The rain was falling but only a little. The clouds came and spat at the earth in mockery. What was falling from the sky was only a hint of water but never a full shower. It didn’t do much good and only made the earth a little more thirsty and impatient.
Even at this time of the night, he could feel the heat escaping the earth. It was like touching a sick person. He thought he could hear the heat radiating from the ground. What it sounded like he couldn’t explain, even to himself, but he was sure he could hear it.
He picked up his phone and dialed a number. She still wasn’t taking his calls. He threw his phone at the wall and it broke into pieces. He had had enough. He picked up the razor blade and cut himself across the arm and then flung the blade away as well. Every time he called her, he would make a cut somewhere on his body. He had called her thirty seven times tonight.
He wondered what she could be doing that she wouldn’t answer even one his calls. It didn’t really matter. She didn’t pick up his calls and that was that. After he had broken up with her, they had decided to stay in touch at least till his experiment was over. He didn’t want to do so but she had insisted on talking to him at least once a week. In the beginning he had not taken her calls and whenever he had, he had kept it as short as possible. He didn’t need any news or gossip about anyone and since he had decided to lock himself up away from everything for a long time he didn’t really have anything to talk about except for the story that he wanted this experience to bring out. Not much was happening on that end either.
Maybe she had lost her phone but that wasn’t possible. He had been trying to call her for the past three weeks now without success. She would have surely gotten her number blocked by now or at least told him about it if that was the case. Or maybe she had died in an accident and her phone was still working but three weeks is long enough for a phone to discharge. Somewhere he hoped that she was dead. At least that would explain something – give his unanswered calls some sort of logic.
Or maybe she just didn’t want to talk to him anymore and that thought drove him insane. She knew what he was going through even though he had never tried to show it in his calls. She knew that he had locked himself out from everything in this little house for six months. Four months had passed by now and he hadn’t talked to her in almost a month.
He was remembering how this damned experiment came to be. Almost a year ago, he was struggling with writing his new book. He had spent three months to find the right story but it didn’t come to him. At first he thought it was just a writer’s block and would pass by in some time but that blankness stayed. He was just simply out of stories and nothing really interested him anymore. His publishers wanted new material from him and all he had were thousands of crumpled papers with only a few scratched out lines in each. He decided to lock himself up in a house for about six months and write about that experience. At first, it seemed like an idea that was only a ‘spectacle’ but it interested him and he decided to go ahead with it. He promised his publishers a new book by the end of six months.
And now, almost four months later, he realized it he had come to almost nothing. He really couldn’t turn back from here. The event had been much publicized and people expected a lot from him. He couldn’t just walk out before he finished half a year and even if he did the rest of his life would go down the drain. No one would want to publish him and he was just thirty years old. He couldn’t stay here anymore either.
It was driving him insane to not have anyone to talk to. Even though he was generally quiet, he figured there is some contact even when two people are sitting together in silence. Even that silence meant something. He was tired of staring at the same walls everyday, tired of the same fucking hills that he could see through the window and tired of listening to his own voice. He craved to see something else. At this point, he would rather see someone getting murdered than these yellow walls or the green hills. And now his only touch with any humanity had ceased because that bitch wouldn’t take his calls.
He decided to kill himself.
He picked up the blade from the table and held it against his wrist, ready to slash it open. He tried to console himself with the thought that at least he would die in an attempt to achieve something great. He knew that it was a lie. He was simply giving up. In that moment of madness he would have almost gone all the way if something hadn’t struck him.
He walked over to the entrance door. The passage was filled with boxes in which t he had brought all his stuff. But upon reaching here he had never really opened them. He walked over to one of them, crouched upon the ground and started opening it. He wanted to look at it once. There it was, underneath all the papers and books, still kept in the same blue file. The first story he had ever published, when he was twenty one.
He remembered how he had struggled with it, facing rejections almost everywhere for a long time but he had stuck to it because he knew there was something good in it. But things were different now. Back then he was a nobody, but now he had a reputation to live up to and this place was killing him. He had tasted success and the fear of losing it was too great. He again held the blade against his wrist but he couldn’t move his eyes away from that first story of his.
He picked it up again and stared at it. He was much calmer now. He wondered what would happen if he really was to kill himself. Nothing. A funeral would be held and someone would come and lie about what a great man he was and then they would all go back home. The world would move on. The only one he could talk to had passed him by without even slightest care or concern. Even death seemed pointless now. For that moment, he was suspended in a perfect balance between contradictions and he felt his brain would be ripped apart.
He walked over to the window and looked outside. It was still dark and cold but the sun would be out any moment. He decided to count till a hundred. If he saw the line of light over the horizon by then, he would go back to his desk and write. It would be hard but he would do it somehow. . But if it still remained dark then he would take the drop down the hill. He lit a cigarette and started counting. His eyes were fixed upon the horizon.
Avy comments:
It’s a good story and a great title.
However, the end, though ambiguous , leaves it all hanging. There is another kind of ambiguous end that might be possible. What would it be?
I think you are now ready to write your sci-fi story.
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