Visitors

Akash opened his eyes with some effort. The bedroom was still pitch dark. Was that a loud thud that woke him? He turned over his phone. Four a.m. Maybe his girlfriend, Miya, was back from vacation? But she wasn’t supposed to be back for another week. He thought of getting up and checking, but his eyes were too heavy. He strained to hear any other noise. When he heard nothing, he pulled the blanket over his head and went back to sleep.

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Traveler

The boy felt swallowed by darkness whenever the moon hid behind a cloud. Wind blew through the thick forest like the raspy breath of old men back at the village. The wavering flame from his torch barely showed the narrow trail he followed.

 “Who goes there?” A loud, harsh voice came from a bush a few steps ahead of him.

The Shape of Magic

The ceremony for announcing the royal wizard was always done in open-air, for reasons Ashna never understood. It was autumn, and a cold wind blew through the deer park. Ashna sat in his chair in the front row with the rest of the council wizards, shivering a little. He drew his cloak closer around him. He could hear the throng of people standing behind him, whispering, gossiping, speculating about the next royal wizard. He was in the running for the post, but that didn’t mean anything. The politics of the court had its own flow, its own shape, and Ashna had long back given up on capturing it.

Instead he focused on the remaining leaf of a tree he could see at the end of the deer park, behind the king’s make-shift throne. The leaf fluttered violently in the wind. Ashana felt it and tried to hold it with his mind. It was difficult, given the distance and all the noise. He focused his attention more and excluded everything.

The Flood

Mark couldn’t hear anything, but the flood was visible in the distance. Calm and slow. It seemed to be approaching the first few downtown skyscrapers. It felt like a silent movie.

“Get out now, dad!” Joan was shouting outside the car.

Stone-man

The screams grew louder as Stone-man ran towards the room. Large flames danced around him, now leaping forward, now going back, teasing him with their carefree somersaults. The room’s door was engulfed in flames, he couldn’t get the boy out from there. If Mer-woman was here, she could hold the fire long enough for him to get the boy out. But she was outside the house, trying to douse the right places so the whole house wouldn’t collapse.

Dancing with the Stars

The earth was destroyed. No matter how I busied myself in the chores, the thought kept coming back to my mind in a periodic cycle like the chimes of the innumerable clocks on the planet I once called home. I am on a little spaceship like a few thousand others, moving towards unknown destinations in all directions of the galaxy. I pushed these thoughts away and went to check my monitor for the exploration routine as I had for ten years. But that day was different.

The Curse of Wyrd

Mark Johnson stared at the gifts strewn across his office desk. In the center lay the leftover cake from the party, mangled from the assault of many forks but with the letters “py retirem” still intact in the middle. How many years spent at the company? Twenty? Somewhere around that. His memory was getting slower every day. In the last few years, people often had to remind him their names, and on several occasions he had mixed up the invoices of clients. It was time to retire, time to move on.

Anatomy of a Goodbye

Trees along the road brooded on their faint shadows as night drew nearer. Vish walked up to the door of Mr. and Mrs. Mehra’s house and knocked gently. A few seconds went by. His eyes wandered towards the doormat on which he had once spilled a cup of tea. Then the door opened.

Moving

It was almost dark. As Megan parked her car in the driveway and got out, she saw the movers take out a green couch out of the house. A little pang of nostalgia rose in her, then swiftly dissolved into an overwhelming sense of liberty. In the past one year, she had spent many hours lying on this couch. Most of them had been miserable.

Capital

The winter sun had been decaying all afternoon like a rotten fruit. Now it suddenly gave up its struggle and darkness fell on the little town like a heavy blanket. The four buildings of the boys’ hostel tried to be defiant against the slowly approaching fog, but only managed to stand awkwardly in the speckled light of the few working street lamps. Lights from some windows stared out in the darkness, as if surprised at the unexpected arrival of the night.