The vacuum

Then there is the problem with life that is her own, when left to herself.

At present, there is no idea, no person, no thing – nothing at all to engage her core. Actually, there never was. She is slowly coming to grips with the fact that she has been carrying around this empty core in herself. She thinks it is called ageing. That thought, however, is scarier. A gradual greyish-blueing of all colours. Moss building on shiny memories. The growing passion for being left alone. This passionate ambivalence towards loneliness.

Why does she want to be alone? Because she likes to savour the emptiness that is deep in her. She needs some time and space around her to do that. But, she also knows that this vacuum is slowly seeping out, creeping into her whole being. It is slowly taking control of the rest of her. She knows that she cannot afford this luxury for too long. She knows she needs to plug it, fill it. With something. Sometime soon. But till that time, she would relish the nihilism. So she comes to the café, where, if she wants to, she can straddle both worlds – of one and of many.

Her Story Begins

Like every time she does when life throws at her one of its little gems, she sucks at a cigarette. This dark corner, this noir aroma, this slow-burning dusk inside the café greeting the coffee-flavoured nightfall outside, this greyish-blue trail of the departing train in the track across the lazy street, rises in her chest like a lump of tangy lust. She takes it all in with a deep inhale.

Someone was saying something. Weird, these guys – with their egos, with their outwardness. Their stories, their always-saying-something. She has nothing much to say. People just talk too much, in this world. Whatever one can say is either anyway known already or will be known tomorrow. If there is anything else that the world will not know unless she tells, is her own – too personal to tell the world. At any rate, no one cares about her own things. Talking annoys her, especially at these moments.

She mumbles a god-knows-what and keeps herself immersed in the moment. Tries to hold on to it. Takes another desperate drag, as if she can store the moment inside her and carry it along. But someone else says something else. Then someone else.

How she craves for a drop of life that is her own!

A fifty-five word story about nothing

He has been asked to quote the fifth sentence of his twenty-third post.

He trembles as he browses his postings, and then laughs.

The sentence being written, his fifth sentence in his twenty-third post, is writing itself, quoting itself, and is wrapped in itself.

The fifth sentence in his twenty-third post is a black hole.

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Thanks, Vishkanya for the tag.
I tag, with this double whammy of tags, Letterhead, in her new Avatar - Laura, Ani too, who has moved from ex-ante to ex-post, Runglee (this tag brought me back to blogging, I hope it will do the same to her too) and M., who, I hope, finds time to blog in South Africa. All you have to do is pull up the fifth sentence in your twenty third post (tag #1) and write a storyt with exactly fifty-five words (tag #2). They do not have to be related.