Meme Contribution

This is a meme, so please keep it going.
Awarded to me by PT aka thefrumpyprofessor.
This meme was started by I, Splotchy.
I tag mago Herr magician
Amit L
Quin


Story Title: There Always Has To Be a Start

I, Splotchy's Contribution:

The mall was crowded. There were happy people, angry people, people in a hurry, even a few people sleeping on benches. To the security guard, they were a blur of coats, hats and scarves. He was just beginning his second eight hour shift. He yawned, leaning against a pillar in the food court, the aftertaste of terrible mall cookies lingering on his tongue. His eyes abruptly snapped open with the loud sound of glass shattering behind him.

************

Cormac's Contribution:

The glass landed on the main concourse floor and the strung Christmas lights around the mall made the floor glitter like a field of glittering gems. Out of Hot Topic came a huge tasseled-shod foot and the glass cracked like ice under the foot's immense weight. Above that antiquated shoe was a massive muscular leg, clad in green tights.

The elder Mrs. Hajba knows what this creature is and she screams out its name, yet no one understands her. Mostly because everyone else is too busy screaming, but also because the only person would understand, her daughter Anastasia, is across the mall at T.G. McFunster's...trying to find husband number four, lest her, and her mother be deported.

This being that apparently is unknown to America, stands some sixteen feet tall in bright green and red clothing that would be more suitable to the Renaissance. The brute is muscular and misshapen, with veins that bulge and throb at a preternaturally speed. Its skin is bright white, and its teeth silver and black like tinsel. The eyes of the beast have no pupils or irises to speak of. They could best be described as giant red, opaque Christmas ball ornaments.

Mrs. Hajba summons every brain cell that American TV soaps haven't manged to destroy yet and she yells at the security guard, "It's Ghost of Kreestmass Disappoint-ted!"

************

MrMaCrum's Contribution:

Christmas was especially hectic here at the largest Mall in the Universe. Jenkins had been temporarily transferred over from his normal eight hours of checking doors at the local high school to double shifts here at the mall. On any given day starting in November, as many as 1,ooo,ooo shoppers a day flocked here to drop their credits in one or more of the 3000 shop til you drop stores found inside it's ten story 5000 acre complex. Increased traffic meant more shoplifting, assaults, and an uptick in the usual run of the mill bag thefts and purse snatchings. Jenkins definitely did not consider the quarter an hour raise to be enough compensation for what he had to put up with here. Nodding off sitting on a hard chair at the high school seemed like heaven about now.

"Base. Come in Base."

"Jenkins, that you? What's the problem? Jeezus guy, hold the mic away from your mouth some. I thought we went over that. The feed back is terrible."

"Uh, well okay, gotcha Base. Seems one of those new Tron androids got loose. Looks like the big one in the window display as a matter of fact. He's headed for food court 23."

"Jenkins, that display cannot move. They promised us that it was completely non-functional. Get your shit together and check it out."

"Base, that display maybe is supposed to be inoperative, but I tell you something big has just made a helluva mess from Hot Topic to the big tree display here on floor five. I see some woman up ahead waving at me. Maybe she has a clue. Jenkins out."

"Lady, lady." Jenkins shook the woman on the floor. She turned her head in Jenkins' direction. Panicked shoppers continued streaming by them in the opposite direction of the commotion closing in on food court 23.

"It's Ghost of Kreestmass Disappoint-ted!" That's all she said.

"What's that mean lady? Tell me."

Her eyes suddenly fixed on something over Jenkins shoulder. Jenkins turned........

**********

My (PipeTobacco's) Contribution:

.... and saw the ferocious claws of the mechanical Tron Android reaching towards his neck, and looked briefly into its "face" before he dropped to the floor and attempted to role away in a manner akin to Jackie Chan.

Unfortunately, Jenkins was no Chan, and his roll had more egg in it than those at the mall's Panda Express. A bit battered, he got back on his feet to see the Tron Android grasping and squeezing fervently a Mild Sauce packet he found to the side of Jenkin's burrito combo meal from Taco Bell.

"What the hell?" muttered Jenkins, as he grappled for his mike to call back to base again.

But as he pulled on the cord across his chest to reach the mike, he found the cord was severed. Where the mike was to be, attached to the epaulets of his uniform, was only a ripped piece of his shirt, drenched in blood.

* * * * *

Austere’s contribution:

Jenkins sniffed his red-smeared hand.
Maggi's special masala ketchup. From the Indian store. Whoever'd know! The mechanical Tron Android had a predilection for all things Asian.

Jenkins breathed deeply. No sudden moves, nothing to startle the creature. Possibly he could get away. Either that, or get trod upon, crushed to bits. He should have taken care of that insurance. Now it was too late.

Crunch Crunch. The monster chewed the burrito combo meal including the styrofoam plate to pieces.

"More!" he growled, and brought down the giant chandelier with a flick of his wrist.

The horrified crowd tried to crouch and look inconspicuous. All the shop doors had sealed at the first signs of danger, and all escape routes were blocked by the Iron Android's giant limbs. The wailing siren and blinking lights only angered him.

"More!" he roared again, and grabbed the shining, tinsel-decked Christmas tree, decorations and all, and flung it aside.

The crowd trembled. A few people fainted.
#

here the jasood is in bloom, fresh tender leaves tremble.
that shrub decked with pretty purple flowers
joyous in a peach dawn, it is just is.
someplace the neon nights are endless
somewhere a distant planet wobbled.

Almost 55 words

Cheating 1
“Was… was she very pretty?” He didn’t reply, turned to the other side of the bed instead. ”So when did it begin?” she whispered, tracing a different name in the sweat on his back.

Cheating 2
Click. The last fifty million transferred out to a Cayman Island account. All booked as expense in the main company. Every penny accounted for. Full and final. The phone buzzed. “Sure, send the auditors in. And make it quick. I have a Corporate Excellence Award to go to.”

187

tracks clatter to the distance.
twin strips of gleaming metal,
welded with rivets, sweat, grease.
gleaming tracks,
wiped clean.
free
of flesh shards, blood,
detritus, grime.
hammered strips of gleaming metal
meet someplace
where flowers
in memory
blood-red hibiscus, lilywhite
steal jealous color
from a widow’s ripped life.

see?
past the cobwebs and the grime.
just as luminous

Just this incredible sense of peace, and space.

Something about the play of sunlight on worn stone draws me back.
Something that I sort of know, but not quite.

Of tendrils carved in stone, a faint memory .
Even today the wind sighs over Bukhara.

Blessings~

She bowed with eyes closed, before the pleasant-faced deity, the patron God of the arts, the harbinger of good fortune and slayer of all evil. In her mind, quickly moving mass of chemical formulae straightened itself out of a jumble, sorted and shook itself straight, danced, morphed and then separated in orderly rows. “Get me out of this please please please dear God. I swear I wont have anything to do with medicinal chemistry ever again. Please God, those steroid transformations, where the circles close and open up and groups shuffle around rings on whim. No, I wont immigrate, not even if I get a full fee waiver and a visa for more med chem, so help me, God.”

She stood in front of the pleasant faced deity, strangely calm and wane, “You brought me to this and you will deliver. No, he says he’d rather not, he says he has other things to do. You have some other plans perhaps.” The marigold garlands seemed to take on the luster of the gold-plated idol. Outside, the rain-swept road was bustling with sounds of main street, small town India; honking rickshaws, buses hell-bent intent on finding a way, a song from a distant radio.

“Well, the company says its moving, lock, stock and filing cabinets. What shall we do? There really isn’t any work for me here. And I refuse to sit at home and be that ‘poor girl, she’s thirty- five and as yet, unmarried…’ The big city is scary, its is supposedly nasty, crime infested, and distant. And we don’t know anyone, not really. You think I should take a trial run and see how it goes?” Vighnaharta, one name among the million names the deity was known by, the remover of all obstacles, seemed to send a gentle smile her way.

Past ups and abysmal downs. Rejection letters, promotion highs, the first ever this and that, heartbreaks and tears. Illnesses patiently borne, fractures healed and falls that miraculously were stayed from becoming serious. Stock market ups and downs. Operations, home hunts, house changes, recalcitrant landladies, and landladies who miraculously became friends. Sudden insights and last-minute travel plan changes. Twist and turns, and an uncanny sixth sense that shielded her past people who didn’t seem right; life’s shortcuts that were better avoided.

Carried forth on a palm, protected, guided, no matter what.

Faith.

Why? I want to shake you hard and ask, or persist in my usual strident shrill harridan mode why why when what oh really! But intrinsically, whittled to the core, it’s a why, and with the benefit of the silver that liberally peppers black, I know yes, there is no why, not really. It just is, like a thread that bravely put on a front for so long, patched and spliced a couple of times, but was gradually frayed at the ends; till one day that was it. Enough. So I tiptoe away from these flame points, and sit by and share your silences. Day by day, I say.

Pre-diwali Sunday.
They’re out to shop.
"buy, or you're done!"
Glassware, linen, white goods, dry fruits, dazzlers, danglers
lip gloss, chocolates, eyeliner. Steelware. Luggage.
Indian. Imported. Counterfeit.
Everything. Now. Grab!
Crowds.
Temple quality crowds on an auspicious day?
Jostling pushing loud thrusting grabbing
“keep moving keep moving, quick on thedouble march fast keept'yurrlefft”
I gasp.
Genuflect at the till-altar.
A stranger's sweat on my skin.
Push free to a white sky.

Kaikeyi’s rant

Fourteen years: a slew of curses, a stretched silence
Five thousand hundred and ten, days of acid scorn
Shunned, as night slips into strained day
I, too, am the queen mother.

Wife- mother- widow- witch,
the mirrors jeer, echo
a harsh banshee wail, destiny’s words
I, too, am the queen mother

a quagmire of my own design
abuse and hate my crown of thorns
the acrid flame that purified molten gold
the weathered stone it was beaten fine on
I, too, am the queen mother.

Chants. Reflected off gold spires.
Swirling incense.
The prayer wheel.
Sangham sharanam gacchami.

Shuffling footsteps
A silent march.
The golden mean. The six fold path
Sangham sharanam gacchami.

Bowed ochre, the crack on wood on bone
Thudding boots on paved stone
Shots zip overhead
Sangham sharanam gacchami.




http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/26/world/asia/26cnd-myanmar.html?hp

Orange sherbet and Jemima Rabbit
And of course Sherbet has an Arabian Nights feel to it, a jewel-bedecked, pale as alabaster Scheherazade swathed in the finest of rose silks, with diamonds in her hair, spinning her tales through endless nights of star-crusted velvet, veering her tale to a dreary end so it just about splutters to a certain death, and THEN with a single brilliant turn of phrase setting it adrift like a kite, to another startling level, a gasp at life, surviving another sunset. Arabian Nights, and you; and I try keep my mind on the price of oil, straight roads and chrome and glass buildings of the bustling modern Arabian city you live in, force veer it away Scheherazade-like, from thinking of how straight a nose you have, the feel of your skin, and how your curiously-slit eyes shine like diamonds in the dark. But I’m no Scheherazade else this story would have had a different ending or none, and you wouldn’t perchance have tripped, hunting for a Scheherazade to call your own, roving past high-rise towns, past marketplaces, minarets, chat rooms, and skyscrapers. I was good, I was sweet. Nice, goody-two shoes nice; why, I can make a little go a very long way: three subs, one poem one haiku, scrawled black on white. I’ve just about begun.

History throws a golden sheen on events, a pale filtering sunshine that softens the harsh edges, blurs them to an indistinctive-ness, allows the luxury of selection, of dark and light, that real time do not. So that randomly or quite by choice: events, sequences, people, can be highlighted or played down. In a sense an ultimate play with words, with presentation, use one or another, add a mite here or an easing off there, or word a statement from quite another perspective, and meanings can change or be hinted at, distanced, quite at will. This then, is the force, the power of it all, majestic in its sweep, and with a turn of phrase or a casual word, interpretations can be created or reputations shaken.

The color red spread like a series of dots across the city, red dots joined by a thin thread, red dots pierced with manic intensity on white immaculate blotting paper where the color had diffused around pretty pin-points. Nine flare-ups and the sizzle of frying flesh preceded the dots, or maybe nineteen could have, but didn’t quite, the people refused in their wisdom to believe what the officials said, recognizing a cover-up for what it was. What could have been, what might have been and why on effing earth was it not, the people were so nice, no heads rolled, and every slip filed away under a big holdall labeled karma. This is one law that had always worked, it always had and would this once too. There was a cruel steel edge to it, it cut harsh sometimes but they went on, drinking in this hurt as well zombie like.

Seasons

Rina fumbled with her writing pad in her corner seat next to the satin-festooned ramp, trying to look invisible and confident by turns.

Dim chandelier lights, orchids, wall length mirrors, the chatterati in swishing silks and suits. Perfect for the Lkme fashion curtain raiser. But she’d rather be covering commodities; her usual beat, watching zinc burn up the bourses.

“ Oh did you really tell him that?” said an amused voice from the seat behind her. “Fuchsia is soo garish this year, specially ruffles. You told Arjun?”

“ Yes, pink is quite the new black. I told him to reconsider. After all, the Dalal name would forever be linked with such people. Whoever heard of such a thing.” a clipped accent replied.

“ Nouveau rich. Such poor taste. Imagine giving your interest the family jewellery to flaunt. Everyone has an interest or two, all right, but to give away heirlooms… how silly… “

“I told Arjun to watch out. Not quite our level. Or sensible.”

“So that Petro thing is off? That girl’s way too lean for this halter top.“

“He’ll do as I say. Old money knows the smell of cash. That’s what he says.”

“Really? I can’t believe you just said that. Terrible, isn’t it? ”

“ Why? What’s wrong with that? Just a few signatures on paper. Hemant’s showing this afternoon.”

“ Maybe I’ll go to the Galleria one. All the headlines, the news conferences, soundbytes?”

“ So what! It’s only a cross- border document. Even if the PM witnessed it.”

“ Rather unusual, I know. Seemed like such a smart deal. But under the circumstances, maybe.

Next morning the newspaper featured a headline: “Dalal to end $10 bill Petrochemical deal.”

Riyaaz*
Sunanda Ali Khan grimaced as her first born valiantly attacked the scales, notes of the sargam.
Jal, or Jallaluddin, second grader at River High as also thetwenty-fifth direct descendent of a navratna at Emperor Akbar's 16thcentury court, was attempting to learn classical music.
Outside, the environs of 17 Cedar Drive, Hill Slope, NJ wereblissfully quiet. As quiet as they can be on a weekday winterafternoon with just the sound of tyres swishing on the distanthighway.
Sunanda shut her eyes and tried to count to hundred with each mis-sungwarble. She tried to focus on the sweet base notes of the harmoniumand block the protests of her labrador, Raja, whom she'd banishedoutside.
A sound like a cat's warning screech arose from her son's vocalchords. Who could ever believe his illustrious lineage, the rewardsand the acclaim bestowed on his ancestor, honored with the privilegeof inaugurating the spring concert at the palace all those centuriesago?
"He'll get better with practice". She calmed herself.
"He'd better get better with practice". She mock- scolded herself.
It wasn't his fault really, it was the distance and this country.
Why, next year, they'd be returning to Allahabad, where the extendedAli-Khan family lived in a rambling mansion. Where even a newborncried in the right pitch and tone. It was in the blood, the lineage,the old women of the family sagely said.
Where Jal better sing if he were to fit in.
Hence these afternoon sessions, these wrestling bouts with pitch andtone, with notes sounding like colliding planets or demonic bat screeches.
~
Mr Smith groaned. Trust the neighbor's cat to keep him from some welldeserved rest on a day when he'd called in sick. What a cacophony! Heshould never have moved into this neighborhood. He turned and tried to sleep.
But no! There was no warning hiss between cries. He knew cats. He knew cats and screechy territory battles over back alleys and fire escapes.But this sounded different. He listened for a while, Sounded quitehuman, now that you thought about it. Almost like a cry for help. Acascading plea for help.
The main door was open, a labrador was growling and the cries seemedmore insistent when he hurried over to check.
Let the authorities handle this, he decided, and dialed 911.
(*riyaaz- practice)

Cross and naughts

Sarita Lall folded the tabloid so that only the color picture of the ancestral Tambaram abode was visible. The village home of the illustrious Tambaram family. Synonymous with telecom, infrastructure investments and frontline politics.

Someone with a good eye for architectural detail had taken the photo from the entrance, doing justice to the vast central courtyard with carved teak pillars lining the sides. The stone floor of the open courtyard was polished; the doors of the rooms that led off the balcony were somberly painted. Old money and culture. Traditional South Indian culture: vast estates, women in rustling silks, jasmine strands and diamond ear-rings.

“ Not good enough for the servant’s quarters”, Sarita mocked the tiny paying guest accommodation that she shared with two other girls; a room and a tiny balcony that almost touched the tenth floor balcony of the flat opposite. Green paint, large strips of plaster peeling off, posters of Bollywood stars on the walls. Standard issue metal furniture, cheap square-patterned bedsheets bartered off a hawker. A far cry from the Tambaram’s, for sure.

Positioning. Creating an image, a past that didn’t quite exist. For their eldest son, they’d seek a good girl with a public school education at the very least. A convent education or similar. A good background. Maybe a diplomat’s daughter. Or an expatriate doctor’s. Someone who had the polish, the breeding, St. James and Champs Elysees. Someone who could fit into the family, light the lamp at religious ceremonies and still hold her own with tinkling glass and gleaming lights.

Positioning. Something that her army background with its frequent postings had taught her. Show, don’t tell. Show just what you need to, traces and wisps and leave them wondering about the rest.

She’d find a way.

Chinar

Annapurna Shekhawat ran her fingers through her short gray hair, put her gold-framed specs away and stacked the business and general newspapers meticulously in two heaps. So Mr. Patel had been right about Kashyap, her nephew and heir apparent to the vast Shekhawat fortunes built on oil, textiles and steel.

Kashyap. Kash. That’s what his friends called him, a rather fast set of youngsters, all born to the manor, born with silver spoon privileges. Falling profit at the conglomerates that their forefathers had painstakingly built, and ever- increasing party-time, fashion shows, art events. Lamborghinis and pedigreed horses had enthralled Kashyap even as their oldest factory, the one her father-in-law had first built in Calcutta in 1955, was shut down, the real estate squirreled away and sold.

Mr. Patel, ever the loyal retainer, had coughed politely as was typical when he wanted to say something unpleasant. But he had been right. Something had to be done, and quickly.

Annapurna sighed. It was not the boy’s fault. No. It never was the boy’s fault. A pampered upbringing, the very best public school, hobnobbing with the sons of erstwhile rulers, offspring of politicians, old-money business scions. Vacations in Paris, in Lucerne. The best of this and that. Pampered, like fine china.

After all, he was the heir-apparent, she had no children, it was assumed the legacy would pass to Kash. Spoilt, indulged. None of that rough and tumble her husband had been put through, worked to the bone even as he was studying. No far-flung factory assignment, no punishing training in the Indian system of numbers after school hours, every moment accounted for. No ambition. And the tragedy had made it worse.

Kash had lost his parents in an air crash that had no survivors. He was suddenly the poor boy in tragic circumstances. It was impossible to tell him anything after that, he could do no wrong, not to the cloying relatives and hangers-on. Even his arranged marriage to a good girl from a middle class family hadn’t worked as she’d expected, for the girl had changed overnight; now the constant partying and socializing kept the young couple busy.

It was too bad she had no children. “ Perhaps if there were sibling rivalry. Perhaps if he had had more time..”. Annapurna looked into the distance past the row of chinar trees that lined the curving drive to the portico of the mansion. But now something would have to be done.

The bearer knocked politely before clearing away the silver tea service. The lawyers would be here soon. There’d be a ruckus when her will would be read, glaring headlines and outcry, an outsider walking away with the family fortune!

She must begin the process of creating a meticulous paper trail to back her decision.