Bugs Bite

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: Cancer

Everything is too vivid to be true.

'Preeti?' he yells, but in vain.

He forces a barefoot self down the arching, wooden staircase, massaging his temples. Once or twice he makes as if to stumble, but catches himself on time. He does fall eventually, but only on the last step, by which time his head is ready to explode and he does not really care.

A lute is playing somewhere in the main foyer. Each string pulled causing his heart to shake.

'Preeti! Is that you?'

No response.

Shivering, with a twisted ankle and an aching head, he picks himself up and slowly limps toward the porch. He can see a light up ahead, a pure white light, brighter than the sun. It seems like he is in heaven. The lute is playing louder than ever, louder than the drumsticks clobbering against his skull.

A distasteful rank reaches his nostrils, which dilate in irate reflex.

'What's that?' he says, and all of a sudden he knows this is a dream. He never says such idiotic things aloud to himself in real life. He is a grown man, and that is not how grown men work.

But he is again reminded by the torturous pain in his head, of the vividness of the whole scenario. In fact, he feels a strange sense of dejà-vù take over his own self.

'Preeti! C'mon, you know you don't wanna fuck with me!'

The lute stops playing. His heart stops too.

There are four outlines - four delineates - four black shadows standing against the backdrop of that sublime light.

They move, slowly, towards him.

'Stop right there, you fuckers - !'

One by one, as if by magic, light is cast upon the silhouettes.

The first one is that of his grandma, Bibi. She is smiling.

The second one is that of his mother, Shweta. She is crying. But those are happy tears. He knows it somehow, he just does.

The third one is of his father, Dhruv, and he looks like a collapsed structure. Like all doors inside of him have been banged shut. Like he has been defeated. Like he is a coward.

No.

Like he is a weasel.

The fourth figure belongs to a man dressed in black, all in black. He holds a sleek black cane in one hand, and stands with his left foot ahead of the right one. Black boots gleaming in the wake of the divine light. He has a kind, familiar face, basking in the white, white light. His chin is held high, and the first knuckle of his right hand is raised unnaturally above the rest.

It is Grandpa Manohar. 

But even as he sees him, Grandpa starts disintegrating. His one eye - the left one - falls from its socket. Bloodless. His right one absorbs the divine light. His jaw seems to detach from his face. His tongue lolls out. The skinfolds of his throat oscillate. His skin shrivells, his hair grow rigid and fall from his scalp like needles. His lips grow blue and diminutive, his nostrils become slits.

Mere moments later, the transformation is complete. It is not Grandpa but the man in black that stands there.

Now the light is becoming blinding, and the man in black is becoming one with it. Dissolving in it. Fading into it.