- Kurt Cobain

He sits in silence in an unending void, pitch black, the black that haunted you at night when you were thirsty but didn’t have the courage to walk those twenty steps towards the kitchen, it haunts you still. He is transfixed into a numbing stillness. He wants to understand his purpose. He has read every word that claimed to offer him gratification for surviving thus far. The Upanishads, the Old Testament and the new, the Sutras and Confucianism. He tossed it all until it hit every surface inside his head, yet, it failed to make any sense. 

These were the kind of revelations that have caused thrashing waves of torment to millions, if not all. He was sure of one indisputable fact- that loneliness was comforting because it assured insolubility, not being responsible to answer another query about an existence that had never made sense to him. Whatever he would say would be another lie, a lie he was conditioned to think was the true nature of his morality. It is times like these every living entity dreads, the questions of morality, existence, purpose and an inescapable end to all of it. He is not sure. He never has been.

How do you know when you are alive? Does breathing entail the existence of life or we are confusing the process of being alive with the idea of having a purpose? Are we alive only when we are creating or the mere actuality of persisting on earth qualifies us as alive? These are things that keep him up into the wee hours; it is becoming an addictive routine, this meditation of sorts. It’s a chance for him to bloat his despicable human frailty- his id, him pathetically believing that he matters in this savage wasteland. His miniscule breathing in this prodigious world makes a difference to the cosmic clockwork.

He knows it all too well. He thinks about dinner now. Did the last piece of pie rot out in the fridge or he’ll need to wake her up. She tells him every day that he needs to learn the basics. He gets up and refills his coffee mug with the surviving vestiges of whiskey. It burns his insides, the whiskey, he doesn’t remember the last time he had a full meal, and she will kill him.

He grazes a look on the sleeping form under the sheets, just a wild mess of mahogany hair and creamy skin. He imagines them together in a few years into the future and immediately becomes aware of the crease settling in between his eyes. He is not sure, as is she. He then realises, if human affairs are not riding the same wave towards their conclusion then how can a messed up web of outcomes, ruled by unfixed decisions, have a definite finality. He will never be sure of the future, simply because he will write a new one every day.

He mounts the Muddy waters onto his vintage record player  and resumes the soft tapping on his macbook. He tried to maintain a journal, but “they weren’t meant to be”, he remembers it in her raspy sexed up voice. It’s three in the morning- the time for artists, loners and lovers. He smiles, realising we are all a little bit of all three.

The tapping reaches a fever pitch, the pages bound by magical realism, this is a new thing that has got him intrigued, and he’s is good at it, or so, she says. The page numbers are ascending. He is writing the epilogue, more for the benefit of the reader and the publishers than his own, he doesn’t care for subjecting an ending to another ending, kind of defeats the whole purpose of a conclusion. He never understood the usefulness of a post- script.

The sky is becoming lighter like soaked chalk on the wall, slowly, making you aware with every second that you are alive if you can feel it change from midnight blue to a violent violet. She floats over the floor without making a single sound, her hair in an untamed mess and the huge glasses sliding off her nose, her eyes still dreaming up poetry. She rests her elbows on the table and stares at him intently. He looks at her fleetingly, he can’t afford to ruin his perfect ending, those eyes are lethal for coherence and alcohol isn’t the only substance that causes intoxication.

He types - This incompleteness is all we have, when we are not sure, we are alive.

“You are one glorious mindfuck”, he utters, not meeting her eye, bidding farewell to the keys.

P.S. credits to Graham Greene and Charles Bukowski for being the real glorious mindfucks. My second semester exams have finally ended, I really need to find a new sad playlist. I hope everyone is happy in their lives. I wrote this because we all have our messed up days. Thanks for reading, I won't bite if you leave a comment, I swear.

He walked in the purple haze. The light filtered by the dust motes, softly falling on her phantasmal visage or mirage? His feet lucidly trudging the moss floor. The errant pounding of the massive stereos now a soft thumping on the ground, his steps mirrored the beat. The graciously poured alcohol had started making its intentions clear. His hands instinctively ran through his floppy hair.

He could smell the smoke from this distance, the familiar scent of the wild mingling with soot from the cedars. He trembled a little, a small part of him afraid to disrupt this perfect Shangri-La. He quirked his lips remembering, “Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?” He steadied his breath and set his gaze on the magical enchantment especially conjured from his personal hell.

“Will you paint me?” she laughed quietly, her eyes playing with the light. His eyes fell on the Art supplies at her feet. She smiled a lost smile, a trick of the eyes he guessed. “I guess I have time” he scrutinized her face, probing for an indication for this hour to be a dreamer’s paradise. “I am getting old here” she chortled, her eyelashes casting shadows on her cheeks. He sat down on the grass, his back against a cedar trunk. Never once did he let  his gaze off her, worried if she’d fade away. She was wreathed by an Elysian glow, the kind we read in folklore. Her head was swaying to some imaginary tune he wished he could hear too.

The charcoal in his hands glided on the paper unceasingly, his eyes lost in the valleys and moons of her facial world; every part of it was a revelation. He remembered something from a book he’d read awhile ago, the unworldly maiden who was perpetually lost in the woods. Her hair tangled into the branches and she became one of the trees.

 She held still but there was fluidity to it. The Sun kissed the horizon and the world became a balmy breeze.

“Do you come here often?” he asked her with palpable curiosity, he was finished with the portrait. His fingers lightly brushing the shadows, lingering wistful stroke on her lips.  “Yes, whenever you do.” She murmured, her voice becoming dreamy.

He looked up to find an empty space, just in time to realize that he had invented her all along.

P.S. This story doesn’t imply that your beloved author writes under chemical influence. Also, it’s magical to write in a toasty blanket- of- dreams on a chilly Winter evening.