The sky thickened rapidly, the ship now was indistinguishable from the sea. Only flashes of lightening revealed the scrolls soaring, monstrous giants waiting for their feed. The Captain's eyes said it all. Death was hunting.

“Get off” he boomed pointing to the only lifeboat on board. My mind stopped, then my body took over. The chains lashed at me whilst I loosed the wood delivering it below. I dived in, finding myself under the roof of a greedy wave, my cuts dribbling blood.

The lifeboat tripped. Skidding on black polish, it ripped open the foaming tips and spat me out like a disturbing fragment lodged in its throat.
​
Then a wail shattered the fizzing blubber.  A giant seagull descended targeting my raw flesh and with its beak swung me over. Seated on white pink feathers I rode, flew to the cotton fields above, resurrected.

After twenty minutes going up and down, side-stepping cargo cranes and nearly falling into a hold being stowed, I found the bridge.

Hesitating before going in, I had to find my bearings. Persuade myself that I could pull it through. I looked at my tights, two ladders had climbed to my inner thigh. My skirt had oil stains and one of the heels was about to crash. I mean who I was trying to convince?

I pushed on, urged by a will to at least finish the mess I was in. I announced my visit with a cough. The Captain was standing there, a seven feet tall Father Christmas, white beard, moustache and blue gaze.

“You´re the new one?”

I nodded.

“Look dear, have you ever done this before? There's always a first time. I'll help and then we'll celebrate”.

His warm hand took me. I was accepted.

We enter the Regency Tea Rooms, university friends on our annual reunion. The waiter seats us in front of the marble fireplace. On the mantelpiece under the Edwardian clock stands a solitary porcelain vase holding a blood-red rose. ‘Nice touch, very elegant,’ I think as we sit down on plush velvet-upholstered chairs. As scruffy students we wouldn’t have been allowed entry, but times have changed and so have we.

We order tea, a pot of Earl Gray and one of Darjeeling, her favorite. Sally duly arrives, fashionably late. Thin, too thin, she looks fragile in her faux fur coat, not like the now plump Susan and portly Alan, who have settled robustly into smug middle-age with their families and careers. Me too, I suppose, though not quite with the same ease.

She had her first breakdown at college, I recall. A broken love affair she couldn’t get over. We were all Eng Lit majors, but Sally was the only one who wrote poetry. She lived it, while we were considering our options. These turned out to be post grad qualifications in accountancy for Susan, and law for Alan and myself.

Sally, quite a looker in those days, got snapped up by an older man, a barrister, and devoted herself to writing, having a few pieces published in the small presses here and there. But his affairs and the divorce crushed her again, followed by an abortive attempt at a journalist career. We had visited her in various institutions, going together because one-on-one was too much to bear. A year ago, at the Elmtree ‘rest home’, she was a zombie medicated on Thorazine. She recovered as she always did, for a time.

Over the years she had found God, men, booze, Buddha, yoga, mindfulness, you name it, but everything and everyone eventually deserted this tormented soul. Except for us.

Today she is ebullient.

“Hi, guys!” she exclaims using the American slang we would have eschewed back in the day, but now their soaps and Hollywood movies have infected us all.

“Sally!” we respond.

“How the hell are you?” says Susan, and Sally proceeds to dominate the conversation. Painting is her latest fad, and she’s writing a novel, about what exactly we are unable to ascertain.

‘Prozac,’ I think cynically. ‘It’s the Prozac talking.’

While Susan and Alan indulge her, perhaps thinking she is finally ‘alright’, I fall silent, seeing through the façade.

“Always the quiet one weren’t you, Ian?” she says to me as if sensing something.

I smile and blush, meeting her eyes, the windows of the soul. Yet hers are whirlpools and seem to have no centre. I quickly look away not knowing what on earth to say.

“Still waters run deep,” says Alan, saving the day.

Ha, ha, ha, we all laugh, and they settle down again to tea and small talk.

​Ignoring their chatter, I study the porcelain vase on the mantelpiece, thinking how just one tremor, the smallest of knocks, could make it fall and shatter.

​It was my adventurous experience just five days before my sixteenth birthday when I attended the last school excursion cum camp near the premise of Kajiranga National Park. As the final hour rang, our mentor instructed me along with my mates to pack up and we were ready to leave the place.
 
On the way, we stopped near a tunnel as the ground beneath our shoes felt shaken. About twenty feet away the image was not hazy, we discovered some black species were coming towards us. Facing other direction we started to run. Hiding behind some long bushes, we tried to make sense of what we were looking at. With a repulsive mood we waited and discovered that the black demons were the elephants, they headed towards the tunnel to drink water.
 
All of a sudden, a small kid of a mother elephant fell into a narrow channel and it laid there. The small elephant was unable to stand up, mother and other elephants tried to drag the kid up with their trunks but failed. Within the moments, the mother elephant became wild and we felt that our bodies were trembling in fear. After some time, the elephants departed the area and only the small one was laid alone in the tunnel.
 
Our mentor came out from the shadow of bushes, he moved toward the unfortunate little elephant. He looked down at the eyes of the elephant, tears were coming out with pain and agony. It was trumpeting but nobody remained to help him.
 
We were already late to reach home but our mentor informed the forest security force and we waited till they reached there to rescue the small elephant. We were late but happy with our adventurous excursion.

It had been a long journey, but now he was tired, so damnably tired. Jason Trent stopped the car in Old Town and got out. Using his cane, he walked slowly, painfully along the deserted main street to the theater where he was once the projectionist. On his last night of work, he closed up then stopped by the manager's office, full of anger. It was surely the manager's fault that the theater was closing. Somehow, he had "sold out" all his loyal employees. Trent was only twenty-seven years old, with a wife and two children. What would they do, now that he was out of work?

Before he knew fully what he was doing, a sudden fit of rage possessed Trent. He pulled out his pocket knife and, without thinking, plunged the blade into the manager's throat. Jason fled, leaving his employer lying across his desk, his life's blood draining away.

Trent, not wishing to spend the rest of his life in prison for a terrible lapse of judgement, denied any knowledge of the murder, claiming the manager had been fine when he, Jason, left the theater that night, and he was believed. He tried to put it all behind him, went on to other jobs, raised his children, lived many years happily with his beloved wife. Now and then he had nightmares in which his murderous deed came back to haunt him but always shrugged them off.

Then his wife quietly passed away, leaving Jason Trent alone and so very lonely. More and more he caught himself recalling that night so long ago when he committed the senseless murder . . .

Trent stopped in front of the theater, looked about to make sure no one else was around, then went around to the back exit. The door was locked, but no one had removed the spare key from under the rotting door mat and let himself inside. Flashlight in hand, he made his way precariously through a littered hallway where part of the ceiling had fallen, and came finally to what had once been the manager's office.

He moved around behind the desk, sat in a creaking chair, laid aside his cane, and took out the old pocket knife and opened it. Earlier he had honed the blade so that it was as sharp as a surgeon's scalpel.

​"I must do this; I must make things right," he told himself; then, summoning all his remaining nerve and strength, drove the blade into his throat. Amazingly, he noted, there was very little pain as the final darkness began to fall upon him.

My head is throbbing; my mind scattered. Stars begin to fill my head. His warm embrace covers my existence; the galaxy is mine. He is my king and I am his queen. Jumping from planet to planet, our love grows deeper, stronger.

The day is long without his love. Day after day, he sits above the clouds pondering what I am doing. He imagines my face; dark blue eyes that shine like the tides and a smile that gleams. When night comes, he is thrilled. He greets me with a kiss then leaves. He loves me so much that he dies every night so that I can breathe. That passing moment is worth waiting an eternity.

Dawn brings only sadness to me. And to him. His eyes fill with sorrow, for I must leave again. Rain soon covers the ground and the day goes by particularly slow. His life remains incomplete without my love. Everyday his eyes see beyond the clouds but his mind drifts to our intangible love. The evening comes and his mood becomes radiant; shining like Heaven’s gates opening for the first time. I will soon be close to him. Dusk will reveal the most beautiful sight he could ever imagine. The shining opalescent gleam of my skin is evident but my eyes have lost their twinkle. 

“Luna!” he said.

“Solar, why do you keep doing this? It only brings us pain.” Her eyes drift towards the ground, avoiding his loving gaze. 

“Pain and beauty often come together.” 

He steps closer; his hands cup my face and warmth consumes me. The tides rise with our passion; Solar’s lips brush mine. My body and mind are on cloud nine. 

“The Solar Eclipse tomorrow will give us more time, I promise. You are my one and only Luna, don’t forget that.” 

And he was gone. 

***

The light of dawn came faster than expected. The clouds part for the longest passing between the two lovers. The kiss is the only thing on her mind. You’re my one and only whirls in her head. Tomorrow was here and he had promised they would have more time to be together. Her spirit aches for him… wanting him for eternity.

​“Why are you wearing a noose like a tie?"
“My brother got me a job interview at his firm."


“That's a great internship, I'd kill for the experience!"
“Everyone says that. I'm not that impressed."


“Seriously, please, tell me that rope wasn't around your neck!"
“Man, Big Bro will be pissed when his Boss tells him!"


“What's wrong with you?"
“I have cancer and my family is acting as if everything is normal. They won't address the seriousness of the situation. They find it difficult to acknowledge I'm not healthy. The Chemotherapy treatments are working, for now, and in their heads I'm going to beat this. But they don't seem to grasp how likely I am to die."


“Wow, I assumed you were being ironic or something. Maybe you should talk to your family about this."
“To be honest, I wouldn't know how to start."