Tomic Riter

Tag: shortfiction

  • Phonecall.

    ‘Where did you disappear last night?’ she called at 11 this morning and asked.

    ‘I just went out. It’s nothing’ I said.

    ‘Are you okay? I feel worried about you’ she asked.

    ‘Yeah I’m good. I’m good. Good. Hey listen, I’ll call you back in an hour. Bye,’ I said.

    ‘Sure. Bye,’ she said and cut the call.

    I threw the phone hard at the opposite wall. It didn’t broke into pieces. Only the screen flickered fast and then all went blank. I just realised what I had done. I broke my phone.

    ‘I broke my phone’ I thought again and again. I wasn’t able to think about anything else for few minutes. I kept sitting in that corner. I kept staring at my phone. I didn’t know what to do. I felt paralysed. ‘Should I check if it’s working? Should I leave it? Should I get rid of it altogether? Should I get it repaired? It’s surely broken. What if it’s not? Should I just check it once? Should I? What should I do?’ More questions arose in my head. I got up and walked to my phone. Just as I picked it up with my right hand, it exploded.

    ‘Shit shit shit shit shit! Fuck! Shit shit shit shit!’ I screamed and fell back on the floor. The smell of smoke filled my nose. I felt nauseated. I looked at my right hand. A third of my index finger was gone. Half of my middle finger was gone. The rest of my hand was in blood. ‘Shit shit shit shit shit’ I was screaming very loud. I crawled back to the corner farthest from the point of explosion. It hurt really bad. It was the first time I had lost a part of my body. I was screaming and I was in tears and I wasn’t able to think. It was as if I had just lost my one hand. I really had. With two less fingers, what was a hand anyways. I kept sitting there for a couple of minutes. As I was about to get up, the phone rang again.

    ‘What the hell,’ I thought. I pissed right there. My eyes searched for the source of ringing and found it to be just the chip of the phone. The ringing came from there.

    With fear, I crawled to where the chip was. What more have I got to lose, I thought. I reached the chip. It was still ringing. No cover. Only a couple of buttons on the top were strangely intact. I pressed one of the buttons.

    ‘Hey are you alright? You didn’t call me back. I feel so worried really,’ said the voice. It was her again.

    ‘Bitch just shut up! Shuutttt Uppppp!!!’ I screamed into the ears of the chip and threw a hard punch at it with my left hand. The chip exploded in my face.

    The ringing stopped.

    Copyright © Tomic Riter. All rights reserved.

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  • An asshole for no reason.

    I dwell in the lowest strata of society. While I was about to leave, the asshole called out my name. I was on a call, a useless call with a middle aged woman and we were not talking about why things go the way they go and other trivial matters. The asshole didn’t notice I was on a call or maybe he did and decided to continue to be an asshole and shouted my name while standing right behind me. I was sitting on my revolving chair and looking at the screen in front of me and there was a pen in my hand. Its cap got lost some time ago. It is running out of ink. The ink is blue in colour and blue was the pen cap but now it is gone. I have other pens that have caps and the lady spoke for about 15 minutes or so and I spoke for about 5 minutes and then I cut the call saying Thank You because I had nothing else to say at the end of that call and I was definitely not thankful to her for anything. She said what she was programmed to say and my responses were civil and they sent me in immediate shock but I continued to talk normally and listen to her standard gibberish.  The asshole stood behind me and coughed and cleared his throat all that while like he was sick or something. Men like him don’t ever fall sick. They only take advantage of their aging to fool the young ones and throw them in the grinder. The asshole didn’t care what I was speaking about and to whom I was speaking. It rained heavily outside and I was pretty tired by that time and wanted a drink and it looked like it would rain a lot more and I couldn’t not think about not being able to go to the beer shop and replenish my stock. The revolving chair came last year and since then, it has been revolving but not as much I thought it would. I cut the call and revolved 180 degrees and looked towards the asshole and it was really him standing there and he hadn’t moved an inch from his place of standing. He was standing like he had something important to say. I looked the asshole in his eyes but said nothing. It was time to leave for home.

    ‘Search a name,’ the asshole said pointing his index finger at the screen in front of me. I said nothing and did the search. He didn’t want anything with the name or that man whose name it was. You can be an asshole for no reason. The asshole wrote down the name and his cellphone number on a scrap of white paper with a pen that too had blue ink and then he walked away a little and then turned and walked to me and then he turned again and finally walked away and out of the room. I packed my things which were nothing much and I left some time later. The screen blipped to black. The loud beep of UPS batteries continued echoing inside the dead room, hinting at the absence of men and their voices.

    Copyright © Tomic Riter. All rights reserved.

  • Past sleep.

    A little rain makes the landscape greener. I look at the 20-feet tall pigeon sitting outside the glass window. It’s eyeball emerald studded watches brainlessly. Am I registered as an enemy? I wish a door was provided for an escape. But now I have to sit here under eternal watch. Its wings almost metallic. I walk to the window. It beats its paw on the glass, probably denying communication. I bite into an apple and sit in a chair. It’s raining again. The tree spread out their branches to absorb as much as they can. I finish eating and watch the pigeon. It is now looking away from me. Acknowledging the impossibility of an escape, I put my head down on top of the table and wait to run out of time. I wake up quite later. It’s still evening. A clock hangs but it faces the other side. I find myself in my chair with an empty plate on the table. I look towards the window. It’s clear. Nothing is sitting outside, nothing is watching me. It stopped raining but not long ago. I get up and walk to the window. I can climb out of the window but I do not. Were I to go out, where would I go? How long would I be gone before I am back here? Won’t it be easier to confront the reality of not leaving than to return to the same place? I move away from the window and sit in the chair. Maybe the pigeon will come back.

    Copyright © Tomic Riter. All rights reserved.

  • A night without light.

    A couple of hours before midnight, the guitars started plucking their own strings. A man was singing from somewhere deep down in his stomach. Following him, another voice rose and it was that of a woman. I had returned home from a long, pointless drill. Soon after that, the man ran away and the woman changed and so did her voice. The guitars broke and got replaced with drums and echoes. I made myself a bowl of hot soup and drank half and threw the rest of it. I ate something that I cannot remember now. However much I worked on it, I just couldn’t keep the insects out for long. They always found a way. They danced around me, sat on my hands, sipped my blood. They were leading better, more peaceful lives than I. The home looked fresh but only for a couple of days. After that, I always forgot and I didn’t care about how it looked. Another man started singing, and this time, he had a banjo sticking out of his windpipe. After a minute of hearing, any song became old.

    Copyright © Tomic Riter. All rights reserved.

  • Riding back home.

    I wanted to ride further on the road, but I decided to ride back home. On the way back, I found a vegetable seller lying dead under a sheet of cloth covered with fresh vegetables. He was lying on the left side of the road. I stopped there for a while. His boy was standing there, waiting for somebody to buy the remaining vegetables. They won’t last longer than a couple of days and after that the rotting will begin. No gut can digest rotten vegetables without consequences. I bought some vegetables from the boy and dropped money notes in his dead father’s open palms. For some reason, he seemed alive and while I was talking to his boy, I felt he could listen to me. I put the vegetables in my bag and rode off, and before that I smiled at the boy and he smiled back at me as he waited for another customer. Half the sky was clouded. It did not rain that day.

    Copyright © Tomic Riter. All rights reserved.

  • Further, up and down.

    Another mile was covered. And then another. Not a quarter in my pocket but I had to ride on. A week’s journey and I hadn’t reached anywhere. The wild landscape was playing tricks on me. I had become weak and I was falling but I kept on as the land rose and fell and as the sun came up and went down. Now and then, a tree or two appeared and that was all. No days had been as drier as those and even for a drop of water, you had to pray really, really hard. But prayed as hard as I might have, no god ever showed its face or washed my head clean with some of its divine light. I was all alone. People said beasts had made a home there. Even they seemed to have moved on. Not as much as a claw was seen in any grain of sand or mud. I was weak and all grown down but my black steed looked as strong and bright as any ray of sunlight. He was made for such journeys. A creature like that, you cannot lock it up for long. Someday it has got to be set free and when that day comes, let its hooves not stop until it wants to stop or until it leaps off this damned horizon.

    Copyright © Tomic Riter 2020. All rights reserved.

  • Travelling West.

    Cattle-ranching was a thing of those days along with four or five more elements, and the topography was such that it pushed any man to the edge. He had to be as strong as he could be and if that did not happen then he was soon eliminated by fate or by the bullet of some devil’s gun or whip and which was it, it didn’t matter much. From my own experience, not much is known to me. I am travelling to a certain land, that simmers in the same harsh conditions, through a path that I am yet to find out. And I am alone in my travel, and hence, quite curious. As alcohol begins to rot my lungs, I am slowly getting transported there. There I am, riding on something tall, a black steed and the moon is full and hot and raining on everything. To my left is one tree and and to my right are none and as to how far they really are from me, I cannot tell. I am not to travel in that direction. Sitting under a tree won’t do my soul any good. This is no time to rest. I thought the land would be a lot smoother, but as I look ahead I can see it rising and falling quite often. Good for my horse. If I crash into the mud, it will take some time to get me up. And while I am trying to get me up, what will my horse do is quite a mystery to me.

    Copyright © Tomic Riter 2020. All rights reserved.