Waiting - a short story

Waiting – a short story

Waiting. She waited for him and she knew that he would come. No matter what, he would come. They said that after the war, they would meet at their favorite coffee shop where they first met. He was a decorated marine in her eyes, and an American hero for all she knew. He represented the pique masculinity and the gleam for his shining teeth would make her heart quiver. But apart from his physique, she fell in love with the man he was at heart, and it wasn’t the love for his country that made him so emotionally desirable; his genuine kindness towards others around him is what sparked her interest in him. Even though she didn’t know him well, that scrawny middle-schooler would always stand up for his friends when they were getting bullied. He usually would’ve ended up getting beaten to a pulp, but he would still stand up for them. But the thing that really made her fall in love with him is the fact that he never made a scene if he was bullied and used to shrug them off like it wasn’t anyone’s business. That’s what she loved most about him, and although they may have not spent as much as time as they would’ve liked, he was – and always will be – her cornerstone.

It’s funny how things would work out in the end. She wouldn’t have, in a million years, thought that she was the man for him. It was not until a fateful encounter between them in a coffee shop where he worked that he had finally had the guts to ask her out. And she was so glad that he did. His father was crippled, which had made money sparse within the family so he had to get a job to help his father have a somewhat decent lifestyle. This only made her love him more.

*

Pearl Harbor was a navy ship that most marines would be proud to work on as an American soldier, protecting the nation was a matter of pride. But to him it didn’t matter, at least not anymore. The bombardment of planes, destruction, and injury was not he stood for. His vision of protecting his country seemed more heroic when looking at the posters ‘America needs you’. It was only when you are on the battlefield that you realize that it is the most cowardly thing governments can do; perilously putting the innocent in risk for feuds that don’t matter. This is what happens when one man thinks he is above all else and has the power to command thousands and million troops with a slight nod of his head. That is not justice, and that definitely is not what the founding fathers were hoping for. “War is a cowardly escape from the problems of peace”. Indeed, whoever said that was absolutely right. This is not justice, just torcher.

But that didn’t matter. Everyone was too worried about surviving the genocide, hoping to dear God that they can see their children, wives and girlfriends one last time and tell them ‘I love you’. So did he. It was kind of funny, he knew these were his last moments, and even if he did survive, the hell he had experienced would never be erased from his memory. No one wants to live with the pain he had experienced and no one should. It was ironic how his girlfriend had made him origami crane before he had left, a kind gift cultivated from the culture from a country he was aiding to destroy.

Am I a Good Man? - a short story

DISCLAIMER: THE CONTENT ON THIS BLOG ARE MY OWN CREATIONS AND THOUGHTS. I APOLOGISE, IF THE CONTENT OFFENDS ANYONE INTENTIONALLY OR UNINTENTIONALLY. This story does not reflect recent events and are a work of fiction. 

Am I a Good Man?

It was a different kind of day for the man. Wiping the tear of his face as he had wept himself to sleep last night, he started to realize that today had to be treated like any other day, to get over his recent loss. He staggered out of bed and averted his eyes from the pictures of his young daughter and all the flowers and sweets that he had received in the past few days. Even though the man was always kept to himself, he had always cared about his daughter, and with her mother passing away from an illness a year ago, he had to be both parents to a lower-middle class family which he couldn’t afford. He had recently started to doubt himself: am I a good man? Recently he had started to feel as if his own doings had led to the ordeals he had been encountering. After the passing away of his wife, he became cold, and stopped talking to his neighbors, scolding his tenants for no good reason. He didn’t communicate with his daughter as much after that and he blames himself for her passing away, thinking that maybe it was the broken heart that took her away. But from now on he had decided that he would change his demeanor, and have a friendly attitude towards anybody he comes by. The man knew that he was trying to compensate, but even so he felt that – no matter how strange it may sound – his arrogant demeanor had led to a karmic retribution on his one and only loved one. And, so after dressing up for the office, he set out foot of his door to be a changed man.

The first thing he did after locking the door behind him was to pull up ahead of his tenants trying to desperately flee from his line of sight and give a big grin, and walked right past them without mentioning anything about the mold growing in their apartment. He had noticed that particular beggar in front of the bus stop, but in the mean streets of Islamabad nobody gave a damn about the thousands of peasants with their hands stretched out. This beggar had noticed this man didn’t pay for all this time, and in contrast had snickered that the beggar’s shortcomings in life. Not that he wasn’t grateful, but he didn’t like it one bit, as if it were some bad omen for a man to change so quickly.

The man gave the beggar 100 rupees, and stepped on to the bus with a big grin on his face. He felt that he was doing some good about his recent endeavor. The bus to work was a long one, and it stopped on the way to the inter-city bus station which was always jam-packed with people in this arid environment. The sweat trickling down his forehead was like the man’s conscience was being cleared. Then the man noticed a certain person sitting in front of him wearing a jacket of all things he could in this weather. He didn’t think much of it, but at the inter-city bus stop he paced frantically for the exit. As soon as the doors opened, he was out in a dash but had dropped some sort of device. The man, feeling as if this was another chance to redeem himself had without a second doubt picked up the device and walked out of the bus to follow the stranger.

*

The stranger sighed with a gasp of relief, it was finally over. He had decided that it was enough, and even if suffocating with this contraption stuck to his chest meant that he could be free, then so be it. He decided that he would leave the city, the closest bus stop being a two minute walk away. He knew what he was doing was unimaginably selfish, but he knew his young sister would want him to escape and live the rest of his life in peace and not for the remaining evening he had left in this world. The entrance to the station was only a few steps away, and with every step he was second guessing his decision whether to go through with his escape, which would inevitably lead to her death but even if he were to go through with their instructions, there was no guarantee that they would let her live regardless of his actions. Then, at the foot of the entrance to the station, someone poked him from behind, with his hands on his knees and panting furiously. “You dropped this!” he said gasping for breath. The stranger looked at the device, and he knew. Although he hadn’t lived for very long considering he only just became a teenager, he knew that this was fate, and he was absolutely certain now that he couldn’t abandon his sister. The boy replied, “yes thank you uncle for bringing this back to me”. The man asked him “son, are you crazy that you are wearing a jacket in this hot weather?” The boy smirked at the man and with a slight hint of anguish in his voice he responded “I think I am”.

*

The stranger darted of in another direction without another word, and the man lost sight of him in the hustle and bustle of the station. For a young boy with such a big belly he sure walked really fast. The man realized that the device he had picked up was a phone, as if it had been taken apart and put back together with additional circuitry sticking out from the sides. One thing that stood out was the beeping red light but the man didn’t care too much for that as he felt that he had done his good deed for the day, even if it meant being late for the office. So he waited for another 30 minutes to jump on the next bus to work in the congested streets of Islamabad.

A Wonderful World - a short story

A Wonderful World

“It is a wonderful world”, she thought to herself. The lady sipping her drink with a lavish dress that made her sparkle like a ruby, her body slumped on the chair with her ever-lasting legs spread out in such a fashion that would make any man’s head spin if looked at the right angle. She was beautiful she thought, but tonight was the night that she felt more beautiful than ever. She felt complete than she did ever since her marriage with her husband. It wasn’t always like this. But marriage gets to even the best of us and it is all about how you handle it, and after all “familiarity breeds contempt”.

                                                            

The night had gone exactly as planned, the five star hotel had lived up to their expectations, and the husband had looked forward to treating his wife to a nice night out in the city, where there marriage was facing some problems a year before as the husband had failed to keep his carnal desires in check when it came to women other than his wife. His wife was torn apart, but they were over that now. Things were finally looking up for the couple. They proceeded to drink at the hotel bar to their heart’s content to celebrate this momentous occasion. Once they had one drink too many, both of them decided to turn in for the night and by the time they had reached the floor for their room they were devouring each other’s mouth and had to take a break for the husband to use the bathroom. That was when it happened. The husband leaving his phone on the dresser, had started ringing. The wife, trying to put on some more lavish lipstick to further accentuate her beauty for her lovely husband – or so she thought – looked at the phone to read a simple three word text “I love you”.

Fast-forwarding to the present, she pilfered a glance to her husband lying on the hotel bed, looking up at the ceiling with a resting, satisfied look on his face. Pondering about the marriage that had made her feel alive and also made her feel the loneliest person in the world, she felt that it had all come to a full circle tonight. The pain was gone for the first time in a long time she had left the embrace of her childhood, gone was the endearing heart burn that was her miscarriage and gone was a little piece of humanity that would haunt her for the rest of her life. But for this moment, for the few seconds of relief that she would be able to enjoy from the boredom that was her life, the excruciating struggle of her mundane lifestyle that had made her doubt her career choices and second-guessing the thought of having kids; all of those doubts, the dread was gone. She felt peace, but in a way that she never thought she would ever feel and in a very strange way she enjoyed it. The only problem was that the ringing in her ears wouldn’t stop, the constant ringing that felt like head was being ripped apart as if someone was tearing away her two cortexes like tearing paper. But she didn’t care, today was a great day in her mind and a day full of revelations that she thinks has helped her marriage beyond what she could’ve ever imagined. She gazed up to look at her reflection in the mirror of the dresser and couldn’t believe how happy she looked.

She put on some more red lipstick with frivolous look on her face and the reflection in the mirror gave a sinister smirk as she proceeded to remove the smudges of blood from her face. Her husband lay there smiling on the bed, as if he had been freed from the agony, with the blood slowly blotting his shirt that his wife had bought him for this occasion. The life in his eyes had gone but he died smiling.

The wife looked down at the gun that she had used. The smirk from her face disappeared as she had finally grasped with had happened in the last few moments, and suddenly the reflection of the person in the mirror had a look of despair on her face. There was a commotion outside as other people had stepped outside of their rooms and lifts of the hotel floor had started dinging at their floor. She drank the remaining vodka martini with a single gulp and started feeling drowsy as she took the ‘murder weapon’ in her hand once more. Her hands trembling, she put it upto her head, with a single tear slowly rolling down her cheek as she whimpered thinking about the false sense of justice she had felt. And never in a million years did she think that she would ever think that it was her time to say “it WAS a wonderful world”.

This was my first attempt at a short story, well a very short story. So, please if you like my content follow my blog and if you do not like what you see, please leave constructive criticism in the comments :).

-Saquib