Short Stories - The New Bhayanak Maut Album - October 20, 2011

Here's the next short story.

It's called X-O-X-O

You’re standing by the guest bedroom’s window, looking at the new security sensors that you’ve just attached to the window frames. “Done”, you say. It comes out almost like a whisper, this self-congratulatory message. You touch the glass pane, now covered with a thin glaze of morning frost and allow your gaze to travel through it and onto the gravel driveway that’s gently revealing itself thanks to the first rays of dawn. You wait for a few minutes more to watch the murky green of the night turn into a warm red. In a few hours, your guest will arrive and you need to ensure that the weekend tasting session that she’s paid for is exactly the way she’s asked for it to be.

 

You wipe the window frame, window ledge and glass panes carefully, pick up your tool box and walk towards the large king-seize bed that’s placed in the center of the room. You stand at the edge and pull the bed sheet off to reveal a young girl, lying prostate and absolutely naked. You feel your lips quiver ever so slightly as you gently move your fingertips across her thighs and up her belly towards her breasts. You place your large hands over them and squeeze gently. They feel harder today, more taught..

 

You shift your gaze to the bed-side table and reach for the injection that’s patiently been waiting to be used. It contains 150ml of human breast milk. You inject 50 ml of the milk into the girl’s left breast and bend down to take her blue nipples in your mouth. You suck on them, gently, until you feel the cold milk fill the dry cavity beneath your tongue. You roll the liquid around in your mouth and then swallow. She’s been dead for a week. Today, she tastes perfect.

 

You carefully inject the rest of the milk equally into each breast. Then, you wipe away your saliva from the nipple and replace the bed sheet over the body. You pick up your tool box, place the injection inside it and walk towards the bedroom door. After you open the door, you stand at the threshold and say, “You’re ready now, my dear. And, just in time. I’ll come to clean up tomorrow morning.”

 

You head back to your study and sit at your workstation. You open the package that you received yesterday afternoon and take a look at the contents. It’s one of the high school yearbooks that you had sent to a prospective client 4 weeks ago. The post-it note that you’d placed on the cover page is still there. You read the message that you had written on it, clear in bold, capital letters: WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO TASTE? MARK IT WITH ‘X’.

You open the yearbook and slowly go through each page, looking for the ‘X’. You finally come across it on the page that has a picture of the high school cheerleading squad.  You stare at it for a few seconds and then close your eyes and think about how you’re going to make this tasting session happen.

It’s the first time you’ve seen an ‘X’ that covers the entire page.

 

Short Stories - The New Bhayanak Maut Album - October 2, 2011

Here's Sunneith's second short story, 'Sigh'. 

You would lay still in the cradle of her legs. Never doubting the shelter it provided – from fears you were still foreign to. ‘Maa’, you called the woman. You loved her. What you felt with your head on her thighs, you will never feel in the orifices of another. Her hair fell on your face as she told you stories. Stories which you pretended to enjoy. Stories that did not interest you. For your eyes rolled back in their sockets, and your ears hummed from the sheer pleasure of laying there on those warm thighs. 

It has been decades. The woman is long past gone, and you haven’t slept for a minute more than two hours at a time. But you have been working to make that go away. Oh yes, you have. And today, it will.

The body lies on the cold floor of the bathroom. It is one of many. You are two feet away from it. Its full legs are spread out. Eyes staring into nothingness, as if contemplating hatred. The dead can’t hate. You smile to yourself as you look at the red cloud that forms on the floor between the legs. Growing. Till it gets heavy and pregnant with consequence. But the sleeping and the strong know no tomorrow. 

You walk out into your room, towards your bed .You have waited years for this day, and now you will bathe in the joy of creation. 

 

Your bedroom is vast. On the left, lie stacks of sheets and cotton. On the right, 72 boxes. Each containing 200 size-12 Milliner' needles. Bundled next to the boxes are piles of gutstring. 
 

 

It is dawn. There is a heaviness in your eyelids that you have never felt before. It is done. You stand before your bed. You're quivering. Your legs shake, your lips tremble, and an almost animal-like whine escapes your mouth. Your chin feels wet. You are drooling like a dog on a pavement, breathing its last on a hot summer afternoon.

You strip naked and stand by the bed, such that your shins touch the wooden edge. You bend your knees to climb in. Your palms touch the sheet; And as they do, your elbows start to tremble, and before you know it, they buckle. Your body glides through the air as if in a dream. And as your face touches the sheet, your eyes roll back. Your ears start to hum.Your sphincter gives in. The ceiling fan creaks, but you know no mechanical poetry.

In this bed made of skin, you lie. Tonight you sleep.