can’t pretend that you are not fat or none of this
bothers you’ I yelled at him. He grunted before turning over to
the other side.
‘Don’t you want to make friends?’ My voice didn’t drop. He
turned his head around, wiping the spot of drool trickling out
of the corner of his mouth on the pillow cover.

14. ‘Friendship paradox’ he mumbled, eyes squinted as he tried
to make out the time on his wrist watch. It was originally his
father’s wrist watch which Alex now used as his own. His father
didn’t mind Alex using his watch.
‘What time is it?’ he questioned.
‘It’s nine in the evening. And don’t you dare give me that
bullshit about how on average most people have fewer friends
than their friends have’ I continued yelling. He always tried to
change the topic he didn’t feel like talking about by referring
to some weird thing he read or knew. Like the friendship
paradox.
He grinned. His pudgy face broke into isolines, isopleths
and isarithms.
‘Don’t you want to hurt them? Don’t you want to punch them
till they stop talking?’
I was fuming. For some odd reason, it hurt me more than it
hurt him. I felt horrible every time he got called names. I
found it difficult to make new friends because of him. He was
ruining college for me.
He quietly got off his pudgy bottom and handed me his
little notebook he scribbled in. I flipped it open. The pages
were filled with his squirrely scribbles. I had to squint to
make out what he had written.
‘I want to kill them.’

15. ‘Choke them.’
‘I want to punch right in their larynxes.’
‘Isn’t the chemistry lab left unattended during lunch hour’
I questioned as the vague outline of a plan started forming in
my mind.
‘Yeah! I guess’ Alex looked suspiciously at me. He knew
what I was thinking.
‘So we sneak out a bottle of sulfuric acid. Pour it in the
water tank and watch them yell screaming in pain and agony.
Watch them how the acid corrodes their larynx. Their esophagus.
Their faces.
‘This can be done...’Alex remarked as he began to connect
the dots and fill in the blanks.
‘But?’I questioned. I knew there was something else
troubling Alex.
‘It is just a fantasy. I don’t actually want to hurt them.
I am fat. There is no way to avoid being called fat when you are
fat you know’
‘Fuck that shit! We don’t have to get the sulfuric acid
from the chem. Lab. It is risky. We can make our own’.
This was exciting.
This was just like television.
The college experience could still be had.

16. It is an often used trope in movies and television shows
where the nerds get their revenge. The jocks and cheerleaders
realize how mean they all were. The hottest person on campus
falls in love with them. In this case, it was Peter Samuels.
This was exciting. And despite his reservations, Alex was
going to help me win Peter’s heart. He didn’t know about Peter.
He didn’t have to.
The next few days, we boosted car batteries from car parks.
There were few things you have to be careful about when you
are stealing car batteries.
1) There should be no sulfate build up around the battery
terminals. They usually look like whitish or bluish
deposits. This meant that the car the car didn’t have
much sulfuric acid in it. And the owner didn’t take much
pride in the ownership of his car.
a. You don’t want such batteries.
2) We had to wear gloves. The sulphuric acid is highly
corrosive.
a. Alex almost lost his fingertips the first time
around.
3) You had to ensure that nobody smoked in and around you.
The electrolyte solution inside the car batteries are
highly inflammable.

17. I didn’t know about it, till we set a car on fire. Alex was
unscrewing the screws on the terminals when the ash from my
cigarette dropped over the battery. The next thing we knew, we
were running away from the burning flame which enveloped the
car.
If you know what you are doing, you can open a hood of a
car, unscrew the battery and get away under three minutes. After
the first week, we were clocking just over two minutes and
thirty seconds. We knew what we were doing.
The average car battery weighs about 10.8 kilos.
On good nights, Alex could easily carry two batteries each.
It helped that he was strong. And fat. I was too pretty to get
my hands dirty. So I just watched and gave instructions to Alex.
When we finally had enough car batteries piled up in the
corner of our little house. We began emptying it in a big blue
plastic cauldron. The big blue plastic cauldron people used as a
makeshift dustbin. The kind which doesn’t react with the acid we
poured in it.
The big day was looming close. The college was hosting a
visiting college basketball team. It was a friendly game to
inaugurate the new built basketball court. I knew that the match
would draw massive crowds.
Proud parents.
Anxious players.

18. Giggling girls.
Cocky boys and hassled teaching staff.
It was going to be a circus. A flea circus.
Flea circuses were an actual thing till the 1960s. The
fleas weren’t trained. Instead they were tortured by being glued
to musical instruments and harnessed to wires. Their bottoms
would be heated up to make them try to jump and give the
illusion that they were playing the musical instrument. We were
going to be the flea masters.
‘Fire sprinklers?’ I inquired as I carefully poured the
concentrated sulfuric acid into something with which we could
carry it in.
‘I don’t want to do this’ Alex feebly mumbled. He was
crying. That fat piece of slob was beginning to dissolve himself
into a big puddle of tears and sweat.
‘You are probably right. The first acid will eat away the
rubber lining before it reaches the sprinkler part’ I beamed.
‘I don’t want to hurt anybody’ he was crying. The acidic
fumes were burning the hair in my nostrils.
‘Well, they are not going to call you names anymore fat
boy’ I smiled. He looked terrified.
Hormones
Humans have the same number of hair follicles as
chimpanzees.

19. There was hair growing all over my body.
Hair here.
Hair there.
Every day when I took a shower, hair had found a new place
to sprout from. Places where hair had no reason to grow. It was
growing under my armpits. It was growing down there. My face
started sprouting bristles under my nose. It even began to grow
between my bum. Irene had devised a neat way to deal with this
problem. She started applying her mother’s bleach. She said she
saw this on TV. It wasn’t long before she convinced me to buy a
shaving kit. She said that usually the father buys a boy’s first
shaving kit. She said she wanted to surprise me.
There is a distinct sense of satisfaction you feel when you
shave. It is almost as much fun and gratifying as making shapes
on a beach and then wiping it all clean. After the first time,
my face was covered with little nicks and cuts. My neck, my
chin, resembled an abandoned minesweeper game.
When I wiped my face clean, I looked like a different man.
Irene couldn’t recognize me anymore. She said I looked pretty.
It felt good. So I shaved every single hair I could see and
feel. I shaved my armpits, down there, my legs, my arms. My skin
felt weird and alien like. But it was soft and smooth. And it
felt weird and wonderful.

20. Things were changing. A lot of things were changing. I
could sense it amongst my classmates too. Some let the ugly
growth under their noses grow and some shaped it in different
shapes. The girls had started growing top heavy. Irene called
them her girls.
‘That’s what I saw the girls on telly call them’ she smiled
as she cupped her girls.
‘Feel them’ she prompted as she lifted her t-shirt. I was
repulsed by it. They were soft and when my cold fingertips
touched them. The nipples hardened. I felt a strange sensation
in my pants. My willy was beginning to pain. Irene placed her
hand on my willy and cupped it.
‘It’s paining isn’t it?’ she smiled as she pulled my zipper
down. ‘It’s paining for me too’
I didn’t want her to touch me. I didn’t know what was
happening. And why my willy was hurting.
So I ran.
I ran like my father.
I ran as fast as I could. I ran till my legs ached. I ran
till I could run no more. I stooped over, trying to catch my
breath.
‘Your fly is open’ I heard her speak. I looked at the girl.
She was trying hard not to break into bout of giggles. I

21. straightened myself up and hurriedly pulled on my zipper. It was
embarrassing.
‘My name is Susie’ She said as she got off her cycle. Her
face still smiled at me. The smile which uses all the twelve
muscles involved to smile. Pair of two muscles which ran from
her high pale cheekbones to the corner of her full lipped mouth.
Two muscles around her brown eyes made them crinkle. Two muscles
pulled up the corner of her red lips, two muscles pulled them
sideways and two muscles made the curved the angle of her mouth.
It was a warm smile. And her smile was infectious.
‘What’s your name?’ she inquired curiously.
‘Alex’ I replied, smiling.
‘You are cute’ she said as she got back on her cycle.
I tousled my hair as I avoided looking at her. My cheeks
got hot. My stomach lining was turning a bright shade of
beetroot red.
‘Want to walk with me?’ She questioned.
And that’s how Susie and I became friends.
Right before I ran away from home.
Dreams
‘What do you want to be when you grow up? When you pass out
of school?’ Dr. Milchard looked up from his diary. The one he
always scribbled in every single thing Alex and I spoke about.
‘I don’t know. Normal I guess’ I spoke for Alex.

22. Dr. Milchard smiled patronizingly at us.
Mum took the two of us to see Dr. Milchard every Monday,
Wednesday and Thursday at five in the evening.
Dr. Milchard didn’t call it as Five PM. He called it as
1700hrs. That’s how the guys in the armed forces call time. Dr.
Milchard was in the armed forces. He used to take care of
soldiers returning from war, suffering from PTSD. He liked
jargon. Which is why I suppose Alex liked talking with Dr.
Milchard. He had for some odd reason quit active duty and had
started his own private practice along with his wife. Mum had
found out about Dr. Milchard when we had gone to see the doctor
about my periods.
‘He is nice isn’t he?’ Mum rhetorically remarked as we
returned home after our first session.
‘He is alright!’ I mumbled.
‘Well for the money he is charging he better be nice’ Mum
playfully ruffled my hair and started to stare out of the cab
window.
Mum never wanted to know what we spoke with Dr. Milchard.
She was just happy to pay the bills.
Never did like Dr. Milchard.
Or the waiting room filled with middle aged men, old women,
young boys and girls. Could never for the life of me understand

23. their need to get to share their deepest darkest secrets to a
stranger like Dr. Milchard.
I knew Alex’s secrets.
He didn’t know mine.
He didn’t have to.
If he did, he wouldn’t have tried to kill me.
But it was always good to know what he was thinking. So we
went, every Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. Think the only
reason mum felt like we had to meet Dr. Milchard more often than
she visited the house of god was probably because she felt that
Alex needed a father figure and Dr. Milchard could help him.
Alex didn’t really help his case with the thing he did with the
blade every time he felt sad and depressed.
Alex and I never discussed about what we spoke inside Dr.
Milchard’s room with mum. Though she did try and get things out
of us. But we didn’t.
Meet The Shrink
Behavioral biologists do not agree on what constitutes
‘behavior’.
Psychologists cannot agree on what ‘personality’ means.
It was a Monday. The first time mum took me to meet Dr.
Milchard. I sat outside in the waiting lounge while mum went to
speak with Dr. Milchard. The receptionist smiled at me before

24. continuing to speak with whoever she was talking to on the
phone.
I sat on the edge of the red velvet sofa. My feet didn’t
touch the floor. If I tried to touch the white tiled floor with
my toes, I slid off the sofa. Soon enough, I got bored trying to
cheat gravity.
The red light on the receptionist’s phone started to blink.
She pressed the button on the keypad and looked at me with a
polite smile on her face.
‘You can go in now’ she spoke with a smile.
I walked through the corridor, covered with posters of
happy smiling faces.
I walked through those corridors every Monday, Wednesday
and Thursday at five in the evening, and walked back out at six.
For an entire hour, Dr. Milchard would ask me questions.
‘How do you feel?’
‘How are things at school?’
‘Get into any fights?’
And I would tell him about how I felt. I would tell him
about why I felt shy when I visited the boys’ room. I would tell
him about how the kids at school bullied and made fun of me. I
told him about how much I hated my mother. How she was weak,
always crying and whining.

25. ‘Do you feel angry Alex?’ He inquired as he furiously made
notes in his diary.
I nodded.
‘What makes you angry?’
I didn’t have an answer. A lot of things made me angry.
Kids at school, my mother, stupid people, were right there at
the top of the list of things which made me angry.
‘And what do you feel like doing when you feel anger?’
‘Hurt’
‘Hurt who?’
‘All of Them’
‘Alex, I want you to do something for me’ Dr. Milchard
looked up with concern at me.
‘I want you to keep a diary. And I want you to write
everyday in it. Everything you feel. Whenever you feel angry, or
feel like you want to hurt somebody, I want you to write it in
your diary’
I nodded my head.
‘And if you like you can let me read it’
I wasn’t going to let him read it. But I nodded
nonetheless. I knew I was not the perfect child my parents
wanted. I was not the things people said to me or behind my
back. I was not going to the job I would work at. I was not the

26. books I read or the movies and music I liked. I was not a lot of
things. I was definitely not what most people thought I was.
‘You are nothing but a blimp on the normal bell curve, the
sum total of wasted potential.’ Irene had once remarked.
Potential.
That word rankled me.
It irked me.
It upset me.
It made me angry.
It made me want to hurt myself. It reminded me of my
mother.
‘Why? You are so smart and gifted. You have such great
potential. Why do you want to hurt yourself?’ she used to say in
between heaving sobs and pregnant tears.
I don’t remember the first time I had hurt myself. But I do
know that there is a certain evolution to harming yourself. You
don’t just start off by cutting or burning yourself. That takes
times.
It all starts with anger. You are angry at your father for
being unjust, for ignoring the fact that you tried your best.
You are angry at yourself because you have disappointed your
father again. You are angry and sad, because you know it is
because of you that mum and dad are fighting. You oscillate
between wanting to cry yourself out and wanting to burn

27. everything. You start by punching the pillow you are crying
into. But soon, the anger overtakes your body and you start
punching the walls till the skin around your knuckles come off.
Till they are red and bleeding.
You wake up the next day, you remember the previous night.
You remember the hurt and the anger. You open and close your
fist, you feel the sting and stiffness and it helps soothe the
pain inside you.
The hurt is the unguent to your suffering.
The negative to make things positive.
As long as it hurts, you find the strength to fight the
world.
But a stiff knuckle is noticed and questions get asked.
Questions you don’t want to answer. You lie. You know nobody
believes it, but you don’t care. You are ashamed. You feel
exposed. The pain and suffering inside you lies exposed to
everybody. The next time you find yourself holding a penknife
you use to do school projects. You run the blade through your
forearm. The skin splits, you feel the familiar sting and it
burns as you dig the pen knife deeper and burrow vertical lines
on your forearm.
You wear long sleeved shirts. There are no questions till
the shirt goes to the laundry. You get taken to the psychiatrist
to talk. You evade, you talk about everything, everything else

28. other than why you have fallen in love with pain. You are listed
reasons why you shouldn’t harm yourself. You are reminded about
the lies people have told you.
‘Your mother loves you’
‘Your father would be proud of you’
‘You are smart. You have such great potential’
You smile and nod your head. You see that you are
surrounded by lies and liars. You recognize that you are not
what you think you are. So you read books, watch movies, listen
to music. Anything which makes reaffirms your belief that what
you are feeling is not unique. That it is not just you. That the
world you live in is as fucked as you think it is.
I knew I wasn’t alone the day I met Irene.
Irene used to tell me about this one moment. This one
moment that occurs in everybody’s life. A moment so scary that
they deny it exists. A moment when they could disappear from the
face of the earth and nobody would know. It was in those moments
that they truly knew who they were.
I wanted to be in that moment forever.
Pursuit of Happiness
I was Alex’s Kali, the Hindu goddess of death, violence,
sexuality and motherly love.
His friend, only friend and confidante.
And I was beginning to get worried about him.

29. Very worried.
Worried because he was depressed, worried because he didn’t
want to be John Lennon.
A five year old John Lennon.
You see, long before Mark David Chapman shot him dead. Long
before he formed The Beatles and then watched Paul McCartney
take credit for disbanding. John Lennon was just the apple of
his mother’s eyes. John Lennon’s mother had once told him that
the key to life was happiness. When John’s teacher asked him to
write an assignment about what he wanted to be when he grew up.
He wrote ‘Happy’. His teacher told him that he didn’t understand
the assignment. He told the teacher that she didn’t understand
life.
Alex wanted to be everything but be happy. And it worried
me that he would start harming himself again.
Alex was selfish that way.
It was always about what he wanted.
And I was getting pretty annoyed with it.
But you couldn’t help but worry. Worry that he would start
cutting himself again. College may have been boring and filled
with self entitled pricks and princesses prancing about. Showing
off just how rich and smart they were. Alex just felt more of an
outsider than he already felt. But at least he had his books.

30. His study was always littered with obscure book titles
borrowed from the Public Library.
The Flat-Footed Flies: (Diptera: Opetiidae and
Platypezidae) of Europe (Fauna Entomologica Scandinavica) by
Peter J. Chandler. A book which basically listed the 44
different kinds of flies.
The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Numbers
by David Wells. Like the name suggests, a dictionary for numbers
with trivia like 2,520 being the only number which can be
exactly divided by all the numbers from 1 to 10.
101 Uses for an Old Farm Tractor by Michael Dregni.
Suture Self by Mary Daheim.
The money from the out of court settlement helped ease the
pain of having to move back home. All the 33 victims got paid.
The college had to close down for three weeks while the police
investigated the acid attack.
12 dead.
33 injured.
Those were the official numbers reported. Those were the
numbers the news channels kept flashing at the bottom of the
screen every time they spoke about the incident. Alex and I were
part of the 33.
The indoor stadium had been rigged with sixteen confetti
cannons. The plan was to drop the rubber balloons filled with

31. the acid down the confetti cannon’s chutes. One of the balloons
had accidentally burst as we dropped it down the chute. The
splash had left first degree burns on Alex’s hands and feet.
The cops had questioned everybody in the college. The
pressure to hang a scapegoat and pin the blame grew with every
passing day. The 24/7 media cycle didn’t relent till they could
have their scapegoat served to them on a spitfire. The police
were thorough in their investigations. They spent countless
hours recording witness statements. Cops questioned us too. Alex
didn’t know what to answer the cops when they came to question
us. Once the cops made their highly publicized arrests, we moved
back home with mother. She didn’t have much time left anyway.
The cops had arrested the dean, the confetti cannon vendor
and few other students. The dean and the vendor were arrested on
account of gross negligence. The group of students who were
arrested had absconded from the game to get high. The news cycle
changed from wanting justice to the growing trend of youngsters
chasing the new high. Nobody suspected us. We were part of the
causality list. So when we decided to quit college and move back
home, nobody thought too much about it. We obviously had to
leave forwarding address with the cops. ‘Just in case’, they had
said. Just like they show in the movies. They didn’t suspect us
though.

32. When we did finally move back, Alex didn’t leave the house.
All he seemed to do was read, eat and sleep. It was fine with
me, but you couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. He said he
felt guilty. He felt depressed. Looked like he had been watching
a little too much of Oprah re-runs.
The kind of things he was reading reflected his mood. You
couldn’t help but worry about him. One wonders as to what sort
of a person reads how to suture oneself. Unless of course he was
planning on cutting himself open and then stitching himself up.
Well, it was Alex and he was crazy. He was known to do
stupid things.
Ma
The woman always used to say that the bond between a mother
and her son is the strongest. And no matter what happened, I
would always be her son. Her baby. I was her gift from God.
I was not her son. I was not her baby. I was not God’s gift
to her.
Imprint.
That is the word which is used to describe the bond a new
born creates with its primary carer.
The idea of ‘imprinting’ was made famous by Konard Lorenz
(1903 – 1989), an Austrian animal behaviorist. He noted that the
graylag geese hatched in an incubator would bond with the first

33. thing they saw move within thirty six hours of hatching. In
Lorenz’s case, it was his pair of wellington boots.
Imagine a YouTube video where a gaggle of graylag geese
cackling and running behind anybody who wore those pair of
wellington boots, expecting to be fed and cared for.
Humans do not bond or ‘imprint’ in any way we think that we
do. The age old wisdom of placing the baby with its mother is
done more to help the mother than the baby. You would be
surprised with the number of women who suffer from post partum
depression. You would be even more surprised with the number of
newborns who die at the hands of mothers who suffer from post
partum.
Research on Development of Human Attachments, done in 1999
by the University of Minnesota outlined the human bonding
process.
16 hours – Babies prefer the sound of human language over
other noises. They have no preference for a particular voice.
2 days – Babies can tell the difference between their
mother’s face and that of a stranger. They still don’t have a
preference.
3 days – Babies clearly prefer human voices, especially
their mother’s.
5 days – Babies clearly prefer the smell of their own
mother’s milk.

34. 3-5 weeks – Babies become interested in faces, especially
their mother’s eyes.
3–4 months – Babies start initiating social contact with
their mother, or other primary carer.
3–7 months – Babies begin to show strong preferences for
other members of their own family.
A Canadian research team found that, up to the age of three
months, newborn human babies respond almost as positively to the
calls of rhesus monkeys as they do their mothers’ annoying baby
talk.
But then again, behavioral biologists do not agree on what
constitutes ‘behavior’.
But both Irene and I agreed that my mother was few nuts and
bolts short of being labeled a complete cuckoo.
You see, she married young. She was in love. She married
the first man who she permitted to go first base with her. She
married the man who stole the remaining three for a run. She
married because she was pregnant with me. And the man she
married wanted a boy.
So she prayed, day and night. She did all the things
possible for her to deliver a healthy baby boy. She quit smoking
and drinking. She gorged on chocolate to lower the risk of
getting preeclampsia. She gave up meat. She started listening to
classical music. She began to include folic acid in her diet to

35. lower my chances of getting spinal bifida. She got herself
tested for German measles. She started to think of baby names.
Oliver.
Edward.
Arthur.
Alexander.
She even took up knitting. All for the love of the man she
married and for the baby boy who will make the man fall in love
with her again.
And then I was born.
The sham of a happy married life fell apart. Bills began to
pile up. The man took to alcohol. The man wondered and pondered
long over the life he could have had, had he not married so
young. He had gone All-in into his marriage and the good Lord
had dealt a nasty hand to him. Now he was cleaned out. He was
out of luck. Stuck with a wife he didn’t love. Burdened with a
child he didn’t want. But he was a good man. He knew what the
world expected him to do. He knew he had to do the right thing.
Blowing his own brains out was an easy option, but he was a
strong man. So he did what any strong willed man would do. He
ran. Leaving behind the woman who continued loving him and a son
who reminded him of his failing as a man.
Alexander McBain.
That was the name he chose for me, right before he scooted.

36. I was everything my mother hadn’t hoped and prayed for. I
was the only thing which reminded my mother every moment of
every day of the man who she still loved. And she loved me even
more than the man. I was her son. I was her baby. I was her gift
from god.
For me, she was just the woman. I was not her son. I was
not her baby. I was not God’s gift to her.
I was the man’s constant disappointment.
I was a mistake.
I was the unwanted byproduct of the man’s overeager
swimmers and the woman’s pious eggs.
I was the mutated zygote of the woman’s optimism and man’s
crippling reality.
And now she was dying of cancer. The good Lord she prayed
to so often and piously chose to give her cancer.
Cancer of the kidneys.
The doctors called it the BDC, short for Bellini Duct
Carcinoma. They said they wanted to keep her in the hospital to
study the cancer. They said it was rare. They said the cancer
looked like a bubble wrap. Have always loved bubble wrap. Now I
loved it even more. Now that it was killing the woman.
A bubble wrap.
Pop.

37. You could cover yourself with thirty nine layers of bubble
wrap and jump off six stories and still live.
Pop.
And with each passing moment, she was getting closer to
death.
Pop.
I wondered if I could kill Irene by asphyxiating her with
bubble wrap.
Pop.
Telly
Boob tube.
Idiot box.
The small screen.
Whatever name it got called by, it was singularly
responsible for raising an entire generation born to working
mothers and absent fathers.
I was forever fascinated with it. One moment you want to
know who killed Mrs. Hudson. The next you are learning about
urea content in the fertilizers being used in the local farms.
You learn about mythological figures and historical figures. You
learn about conspiracy theories and scientific facts.
Television taught me how to talk, think, kiss, and
pronounce items on a restaurant menu. The internet was good. But

38. television was great. It was easy to get lost in the information
super highway. But it was lot more fun to channel surf.
Television was my first teacher. Television taught me that
I was a girl. And a girl is meant to look pretty and play dress
up. A girl gets to enjoy the simple things in life. A girl
didn’t have to compete. She didn’t have to be smart or
intelligent. All she needed to be was to look pretty.
Television taught me to love everything about being a girl.
Television taught me to pay attention to details. That nothing
hurts a person more than the feeling of not being heard. Not
being listened to. It taught me to listen to the things people
spoke out aloud and the things they didn’t. It taught me to
stand up for what is right. It taught me to say no to people.
Oprah and Dr. Phil taught me to be a strong woman.
Baywatch taught me that the world makes way for a pretty
girl in red.
Bold and Beautiful, well it was just plain entertaining.
Every day was something new to be discovered. I learned how
to cook and put make up on my face. A hint of concealer, a touch
of blush and a dab of eyeliner changed the way I stared back
from the mirror.
Television got me addicted to drama. It got me addicted to
wanting an audience. To perform, to blend, to be invisible. It

39. wasn’t long before I was spending my money and time on makeup
and wigs.
I was a shy blonde.
I was a smart brunette.
I was a fiery red head.
I could be anything I wanted. When you are a girl, a very
pretty girl - The normal rules of the society don’t apply to
you. You are the society. You make the rules as you see fit.
When you are a girl, a strong independent girl – You are free in
ways a man only wishes he was.
Television taught me how to kiss.
Surf.
It taught me how the apache Indians made bow and arrows
from animal bones.
Surf.
Television taught me to watch people. You learn a lot when
you watch people, when they think you are invisible. When they
think nobody is watching them. You watch them dig their noses.
You watch them step out of the washroom without washing their
hands. You watch them scratch their groin or adjust the
underwire on their bra. Alex told me that this was called
voyeurism. I didn’t care. Watching people and judging them was
powerful. It made me feel superior. And when you feel all
powerful and superior, you can’t help but show it off. It is

40. like when you hear bunch of nitwits talking about who was the
greatest James Bond and they never mention Sean Connery. It is
just like superman shunning his alter ego every time danger
loomed. This is what we called as the smart-arse syndrome.
All I had to do to be invisible was to be more like Alex.
Follow his lead and be awkward and unattractive. But the chubby
kinds wouldn’t let me be.
Infomercial for a new kind of exercise machine. Guarantees
you rock hard abs in six weeks. All for 1999/-.
Surf.
It taught me about the new social structure the noughties
seemed to usher in. Every era reassembles society and
restructures the social hierarchy. That was the chaotic self
evolving kind of civilization we had subconsciously made for
ourselves. Every era, the society clumped all its contents and
found a new way to divide itself. Like an exercise of
rearranging furniture in a room to give it a new look, feel and
a vibe. There was the class divide, the religious divide, the
race divide. And now our society was dividing itself into the
beautiful and the ugly.
Ugliness had a single defining characteristic. It was
cannibalistic. It feeds off itself. It grows till it implodes
itself.

41. Alex and I were on the opposite ends of this societal
divide.
Surf.
Television was my happy place. Place a television in front
of me, give me the remote and I am happy girl. And since Alex
had broken the television at home, we visited the nearby bar to
watch telly. But there was a problem.
You see people like Alex and their waistlines and girth
have their own private gravitational pull on people’s eyeballs.
Everywhere he went, their eyes followed him. Their tongues
wagged and their fingers raised themselves like a sign post on a
four way traffic junction. Alex of course, could do nothing
about them. He would just get moody and want to leave. Taking me
away from my beloved television.
It was always the chubby ones.
The chubby folk who didn’t think they were fat.
The chubby folk who made resolutions every year to lead a
healthy lifestyle.
The chubby folk who bought new trainers and track pants to
jog but couldn’t be arsed to get up in the morning.
The chubby folk who couldn’t see their penis when they took
a wee.
The chubby folk who believed that humor was a mighty good
defense.

42. The beefed up buff cakes were always too conscious about
their own body to comment on somebody else. And the skinny ones
were always trying too hard to get noticed. It was always those
chubby kinds who blanketed themselves under their own fat and
inflated sense of self confidence. They were always the ones who
would raise their fingers and laugh at people like Alex. The
skinny girls, and their deep seated oedipal and Electra issues
would giggle and call the chubby man mean. Nothing seemed
funnier than saying the obvious.
Fatass.
Thunder thighs.
Elephant tits.
Hushed whispers always followed by the loud rambunctious
laughter.
When they got really loud, when all I could hear was their
laugh over and above the TV volume, those were the times when I
would be forced to drop my façade of a blonde, a brunette or a
plain Jane. And confront them. I would turn and stare. Sometimes
they would shut up. Sometimes they would look right past me and
stare at Alex. Their masculinity challenged in front of women
they fancied. I couldn’t do anything. Not at that time. Not in
front of Alex. Not after the call from the doctor. Not after
mum’s death. Not after what happened at the college.

43. But, I was a girl. A pretty girl. And when you are a girl
and you are pretty. The normal rules of society don’t apply to
you. So, I would send Alex back home to his coffee and books.
And I would wait for those mean chubby folk.
Don’t get me wrong here. Not all chubby folk are mean and
nasty. You see, the thing with chubby folk is that they fall
under two categories.
The first kinds are funny, polite, self conscious and revel
in self deprecating humor. Alex was the first kind. And I adored
them.
Then, there are the second kinds, the mean bastards. They
believed that being aggressive meant that they could defend
themselves. They believed that the world owed them something.
They usually had been abused as kids and understood no other
language. They deserved what awaited them in the parking lot.
You learn a lot whilst watching the Discovery channel. You
learn that when you scream and run at somebody, you are doing
two things. You frighten and confuse your enemy. Secondly you
are taking a giant gulp of air, which pushes more oxygen in your
blood stream and the adrenaline travels faster through your
veins.
You learn that when you stick your fingers in a V-shape and
attack in a gouging motion, the first reflex from the other
person is to step back and push your hand away. You learn that

44. when they do this, it leaves his Adam’s apple exposed. You learn
that when you punch it hard, it severs his wind pipe. Your body
and his body is now acting solely on reflexes. You notice that
both his hands reach to cover his bruised Adam’s apple. You
strike with the knife edge of your hand against the bridge of
his nose. This causes the nose cartilage to break, sharp pain
and temporary blindness.
You learn that if you deliver a blow to the broken
cartilage with the heel of your palm in an upward motion, it can
drive the bone to the brain.
You learn that when a man falls down on hard concrete there
is a definite flat sounding thump.
You learn a lot when you watch television.
Halfeti Roses
Hospitals, trees and people have one thing in common. After
a point of time, none of them care about how they came into
being. They are the exact opposites, very unlike the mythical
creations of God, the house of God, or the tumor which was
killing the woman.
Hospitals don’t understand why someone got pneumonia or
renal failure. All they do is to ensure that you get out of
there, preferably alive.
Trees don’t care if they were planted by an eco-friendly
tree hugging hippie or the seeds found their way out of the

45. business end of a bird’s bottom, that just moments ago was
pecking away on the good bits on a rotten fruit.
People don’t care much about how they were born or where
they were born. They are always worried about what the world and
the society around them sees them. They worry about their jobs,
their health and the things they call their own.
On the other hand, the house of God, the idea of God, or
the cancerous tumor, they were all self aware. Self aware of why
they were created, how they were created and the devastation
they left in their wake.
When you spend enough time in hospitals, you can’t help but
get all Plato and Socrateian on yourself. I was two week shy of
my eighteenth birthday. I got wheeled into the operation theater
and then after six hours, wheeled back out. My hospital room
number was 1C, ICU ward.
The woman was admitted into room number 1F, ICU ward.
Hospital ICU wards are unlike any other wards in a
hospital. The ward has its own dedicated set of nurses,
attendants and on call doctors. The rooms are architected in a
semi circular manner, their glass sliding doors facing the
nurses’ station. You are required to cover your footwear with
protective shoe cover.
But even before you get to put on those lime green colored
plastic things over your feet.

46. Even before you get to press the button ‘3’ on the
elevator. You have to place a call from the lobby. You didn’t
want to see the woman being given a sponge bath.
‘No ma’am, no outside food allowed’ we heard the nurse tell
the woman holding a giant box, probably filled with homemade
cookies.
‘But they are his favorite. Butter and cream cookies’ The
woman was on the verge of tears. Motherly emotional blackmail
out on display.
‘Her son has gastrointestinal hemorrhage’ Irene remarked as
I held up a hand against the wall and adjusted the shoe cover.
‘He has ulcers all over his intestines. All his shits look
pitch black. Darker than the darkest black you can think of.
When he shits, he is basically bleeding.’ Irene continued with
her unrelenting commentary.
Halfeti roses. That was the picture which popped up in my
mental projector. The solid black colored roses which grew in
the tiny village of Halfeti in Turkey. That is what I imagined
his asshole looked like. A black rose.
‘That one suffers from…’ she pointed with her eyes and
eyebrows to the young girl in my old room, 1C. She stopped
herself. Guess she saw the look on my face picturing the poor
boy’s Halfeti asshole.

47. Irene greeted the woman. And the woman beamed. I looked
around the room. Her room and the room I was admitted to four
years back looked exactly alike. I was doing everything possible
than make eye contact with the woman. I even listed out the
things you would commonly find in a hospital ICU room.
These are the things you would find in almost ninety nine
percent of hospital ICU rooms.
•
There are the usual things - A sliding door to the
hospital room and the private bath, foisted in a
manner that it always opens quietly and you could
never slam it shut. A single bed. The IV drip stand by
the headrest with a digital monitoring system that
tends to beep incessantly when a new bag is needed.
•
A bedside table with a vase filled with plastic
flowers
o They never kept fresh flowers. The hospital never
knew what allergy the next patient may suffer
from.
•
A chair for visitors.
o You never were allowed more than five minutes to
visit a patient in the ICU ward. And only one
person was allowed.
o Exceptions were of course made for family.

48. •
The walls colored in neutral tones.
o Colors which made you realize if you were a glass
half full or empty kind of person.
o The hospital doesn’t want you to have false
hopes.
•
The clean, cold, sterile tiles on the floors remind
you to face facts and mortality.
•
Windows which always look out to the parking lot, away
from the ER ward.
•
A Private bath that can't conceal its functionality.
o Handicap railing on the toilet and the shower
area.
•
The bed covered in sterile white sheets with a dark
colored blanket.
•
Phone attached to the bed with a cord.
o The call button also attached to the bed.
•
The lights in the room always giving this unidentified
déjà vu feeling of being inside a casino or a movie
theater during interval.
o Just bright enough and just dark enough to not
make you think or wonder about the sun’s position
outside your window.

49. •
Little table attached to the underside of the bed that
you can move around the bed, to keep everything handy.
•
Stainless steel Emesis basin, with a matching
stainless steel water pitcher on the bedside table.
As I stood and surveyed the room, avoiding eye contact with
the woman, Irene pulled up the lone chair. It was strange being
a visitor instead of being the patient. When you lay on the bed,
immobilized by drugs and pain, you begin to feel what the
animals at the zoo feel like.
There is a story about a chimpanzee named Santino. Every
day, right before the zoo gates opened for visitors, Santino
would gather rocks and stockpile them. The zoo keepers reasoned
that Santino wasn’t being driven by impulse to satisfy an
immediate physical or physiological need. He had formulated a
plan for his future and was working towards it. It was Santino
who gave me the idea to wait, plan and execute.
I wasn’t going to spend my eighteenth birthday in a
hospital. So, I waited. Stole money from the woman’s bag, the
money which would have paid for my next round of operation. And
I ran.
As I boarded the bus out of the city, I tried to picture me
as my father. Wondered what he felt like.
Relief?
Pleasure?

50. Guilt?
Hope
I could hear the wailing sirens far away in the distance. I
opened my eyes. I felt tired and weak. I smiled. I looked at the
rearview mirror, Irene had closed her eyes. I hoped and prayed
that the medics took their own sweet time. Give me just enough
time to make sure that Irene sleeps forever. I stuck my finger
deeper inside the opening in my torso and curled my finger. The
pain woke up Irene.
Irene
We were at Dr. Milchard’s office. Mum had made me promise
that we go see him at least once. She worried that Alex would
harm himself once she was gone. She thought Dr. Milchard had
helped Alex deal with his habit of self harm and mutilation. She
was on some serious medication.
She joked and promised that she would still be right there
on the bed, waiting for us to return. The last time we went to
see Dr. Milchard, Alex had spoken about his father. He never
knew him. Whatever he remembered, he had been trying really hard
to forget. What I understood from all the movies and TV shows
was that, a boy needs a father.
Since our last visit, nothing had changed. The same old
paintings, hung on the hallway. The same old woman, Janet
Summers, manned the phones in the reception. Her table still

51. covered with a clear plastic sheet, assorted files, a year
calendar sponsored by Johnson & Johnson propagating the drug
called Risperidone, and an old crummy desktop computer. The only
personal item Janet had on her table was a framed 4x6 picture of
a young couple proudly cradling a newborn baby and posing for
the camera. Must have been a picture of her son or daughter and
her grandchild. Her reason for existence, framed and set in a
place of respect.
I looked around at Dr. Milchard’s other patients, sitting
and waiting for old woman Janet to nod at them. And I could tell
their reason to be there.
All they wanted was to constantly hear that somebody loved
them.
All they wanted was a reason worth living for.
All they wanted was to belong.
All they wanted was to be heard.
I looked at Alex and the magazines placed aesthetically on
the coffee table. Nobody would ever love Alex. He could never
find a reason worth living for. He could never belong.
And I wanted it all. I wanted to be loved. To live. To
belong. I knew Alex wanted these things too. He just didn’t know
it yet.
I was Alex’s protector.
I was Alex’s lover.

52. I was Alex’s reason to live.
Paying Respect
In the novel that the movie Pinocchio was based on, Jiminy
cricket was brutally murdered and Pinocchio had his feet burned
off before being hanged by villagers.
I read the book years before Irene and I saw the movie
being played on television. It was the first book which made me
cry. The first book which made me feel weird and ugly about my
own self.
The doctor had called time.
08:24 PM.
The woman was dead, finally.
‘Pinocchio’ Irene whispered.
I hated her for bringing up Pinocchio. We were surrounded
by nurses, doctors, other patient families. Irene took me to my
sad place. And I cried. I cried till one of the doctors ordered
a shot of muscle relaxant to be injected up my bottom to calm me
down.
Irene suggested that we cremate the woman. She said that’s
what people did nowadays. The local law states that the coffin
in which the body arrives is the same one which goes inside the
incinerator. Like anybody gave a hoot about what the law stated.
The only thing good about the whole cremation process was to
feel the intense heat rush out at you when the door opened and

53. the conveyor rolled the coffin to consume it. The crematorium
provided a ground for us to spread the ashes. People left you
standing at the edge of the garden holding a brass pot with the
ashes and remains.
‘I always hated you’
Sprinkle.
‘You were stupid and selfish’
Sprinkle.
‘Thank you for dying’
Sprinkle.
‘I hope you stay dead’
Sprinkle.
Irene told me to hurry back home. They were going to show
unseen footages from her favorite reality show.
As Irene hurriedly opened the lock on the door, I thought I
saw Susie getting into a bus. It had been years since I last saw
Susie.
Flashback
‘You have to admit him’ Dr. Milchard insisted to mother who
sobbed herself in.
‘He needs help. He is getting increasingly unstable. He is
posing a threat, both to himself and to you’ Dr. Milchard
continued. Mother looked at us, with those sad teary eyes. You
know that look. You have seen it a million times before on

54. television. It is the look which a mother shares with her kids.
A look which tries hard to convey that she is sorry. That she is
helpless. That she failed. That she is guilty. That she is glad
that somebody else will take the fall.
Alex lay strapped to the bed. He was scheduled for a series
of surgeries.
Susie
It didn’t long for me to rekindle my friendship with Susie.
She had started work at the supermarket as a checkout girl. We
spent all our free time walking and talking. When we weren’t
together, we constantly texted each other. We spent talking on
the phone till day break. She was amazing and I was in awe. And
she laughed and giggled and called me silly names. On Sundays,
her day off, we would go to the park, eat ice cream and feed
bread to the ducks waddling about in the pond.
Donald duck’s voice started out as an attempt to do an
impression of a lamb. She was always so amazed I knew all these
‘silly’ tidbits.
‘I don’t like her’ Irene had exclaimed irritated one day.
Irritated enough to mute the television.
‘You act all weird around her’
‘But I like her…’I had blurted.
‘I wonder if she knows your secret?’ She spoke with a
sinister smile.

55. ‘I wonder if she knows that you keep all the things she
throws away.’ She mused as she opened the drawer on my study
table.
‘How?’I demanded. I always kept that drawer locked and I
always carried the key with me.
‘You think you are the only one with the key?’ she smiled
again before she burst out laughing loud.
‘I love her’ I yelled as I slammed the door behind me. I
was mad at her. I was mad at her for telling me what to do and
what not to do. I was mad at her for going through my stuff.
At that time I had no idea what Irene would do. But when it
happened, I knew exactly what had happened. And who had done it.
Susie and I had become more than just good friends. We
would sneak into the washroom and make out. We would kiss and
she would allow me to pet her over her bra. I so wanted to touch
her breasts. They felt softer and bigger than Irene’s.
‘I wnt 2 do it?’ Susie had texted me during her break.
‘Do what?’
‘U knw…’ She texted back with a winky smiley. I was scared
and excited.
‘Folks lvng town for sm stupid wedding. Cme over @ 10’
I was excited as I surveyed my wardrobe. I shaved and combed my
hair even more than I usually did. I ran all the way over to her

56. place. I now knew what people meant when they said they felt
butterflies in their tummy.
‘U ter?’I texted her. She opened the door and hurriedly
motioned me to come inside. She was dressed in shorts and a
flimsy top. She giggled as she closed the door and held my hand,
leading me to her bedroom. She closed her bedroom door and
stared at me with a wicked smile playing across her face. She
lifted her top over her head and threw it on her bed.
‘Go on! Take it off’ She urged as she untied the knot on
her shorts. I unbuttoned my shirt and removed it. Susie looked
gorgeous. She stepped closer and kissed me. Her hand ran over my
chest, her index finger rolling over my nipple. The feeling of
her warm naked body excited me. My hands travelled over her
naked back covered in goosebumps. Her hands were slowly moving
down my body. I pulled her shorts down.
I kissed her deep.
I kissed her cheeks.
I kissed her neck.
When I looked up, I saw Irene standing behind her. The
window open and her face covered by the blowing curtain. I
screamed in fright and pulled away from Susie. Susie still had
her hands down my pants. Her face looked shocked. Irene pushed
Susie on her bed and sat atop of her.

57. ‘I told you!’ Irene yelled at me as she pinned Susie’s
hands above her head.
Susie was yelling and struggling against Irene’s vice like
grip. Irene grabbed Susie’s top and stuffed it deep in her mouth
to stop from screaming. Irene slapped Susie hard across her
cheeks and whispered.
‘Stay quiet…’
‘Irene! What are you doing?’ I yelled as I tried pulling
Irene off Susie. Irene pushed me back hard. I remember the back
of my head hitting against something hard. The last thing I
remember was Irene whispering into my ears.
‘I told you to call it off!’ Her whisper was cold and calm.
I woke up to find myself in my bed. Irene was sitting on
the chair by the bed, looking expectantly at me.
‘Phew! You are alright’ she exclaimed and got off the
chair.
‘Susie?’ I asked the first and the most important question
among the swirl of questions which floated around my head. My
head hurt. My body ached.
‘Don’t worry’ Irene smiled. And I knew something horrible
had happened to Susie.
My Susie. I looked at Irene. She had pulled her chair to
the computer and was reading something.
I was scared.

58. I was angry.
‘Why?’I couldn’t help but cry.
‘Because you have me’ Irene replied. She turned around to
see me. She saw me crying and smiled.
‘It will get better’ She said, ‘I promise’.
My tears had finally dried up. I got off the bed. Something
on the computer screen caught my attention.
The moment I read the headlines, I knew what Irene had
done. I knew what happened to Susie.
“Young Woman Commits Suicide”
1 in 45,000 young adults aged between 15 to 28 commit
suicide each year.
The news article said
“that a suicide note was found next to the victim. The family of the victim, who
were out of the city at the time of the incident have been informed. The note doesn’t
blame anybody. The police are treating this case as a suicide for now.”
I stared at the picture of Susie the article carried along
with it. I felt like crying again, but I had dried up all my
tears. I didn’t notice Irene enter the room. She leaned over my
shoulders and put her arms around me. Her hands traveled down my
chest. Down my tummy. Her fingers got under the elastic band of
my shorts.
‘It is going to be okay…’ she whispered softly in my ears
as her hand moved up and down.

59. Alex
Alex was smart. But sometimes his smartness proved to be
irrevocably stupid. He had gone to the cops.
‘I KNOW WHO KILLED SUSIE ORMAN’ He had yelled as he barged
into the police station. The officer in charge had taken a
visibly disturbed Alex to where he sat and offered him a cup of
tea.
‘Susie Orman?’ The officer checked his notes.
‘Yes. It wasn’t a suicide… She was murdered’ Alex weeped.
‘Yes, right! Susie Orman… Hey Dick!’ The officer called out
to his friend. ‘This boy seems to be talking your tune’ the
office leaned back in chair. His shirt still held crumbs and
stains from his morning breakfast.
‘So what do you know kid?’ The man, the officer called as
Dick turned Alex’s chair around.
‘I know who killed Susie. She didn’t kill herself. Irene
killed her’ he weeped.
‘And what’s your name?’ Dick questioned as he quickly took
out his small pocket notepad.
‘Alex. Alexander McBain’ he mumbled.
‘And how did you know Susie?’ Dick continued his line of
questioning.
‘I was her boyfriend’ he claimed, he dried up his tears.
‘Nobody is going to believe you’ I whispered into his ears.

60. ‘And who is this Irene?’ Dick questioned.
‘She is my friend… My sister…’
‘I am his one true love’
The other officer who had busied himself with typing
clackity-clack on his computer turned around to the man he
called Dick. ‘There is no Irene in the records. But there is a
warrant out for Alexander McBain’
Alex bolted from the room. His mind was clearly buzzing
with questions. Poor boy. The answer was staring right past all
the mirrors he crossed as he ran back home.
Epiphany
‘Who the fuck are you?’ I yelled.
‘I am you. You silly boy!’ Irene was smiling. The kinds
which used all 12 kinds of muscles.
‘You are me. Though I did have to use all these wigs and
make up to look pretty.’ She pointed at her entire cosmetic
range which she so diligently used to look pretty.
Suddenly the raw knuckles, the fight at parking lots, the
accident at college. Susie. They all began to make sense.
I had what doctors called as ‘Ambiguous genetalia’. Which
is when a person appears to have both male and female sexual
organs. A vaginal opening and an enlarged clitoris. Or like in
my case, a less than average penis.

61. I heard the police sirens wailing in accordance to the
Doppler effect.
‘Run fatboy run!’ Irene yelled as I grabbed the keys to my
dead mother’s car.
As I sped through traffic and took the exit to the nearest
highway, night had fallen over the horizon.
‘God! You are hot when you finally begin to take action’
Irene smiled. Her hand, my hand moved away from the gear stick
and slid under the pants. I was hard and wet.
The vehicle’s stability around turns is directly related to
the probability of the car being engaged in a rollover accident.
This stability is determined by the equation between the center
of gravity of the car and the distance between the left and
right wheels. A high center of gravity and small distance
between the wheels, makes the car extremely unstable around fast
turns or sharp changes of direction. Like an extremely drunk
elephant with its legs tied together. It is bound to fall down.
That’s what happened to the car we were in.
I knew this, because they had done a special program on the
increasing number of rollover accidents at high speeds. But I
still explained it out aloud as my feet pushed the pedal down
harder till it could go no further south. The speedometer needle
raced.
80 KMPH.

62. 90 KMPH.
100 KMPH.
110 KMPH.
The car groaned, reminding me that I was traveling well
over hundred kilometers per hour inside a metal cage. Irene
started moving her hands harder, and faster. The needle shivered
with excitement as it inched slowly but steadily closer to the
120KMPH mark. So did I.
I pulled hard at the steering wheel as I came.
The cops and the medics were still fifteen minutes away.
Enough time for me to bleed death.
And that would the end.
Our end.
Hers and mine.