Wednesday, August 1, 2007

The Drop of Red [fiction]

She listens to the static on the radio and assumes that there’s nothing left to explore. There’s a bitter taste in her mouth. A gale of haze runs through her nostrils down to her lungs and reaches her blood stream: the half-smoked joint makes her heartbeats slow down. The room projects a rainbow of smells: camphor, burnt leaves, wet earth… The yellow light of the lampshade is adulterated by the circles and waves of white smoke that fly around till they thaw in the air.

She lies naked in her bed. Her dark skin against the white. She is the drop of black that fell onto the veil of the bride. The sheets are contaminated with warmth. Heat that her own body (and somebody else’s?) transferred onto the bed. She feels the moist of the cotton pillow cover against her cheek. Her whole body is still covered with beads of perspiration that came unto her like tiny spiders cornering a mosquito.

She realizes that it was not only her own body that gave birth to that thin layer of pearly water that lends a glow to her skin. There, on her tainted skin, also lies the sweat, the saliva, the toxic chemicals of another one. She wonders whether his excrements and hers will make love and give birth to a monster. Not the same monster that was under her bed when she was a child: she sees her bronze skin covered with pestilence and pandemic boils. Gloomy craters vomiting blackened purple liquids. Dry skin being ripped off like iron foils in stormy weather exposing the shame of her charcoal blood.

She sits up, her arms around her legs, chin on her knees, black curls falling on her face. She hugs herself in the fetus-like position listening to the clock ticking thirty times or so.

She finally gets out of bed. The tip of her toes touches the cold white marble- her first touch with the earth! Goosebumps, like small snowy hills suddenly cropping up on a desert, assault her legs. And it’s tip-toed that she makes her way through the paints, brushes, books, papers, canvasses lying on the ground. Her hand reaches the tap, and she lets herself drown in the boiling drops excreted by the shower. They wrap each part of her body- her face, her hair, her tongue, her lips and even her most private parts.

In the room, alone, amongst the snow of the bed sheets... remains the drop of red.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

i definiely think your prose is superior to your poetry. this piece is very well-written. pretty compact. and the flow of words is good. i like the last few lines best. telling :)

Aditi said...

liked the way u developed this from the six line poem...

its interstin to see hw u transformed it.....
it wrked itself up into sumthng that has excellent imagery!

the last line that was a part of ur earlier piece has more background to it and comes through a lot better! keep up the good work!

Unknown said...

tikama, remember when you showed me your writings in mauritius?

well i have to say: you've come a long way babes!