“Where is that poem? I am amazed my father left back a poem and such great minds cannot solve it.” Since, the time I had picked up Marco life was not within my own control, it was sweeping past me at a rhythm not my own.

Rocky seemed to immensely enjoy but Mic was equally sad and remorseful, worrying, scared perhaps.

A beefy muscle and a gun or a tag does not make a human, non human. Every human is scared even the soldiers when they fight. That fear can be transformed into violence is the most amazing weapon humans have ever used against fellow humans and animals. I was incredibly impressed by the MIT scientists who ran the experiment.

Milawi was working on an experiment and one day while we shared a puff in the backyard, she told me,

“You know I would further a research in this stream. How violence in humans is controlled only by one very potent switch called fear. How humans over the years or animals have not attacked just only because they felt threatened, instead they felt fear- fear of survival, fear of losing, fear of everything they considered true at that moment.”

“That is what also drives humans insane.” I added.

She had no place to go and she had been under a lot of debt which she had borrowed. I had cleaned half of her debt and that’s how we became friends. Often brilliant minds are broke, a perfect place where the world wields it’s attack. But, then I became a broke while helping her. This could have taken me two ways- either made me hate her for losing my helpline helping her or could have made me have more compassion for her, but I chose to ignore both ways, I chose the middle path. It was neutral, non hateful and compassion paved the way of course.

“Fine, I must be away for work. You take care girl. Don’t take any more debts. I have left some money use it. Please cut down on everything that is taking you to destruction. You are a strong mind. You can counter nonsense well.”

“I was trying to become a part of this world. Since, now I have decided no longer to do that, you know the demons don’t even swim closer to my head.” She pressed the cigarette beneath her feet.

“How long would you be gone? She looked up from the burning cigarette.

“As long as it takes for the job and to fill back my bucket bringing it back to survival mode. I am penniless, do you know that? I have just 100 dollars to reach the airport and this one pair of dress and just one more in this bag.”

She smiled, “You always believed in travelling light.”

The taxi stopped and I was on it. The gleaming evening lights, the dim human figures, the drizzle all was a haze now.

“My dad never showed it to me.”

“In fact I think otherwise, he might have.” Lawrence had perhaps no idea or maybe all of it.

Marco was perhaps not feeling that bad now. He stood up, the shield was removed, We later knew it was a laser beam channel which activated as soon as anybody entered the circle, visibly there was no way to get rid of it since it ran down fifty feet below and up to the roof. It covered all major vaults and all the water and sanitation facility, so basically anyone within that parameter of fifty feet would be caught, since the wall would come up automatically alerting the security. It did not run on electricity and hence stopping electricity was not an alternative. It ran from a reservoir which contained the lightning ⛈ and generated electricity only to cover this mammoth invisible giant.

“How did you do it?” Rocky seemed so absorbed in everything he heard.

“Well, it’s easy you see. We capture small gushes of lightning. We do not capture anything which is generating huge fields, yet those are enough to protect the reservoir from invasion since they slowly amplify in the reservoir and also facilitate its use as and when required.” Xi seemed proud of this ghost facility.

“Okay, I suppose rest of the questions cannot be answered for security reasons.” Lawrence added.

Rocky nodded like a good boy.

“What about the letter? Is anyone showing it to me?”

Just then the gamma radiator switched off and within a second the Black Curtain was in Marco’s hand. But, we were again wishing the white spurt or fountain of puffy light emanating from the laser beam.

“Does this make sense?”

I took it in my hands. It had not changed. The cushion like object which could be stretched into a curtain and could be squeezed into a match box, was never away from my memory. Earlier I had never wondered about what it was? What it was made up of? What comprises it’s molecules? What could be done with it? I was happy then, now I was not, since my mind was not blank, it was an active volcano.

Marco took it from my hand. He placed it back in its place, covered it with an equally soft white piece of muslin cloth and boom! the gamma lantern came alive.

The two men took position and switched off the laser beam. The beam had to be switched off on either side at the same time. A second’s delay could be fatal.”

“Run.” Rocky put us in a mode where our minds had already began running whereas our bodies were still deciding if to follow the mind.

“Don’t. It’s impenetrable.” Lawrence was no longer sweet honey. His face was contorted and red.

“See, we don’t want you guys to unnecessarily trap us, we can always make a deal.” I was looking for an alternative.

“Yes, please listen to us, the message that we have called you to solve is all you are here for, it was not supposed to be this way but then this is it.” Xi’s lean body leaned on the table.

“What kind of code?”

“Not a code but a poem which could probably take us to the next level ending this horrible wait which is existing for many years.” Lawrence was sugar honey again.

“What is it? Don’t you have the best man for it here?”

“I did not think in my mind it would go this way, but then let me tell you, it is your father’s, the specifics we are not able to match and what it is talking I cannot tell.” Xi was talking again.

Apart from us six, the gamma green wall sat in the centre with the harmless looking kerchief of my beginning of my early childhood.

“Can I see it?”

“Yes, but this has to wait. He has to recover from the recoil.”

“Fine. Pull this down. Give us a place to rest, if we are not captives.” Rocky winked at Xi, I cannot tell Why?

“Great. Please help me to make this man sit up.” Lawrence moved forward.

“I am more than fine. I hold no offence.” Marco did not seem hurt.

“I am still….” I hesitated. He was old though and if he meant no harm, it was really odd.

” It’s fine. As I said I am not offended. I understand, a recoil is always more than welcome.” Marco sat up on the floor.

How long can you

sit in stations, in trains,

in buses, in plains, in parks,

Up on hills and grieve.

How long can you

see the sad humans, bad ones,

rugged ones, kind ones,

sweet ones, mourning people.

How long can you grieve?

Grieve for a home,

Grieve for a bed,

Grieve others have more,

Grieve for your sore.

How long can you grieve?

Even in bed how can you

not see it still rains, it still shines,

The moon, the sun.

Beauty abounds, asking you

to rejoice even at your last breath

How long can you grieve?

Loss of love,

Loss of money,

Loss of fears and worries,

Loss of greed,

Loss of losses.

For you cannot grieve more than

what you live, life goes back,

to what they say normal.

When you get the nature’s call,

When you feel hungry,

When you thirst for more.

What then is grief?

Is it not real?

Is it not true?

What we cannot do forever

Is often untrue.

Love is true

Sometimes, we can love forever.

But grief, is it then true?

For how long would you grieve?

How long would you sit and not see.

I lived somehow,

medicines, pain, hopelessness, heartaches,

of my own brought me down.

Then, there was a rain,

Slow, beautifully relaxing gain.

Life never could mean

how we live to earn

or earn to live and churn.

I sat in a corner

trying in vain

But, then the smell of earth

the smell of rain,

Drew away my pain.

The pain in, the pain out.

I saw you,

Yet I would never reach you,

You would not see

For you have already seen.

Let us then be joyful,

amongst drugs for meds, the human cries,

the moaning, the beating of chests, the slapping on foreheads.

The wails, the helpless sobs, whimpering

noises, they hurt the soul even when

they were not mine. I love you

even though I know I do never see you.

I love your specs, your eyes, your presence

even when we do not meet.

Everything about you, your harmless eyes

which do not look for me.

Sad I am, yet happy I could

love, the first time your spirit arms, your

medicine smelling shirt, yet I am happy

my heart and soul found peace,

leaving behind what was not mine.

Walking with my loved ones and you.

Peaceful I stand in sad demise of others.

I am not hard but quite in peace.

Love, referrals of fight or peace?

Furious shots, ice cream dollops, lovely renegades.

Do you think I loved you? Hell, yes I did. The sweet, sour, lime, butter melting on cherries,

the icy toppings, love was grand or evil. A way to deliverance or trapped doors from which there is no

respite. The love kissed, the molten saliva, the smell was same for his and my saliva. Well, I had thought it

might differ, but no, it didn’t. I was wrong like any other time when I fancy it won’t rain and don’t carry the

umbrella or when I try to walk on the rail on my pointy heels or when I smell the flowers sneezing out,

forgetting my allergy all the way. Now the world believes in love so strongly that an answer to an

unrequited love is always a love again.

Hell, yeah, beholding out of heavens when the master said about one man and one woman, he must have

known, only one to know what I felt or many others did while being burnt on stakes, murdered in cold blood.

The love ruled and the love alone can fill the gap lovelessness can create but which stuff says I have to

love again, the man with the Java scripted name, was he not enough? If enough not he is, to fill the hole,

enough is not the fact that he hides behind a pole, only too obvious he doesn’t love me, but then loving

him has given me strength like no other duck, rooster or goat or fish even when love was just a name.

Love that is now, is love for ever since it was not my destination ever, it was a platform for me to rest a

bit, a way to ope my eyes and see the world more, but as long as he lives, faded memories are just words

of madness spoken by the philandering world which knows not the fact that love once can alone fill a gap,

unrequited or requited doesn’t matter for those who have lives of their own and peace in the end…peace

by the mountain, peace by the chants.

The all soothing, benumbing love is not up for complaints. It is to believe that if there is a few that can be

called close to God it might be love of good sort. The good sort familiarised and plagiarised by the world

is what makes it a chance to live beyond the name of Christ, as they say for fri-ends or if-ends.

The love whose definition is not circumscribed by the dictionaries of the world or even by the most

ordinarily sophisticated machinery Go-ogle.

Sometimes, we live to fend ourselves and fend for others, on other times, we are fended by others. The

History of love is bloodied and blood shed creates fears, specifying clear proclivity to lust perhaps. Love

has been murdered long. Do we take it as a sign to live loveless or love beyond the bounds of lust called

love lust confused as lust by the unholy and love by the holy barely seeing they are none in each other’s

existence.

The trochety hockety drokety willisome wily wey woe will wonder wounded worthy wings wistful whisking wreath wrung wrought wondrous winds.

I realise I must place some disclaimers for those readers who might wish to decipher their own meanings as per their thinkings and thought processes.

“All characters and dialogues and circumstances are purely fictitious and bear no resemblance to any living or dead.”

If you like it, please sit back and enjoy as it moves forward……..

This is pure prose and is meant for readers appreciation and comments.

The text is built from a point designed for unravelling pure fiction.

Thank you

Snehashree

The Black Curtain Series

“Do you believe in God, Ms.Romanikoff?” Lawrence seemed to be an ardent follower, So was Xi though the masters differed.

“All or none.” I replied wryly.

“All or none?” Lawrence was counting the options in his head looking to his upper left.

“The law. Have you heard about the principle? The All or none law or principle.” I chided, slightly uncomfortable about the topic.

“Ahhh I see. Well, that’s amazing, then you know all or none. Both ways if you look at it, you are here precisely for a reason to be served.

“Either planned or coincidental? Either ways they mean.” Martin was explaining. I was not getting that straight. Was it some kind of influence?

“Was the attack planned by you guys?” I could not contain it in my pressure valves anymore.

I could not think beyond it, since the world with humans precisely falls into many groups. One trying to regulate other, worst regulations came upon those who were deemed free in this world for no one must be free, was the law. Gods had long retired and watched in mute absolutions the Shakespeares of each generation vending out their thoughts to keep the world alive.

Nothing worked if you did not belong to a group.

“Life was stark clean, humans hid behind the arses of Gods imposing laws of their own in the name of God. The day my family was taken away from me and I was not allowed to make free choices of my own, I knew it, at that point then itself, that here were no rights which did not pass below the nose of some fu…ing….ass.

Horrible interference existed on every plane.

My sister was way far brilliant than the world could have ever produced. Her knowledge became her enemy and people connived.

Human nets and networking runs the show, not the old, senile Gods who are imitated a thousand times.

“Well, yes, we did.” Lawrence agreed.

The humans, I should have known. I should have known. I was trapped now.

Boys were not sure what they were supposed to think.

“Do not please think that you are being trapped. It is for a cause which only you can answer.” Marco stood by the machines.

There was an iron jaw kept close to me, and I snapped it faster than anyone could imagine, the hands went around my body as the force shifted to the jaw. ……

………..

Lawrence had fear in his eyes and Xi was immovable.

“Here we come at last to rest.

We come here to see, to test.

We live here by the lane with zest.

Here, we come at last to rest.

Here is your gift at plain sight at a fest.

You can keep it now and build around it a chest.

Here, we come at last to rest.

We come here to see, to test.”

“Do you remember it? We are in a well and here lies something you know.”

Far from us, there was a gamma beam box, in molten nitrogen there stood a black speck.

“Can I see it from close?”

“Ohh, Yes. You prefer to see it live or in the monitor?”

“Live.” The men exchanged looks and Marco nodded.

“Please come.”

As we descended, the green glow glazed more into the eyes.

I went closer, very unsure of what I saw.

“This is……” it came back to me…..this is what was placed under the aluminium suitcase I carried to my kgs. A stiff black cloth which increased the space in my box. I had to hide it from my friends, my father’s discovery or rather as people said stolen discovery.” The memories came back, the tiffin, the pencil box, the ruler, the facilities I used to hide it in plain sight and the shame, the bullying.

“It was in fact your father’s discovery. The trick was to make others disbelieve it was his, knowing he was a simple man to steal it from, in plain sight.” Marco was also looking at it.

“What does it do, Boss?” Martin seemed curious.

“Well, it is what we are here for, hiding in the rabbit holes.” Marco overheard Rocky’s over enthusiastic voice.

“We need your help, Reasha….that’s why you are here.” Lawrence and Xi had an imploring look in their eyes and voice.

“You see, I precisely do not myself understand what we are talking here. I need to.”

Lawrence McGuire nodded…an astrophysicist around my dad’s hidden secret which seemed like my gadget, my play gadget was hung behind the best securities of the world.

“The world drops by.

Only to meet an eye.

The love of the dye,

The world drops by.

which brings me to the sigh.

You must help my hue.

The world drops by.

Only to meet an eye.”

“Brilliant.” Xi and Lawrence clapped the loudest followed by Rocky.

“A triolet so lovely.” Rocky nodded at each one beaming joyfully, proud to have perhaps understood the form of poetry.

They chomped out of the wash basin….probably that’s the best way to define it.

Out there stood a guy, tall, well built, looked like a bull with great strength, only short of a matador to send it to slaughter house. Well, it might be the that the bull sends the matador to the slaughterhouse instead, the strength oozed from his eyes.

“Doped?” I whispered.

Rocky nodded, “seems like.”

“Well, Mushy this is a small team here….” Marco was interrupted as he flipped through his tablet.

“Ms. Reasha Markonikoff alias Reasha Romanikoff, Julius Rocky Sengengwe and Martin Andrew Jones.”

“Wow! You impress me all the time.” Marco clapped as I stood wondering if he knew my whole story.

We passed through his surveillance monitor and once on the other side, walking through the barbed electrified fenced tracks, I asked Marco.

“How much does he know?”

“Nothing more than ten years of your life. The world had no cameras & no hidden sound recorders, no mobiles, no spies working for their own countries behind lay men then remember.” Marco whispered.

“Rocky, you move ahead of us.” I instructed.

“Reasha can you please remember I am Martin, instead of the usual names you keep calling me. It’s slightly embarrassing.” Martin beseeched. I understood it from his tone since being shorter than him with the globe sitting tight on my head and his, I could not see more than his eyes which were now smaller with pleading.

“Okay. I will remember.”

“Where are we heading? It seems to be an unending barbed fence.” Far down, a tiny dot was now visible and it seemed like a man.

“Over there, our tryst ends.” Marco pointed out with his fingers.

Cameras lined up the whole wall through tiny holes which walked with us as we moved.

I walked past each imagining how we looked in those cameras.

“Don’t worry, they are mute. Only your moves are studied. Unless the siege is broken. They don’t talk. There are no thought readers though, but once you are in, make sure you know what you think.” Marco blabbered.

“Boss, I am turning blank and Martin turns his thoughts manipulative, is that fine?”

“Fine. These very garments might be recording us, relax.” I pointed out.

“Hello! What brings you here Lucas? We are though always pleased to have you and your friends.” The man was ordinarily lean, his specks spoke how less he could probably see far or near, whatever.

“This is Jerome. He is in charge of what belongs to you.” Marco’s second name was Lucas.

“This is Ms.Reasha. Oh! My Jesus, I am so glad to meet you.” Without a word he flanked my arm and shook it longer than I have ever imagined anyone could probably shook those firm hands.

“What belongs to you Boss?”

“I am yet to find out…..we don’t know what Marco thinks and talks.”

“Why? Is he insane or something? In that case are we in the right place?” Martin looked around, there was no escape. It was as high as probably a hundred storey building, remodelled probably coz a hangar is usually lower. We all had started whispering our thoughts.

“No, coz he does poetry and no one really can guess a poet’s thoughts. It might be one at a point antagonising it in the next. Precisely thought readers and lie detectors don’t do much well with such people. An innocent may think like a criminal for his poetry and prose and vice verse.”

Martin gulped down, the shrill tone at the end of each statement died for him. His voice became more base.