Stage For You - Stories/Musings
He killed him that night. The boy with two thumbs finally killed his father. He waited till he heard his father snoring gently, tiptoed to the left side of the bed, a pillow and a kitchen knife in his hands, and peered in the darkness at his father, trying to gauge the depth of his slumber. His father was sleeping soundly, his hands resting on his stomach, his chest heaving rhythmically with his snores. He fidgeted with the knife in his hand. It was the sharpest knife he could find in the kitchen. It was sharp because it was new. He was standing at the side of the bed. The window was to his left. The curtains were fluttering in the wind. It was a rough night. Suddenly a gust of wind blew the flimsy curtain across his face. He was startled out of his wits. He dropped the pillow and barely managed to hold on to the knife. He removed the curtain gently from his face with his trembling left hand, checked that the sudden interruption in his chain of actions had not woken up his father, blew an imperceptible sigh, and bent to pick up the pillow. He knew his hands were trembling and his face had become ashen with fear. He suspected that the neighbors could hear his heart beating loudly. He picked up the pillow, moved slightly away from the window and then stood there for some time, trying to arrange the wild thoughts flying across his mind.
He was not a serial killer, he was not mad, not even a drug addict. He was just an average nineteen-year old, living an average life with average parents in an average neighborhood. What set them apart were the two thumbs on his left hand and the way his father treated his mother. His father never hit his wife, but his words were like barbed wire. He had a unique quality of being able to find faults with everything his wife did. He was unhappy about the way the dishes were done, the way the table was laid, the way the clothes were put out to dry, the way the boy with two thumbs kept his room, the way his wife cooked dinner, the way she served it, in short, he was unhappy about the way just about every household chore was performed. And the abuses. He used the choicest profanities that mankind had invented to denigrate women. His father’s verbal abuse started at the crack of dawn and went on till the last light was switched off at night. It was worse on weekends when his mother stayed home. She was a working woman and the primary breadwinner. Despite being the sole source of income in the household, she took her husband’s abuses in her stride. She was a very optimistic person. She seldom raised her voice to match her husband’s. She just did her job conscientiously and told the boy with two thumbs to ignore his father’s acidic remarks and to concentrate on his studies. But the boy with two thumbs could not share his mother’s optimism. He could not control his anger when he saw his mother got bullied around by his father. He felt like bashing his father’s head in, but his mother always restrained him. She told him to control his anger and to learn to have pity on the troubled soul of his father. Sometimes his desperation became almost palpable, desperation at not being able to do anything while his own father treated his mother like vermin before his very eyes. He knew he could not reach the same level of detachment that his mother had achieved. He knew because he had seen that though reaching that level was difficult, maintaining that level for long was impossible. He had seen his mother’s eyes welling up at some point of their arguments, and unable to take any more she got up quietly and went to her room while his father continued to hurl abuses at her departing back.
The boy with the two thumbs gripped the handle of the knife even more tightly as his father turned in his sleep. A sliver of pale moonlight streaming in through the window fell on his face and outlined his hard features. Even in his sleep it looked as if he was thinking of new ways to torment his wife. The boy with two thumbs gazed long and hard at his father’s face, trying to think of one reason not to kill him, one reason to justify putting the knife back in the knife rack. He could think of none. Fury began to well up inside him. In his mind’s eye he saw his plan turning into action. He saw himself pressing the pillow on his father’s face and slitting his throat in one swift motion. Even as he was imagining this a shiver went through him. A plan so gory, so bloody, so desperate, and yet totally justified, at least to him.
He could feel his pulse quickening, his breath turning ragged, his hands trembling, his mouth drying up, his feet turning numb. Hs eyes saw his father’s face in clear detail, his mind thinking of nothing else but the task on hand, all his energies focused towards getting the job done. Hatred started boiling within him and rose in his eyes. Every muscle, every nerve, every nerve-ending in his body was taut. It was like a symphony which was reaching its crescendo. He could feel his body totally under the control of his mind, every joint working in perfect unison to achieve one goal. At the penultimate moment he raised his hands, and then dropped them again. The pillow fell lightly on the floor. He withdrew slowly from the bed, the pristine knife still in his right hand and his father still snoring gently on the left side of the bed. He leaned back against the wall and relished the feeling of pity which washed over him. Now he knew he had attained salvation. Now he knew- with extreme hatred, came extreme pity. The boy with two thumbs had finally managed to kill his father that night.
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- IPL - Indian Psychosis League
Very well put. It's incredible that entertainment ...
19.05.12 19:30 - Indian Justice System, Enough ...
Even though I am not from India, I really apprecia...
24.04.12 11:46 - The Deepest Bucket..
Thank you so much sir.. I wrote this in the loneli...
16.04.12 17:54 - Fuck The System
Well put. I think someday you will make a great po...
16.04.12 17:40 - The Deepest Bucket..
I like this poem. It is systematic and labors in i...
16.04.12 16:05
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