Provocation

She seemed to be totally unaffected by all the commotion around her. She kept working in a relaxed and sedate manner.

“Don’t be that harsh on yourself, join the party; after all how often do we win the World Cup,” someone tried to provoke her but his effort was half-hearted and pathetic. She knew that they were all deliberately fooling themselves and that, in fact, they were all very angry. But it was not a righteous anger.

It was after thirty years that the football team had a golden chance of winning the World Cup. They were hosting the tournament and they were in the final. Other team in the final was the weakest team in the tournament; it was just sheer luck and some patchy hard work that had enabled it to reach the final. The hosts were too confident of a thumping win.

The game was yet to start but everyone had begun to celebrate. The frenzy had to be seen to be believed. They had waited for many years for this intoxicating moment.

But to everyone’s shock and disbelieve the host team lost and lost miserably.  Celebrations turned into one long dirge.  

No one knew that she was fighting her own ghosts; her younger brother had been killed by riotous fans during a football tournament five years back.

She pretended to remain unaffected. But she was not aware that her sang-froid was provoking them.

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A post for Three Word Wednesday and Magpie Tales

Accident

                                                                           Photo prompt © The Reclining Gentleman

“Don’t ever drive if you are drunk, never.”

For his father driving after drinking was nothing but a cardinal sin. But he often ignored old man’s warning and, luckily, on a few occasions narrowly missed hitting unwary pedestrians. 

But one late evening his luck ran out. He hit a young biker who was thrown off his bike with terrible ferocity. He was too drunk to realize the gravity of the situation and did not even stop to look at the victim.

Later the police informed his wife that their son had been killed in a hit and run accident.

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A post for Friday Fictioneers on a photo prompt.

Word count 99

Dream?

He must have been dreaming; he was certain that he had seen her but only in his dream. It was raining and she was peeping through the window. He was sure it was her; it had to be her.

But deep within he was shivering; it could not have been a dream. He was quite awake and was enjoying a cup of exotic green tea. She had brought it when she had gone to Japan.

He had been cursing himself for being extremely rash and violent; he had not given her even a chance to explain anything. It had always been like that with him. Every time he had blundered and learnt no lessons.

He had gone back to that tragic moment a hundred times and every time he had found himself guilty of being irrational; he could not find even an iota of justification for his anger.

But now he was determined to change. But he did not know that it was already too late.

He saw her again peeping through the glass, he saw the blood dripping from the deep gash on her forehead; terrified, he could not suppress his blood-curdling scream.     

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A post for Magpie Tales on a photo prompt.

The Woman in the Garden

For us, engrossed as we were in our haphazard life plans, she was as inconsequential as the flowers blooming in the garden. She had been creating masterpieces for past few months at an unhurried pace. She was completely at ease with her paints and paint brushes and flowers around her. She seemed untouched by the noxious ways of the world.

We laboured from sunrise to sunset, chasing our dreams. It was an endless chase. But that did not bother us. We were sure that all the odds and ends that we had succeeded to accumulate were prized rewards and our incessant efforts were worth their while.

One day one of us chose to talk to her.

‘I too chased my dreams….and for years….till one day I realized that the chase was as worthless as the dreams that I chased.’

‘You seem to be fascinated by these flowers? You keep painting flowers?’

‘They talk to me….of their impermanence.’ She smiled. It was a smile as beautiful as the flowers around her.

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A post for Three Word Wednesday and FFfAW

Partition

                                                                                            Photo prompt- © David Stewart 

It was after fifty years that he could visit the house where he had spent ten years of his childhood.

Partition of the country had let loose an irreversible process. Millions  of people had been rooted out of the land where they had lived for generations.

Before migrating, his grandfather had handed over the house to a friend, who accepted it like a cursed gift. But the grandfather failed to grow roots in the new land and slowly withered away.

He was shocked to learn that the grandfather’s friend had suffered a fatal heart attack the day his grandfather died.

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A post for Friday Fictioneers on a picture prompt.

Word count 100

The Green Light

It was a chilly night and, as always, the room was cold. He had wrapped the quilt all around his head; he was scared of catching the cold.

He thought that he had heard a strange sound, a sound that had distracted him in his sleep. But he was not too sure, ‘No, I was not sleeping; I was only worrying about my unfinished homework.’

He was terrified of his math teacher who loved spanking the boys, even those who did not make mistakes.

‘But I did hear a sound; what was that?’

He adjusted the quilt a bit and managed to create a small aperture and peeped through it.

He froze when he saw a green light shining in one corner of the room. The green light was floating like a weightless ball.

Terrified, he quickly wrapped the quilt around his face. But an overpowering curiosity rose somewhere deep within him. He slowly pushed the quilt away and uncovered his head.

A green light was surely floating in the room.

He tried but failed to wake up his elder brother. He wanted to get up and wake up his parents; but he could not muster enough courage and instead shut himself in his quilt that he wrapped tightly all around himself.

Next morning he thought that his elder brother was unusually happy and boisterous.

‘Did he play a prank?’ he looked at his elder brother; it was the dirtiest look that he could manage.

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A post for Sunday Photo Fiction on a photo prompt.

Good Samaritan

It was a beautiful day. There was not much traffic on the road. We were enjoying our drive. But we didn’t know that things were about to change.

The clouds came and soon the sky was flooded with thick, dark clouds.  It was late afternoon but day had unexpectedly turned into a night.

The rain came. We kept driving but slowly. The visibility was diminishing rapidly; the rain had very quickly turned into a torrential downpour.

We had to stop abruptly. A huge tree had fallen and had blocked the road.

It was so dark that we could not see as to what was on either side of the road. We had no option but to wait for the rain to stop and for the visibility to improve.

For no apparent reason we were talking to one another in hushed tones.

‘We are stuck in the middle of nowhere, no.’

‘Let us turn back.’

‘Let the rain stop.’

“But…’

A light at flashed at us. Someone knocked at the window.

‘Why don’t you follow me; you must be going to the engineering college?’ it was a Good Samaritan, out of nowhere.

We all looked at one another unsure of what we ought to do.  We eventually decided to follow him.

But he moved to quickly we were not able to keep pace with him. Soon we were alone on a narrow road in a dark forest.

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A post for FFfAW on a photo prompt

A Boat Ride

We were a gang of three but only one could swim. He was a cadet of the naval wing.

He borrowed a boat and took us for a ride. Unexpectedly the clouds came, wind rose and the rudder came unstuck; we could move only in circles.

There were no life-jackets. That was a fatal error. But there was a glimmer of hope for it was still not dark. 

‘Search party would come,’ he said.

But he was worried. His coach was impartial and ruthless in dealing with errant cadets; he had lied while borrowing the boat that we all could swim.

                              

(The story is based on a real life incident of school days.)

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A post for Friday Fictioneers on a photo prompt and

Three Word Wednesday; word prompts- fatal, glimmer, impartial.

Word count -101

Conversion

There were no more than hundred families of non-believers in that town. But all these years they had no conflict with the believers.

One day the believers said, ‘You have to either convert or leave.’

Although they were elastic in many of their habits yet the non-believers were deeply attached to their culture.   

It was not an amusing situation; the believers were serious. The non-believers got terrified. They hid themselves in their houses; held discussions and came to a heart-breaking decision.

It was no use leaving their homes; they chose to convert.

Now they break the eggs the believers’ way.

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Three Word Wednesday; word prompts- amusing, elastic, deeply.

Word count-100

Silence of the Valley

Everything was quite, unusually quite. Or so she thought.

Having lived all these years amidst the noise and cacophony of her city, she was struck by the silence of that place; the hills on one side and the sleepy valley stretching in front appeared to be smiling at her confusion. She had not known that some parts of earth were, even now, beautiful and peacefully quite.

“How I wish we had come here earlier?” she said to him.

He didn’t say anything. She was too overwhelmed by the beauty of that place to see that his eyes had turned hard and cruel.

“We must come here, again.”

He didn’t respond. She turned and looked at him and froze in terror.

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A post for Magpie Tales on a picture prompt.

Flowers

As he entered the room they stopped talking. Every one of them looked at him. A pregnant silence had descended in the room. But their eyes could not remain quite. The eyes were open in a kind of mock surprise.

They knew that she had spurned him. They had warned him but he was too confident of his charm; it had never failed him. But it did fail. He felt shattered.

“Now you would like teach her a lesson, no?” asked one with a sneering smile on his face.

“That won’t behove you; just let it go. There are any number of girls in the town, no?” said other.

“Don’t do anything rash or foolish. Just give her some time. May be she will have a change of heart,” this was the one who really hated him.

“Why would I do anything rash or foolish? Rather I would send her flowers; every day and day after day,” he said with an exceedingly warm smile.

They were all disappointed. They had not expected that he would take her rebuff that sportingly. They were wishing that he would retaliate and do something foolish and nasty.

“Flowers?” they could not believe him.

Only he knew that she was allergic to flowers and that he was going to make her feel miserable; every day and day after day.

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A post for Magpie Tales on a photo prompt.

Justice

                                                                                              Photo prompt © Clair Fuller

He had piteously pleaded his innocence. But the evidence arrayed by the police convinced the judge. He was found guilty of raping and killing his daughter.

He was sent to the jail for life. But it was the shame that broke his heart.

He was released from the prison when a serial killer confessed that he had raped and killed many girls since his twentieth birthday. Many unsolved cases attained finality with his confession.

The father too was found innocent after fifteen years in jail. But he did not leave the jail. He died on the day of his release.

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A post for FridayFictioneers on a photo prompt.