They watch him again. They don’t take their eyes off him. Annoying little monsters.

He wishes he could just step on them. Crush them. Like the little bugs they are. Like bugs who deserve to die.

Every night they perform their evil rituals. Unholy little beasts. The chants and whispers keep him awake. Distracted. But necessarily vigilant. Oh well, he has that to thank them for.

But oh the horror! The wickedness of their very presence. The rites that purge this sanctuary of all its goodness. This place is supposed to preserve all that was held sacred of the past, the present, and in the future, the future. Not stain it with these unholy beings!

He only wishes he had the power to oppose these little gods. These little devils masquerading as gods. To cast them into the fire they worship. Where they rightfully belong.

But every time he decides to face them, those stone cold grey eyes lock right on to him. They stop their corrupt ceremonies as they silently turn to glare at him accusingly. With their evil distorted dark faces. Monsters. Blank zombie-like expressions. No questions asked. Their eyes say it all.

You have a problem?

He disrupts their rituals. They know he is the blasphemer. The traitor. The one who will betray them. He knows that they know this. But they only silently watch with their stone cold grey eyes.

It’s a game of who makes the first move. Graciously they deliberately peeve him into considering the first move. No, he will not give in. If they can act all righteous, so can he.

After all, he is only a powerless sentry. A subordinate. He can only follow orders. His very job is to keep watch and maintain order. He cannot participate, he cannot rule, and he most definitely cannot oppose. Only watch. And obey. Helplessly.

His hands clutch at the pendant hanging at his neck. His last hope of remaining sane in the presence of these sinful wicked beings. He wears it like a talisman. He opens it and glances at the pictures of his two children – a boy and a girl – closes it and decides once more that he needs to send them to college one day.

“If you want to keep this job, don’t do anything stupid,” he speaks out loudly. To himself, of course. Staring at the statuettes with his watchful eyes. They just stare back.

“Yeah, just another night at the museum, move along now,” he tries to convince himself.

[a.k.a. Celestial Lessons 002, a stand-alone narrative]

Another morning. Another day. I have to face it. Face her.

As I walk slowly towards the bedroom – her bedroom – I curse myself silently, at my accelerating heartbeat. It was actually louder than my footsteps. She might’ve woken up already, because of that, if not for the smell of her favourite morning coffee, bacon and eggs in the air.

Maybe it was the coffee. Have to stop taking coffee before seeing her.

OFF LIMITS. Read the sign on her door. A warning to me, I feel. Every morning. Do I heed it?

I don’t even bother to knock anymore. She couldn’t care less anyway. College life does that to you, I guess. I turn the knob and enter into a mess of a world, her world, clothes and bags, all over the floor, books and bras…

And there she lay. On the bed. Made for a queen. Tangled up in a heap of pink blankets, sprawled like a lazy cat, thick blonde hair covering her face, bare long legs dangling off the edge…

Curses.

At least she could’ve worn some clothes.

“No…” she groans, groggily, through the golden mane hiding her beautiful face, muffling her soft, husky voice. “Please tell me it’s not time already.”

“I can’t lie to you,” I lie, “you’ve got a seminar presentation this morning.”

“You’d make a terrible roommate, Kieran,” she replies, slowly getting up, folding her lithe catlike body into a sitting position, hair magically parting, emerald green eyes shining through, right through me like a laser beam – I have a thing for piercing green peepers – blanket strategically covering all that was needed to be revealed.

It was just pure torture. Just watching her. Skin the colour of peach glistening in the sliver of the morning sun rays sneaking through the curtains. Such a celestial body. Even the sun wants to take a peek at her, to wake her up, to touch her. What more a lowly being like me?

“I wouldn’t be your roommate even if you begged me to,” I lie again.

She smiles ever so lightly. Another laser beam shot right through me. I think she knew.

“I would’ve stayed at my dorm, if everyone there wasn’t trying to brutally murder me,” she explains, in that groggy intoxicating half-whisper, threatening to rip me apart, and those bedroom eyes, threatening to incinerate me with their laser power.

More excuses. The things I have to put up with.

Calm down now. Breathe. Keep your distance. Stay detached.

“Once more, your breakfast is made ready by yours truly…” I say as she flashes another smile, a brilliant one this time, more brilliant than the sun. It was only gratitude. And I just lose the words, whatever it is I was saying just now.

Stop this. Now.

One last look – I always keep vowing to never look at her this way again – and keep breaking that vow, every morning – I turn my eyes away from her beautiful face, as I say, “Mom’s gone like a ghost again. To work, I think. I’m gonna have to rush off, too. Got a killer Physics exam.”

Turning, walking away from her door, I hear her soft voice fading off, “Good luck, brother…”

I wish she could just stop calling me that.

[Also see: Celestial Lessons 001]

“You’re a waste of breath. Nothing more then a piss poor embarrassment. I’ve wasted more then enough time on you, and won’t rest till you’re choking on your last drop of blood. You’re going to find out how bad I actually am. A parasite, the nameless leech that I will now refer to you as. You have taken almost nine years of my life. From then till now you have controlled me, Controlled every aspect of my life. I find it amusing that you think that I would be overtaken by the swarm of perturbation anymore. You are nothing more then a disorder, an infection….A parasite. I loathe what you have made me and I loathe what will become of me if I let you rule my life any further.”

“Did you really think that I would allow you to survive any longer? Parasites don’t live forever. I simper at the thought of your flesh burning away. Each layer of muscle will deteriorate, and the bone will turn to ash.

I am free, I am no longer a victim of you anymore. Say you’re last breath, enjoy you’re last gasp of air. When you’re lungs collapse and fill with blood, I’ll enjoy you asphyxiating on it.” So I pulled the trigger, and the man I had fought for the past nine years was dead. With a grin on my face I placed the lustrous metal gun to my head.

“I’ll never be controlled again” I pulled the trigger, Then blackness. I’m constrained. Tied down. Where am I?

This room. It’s white, neat and precise. There’s no padding so I’m not in a psych ward. It’s just white. The light was coruscating. I didn’t think I could feel pain after what I had done. I never was “Normal” as they put it. I never though of myself at different though. Is this what death is? We sit in a white room for eternity? Am I in purgatory.  Perhaps this is my personal hell where I’m destined to reflect on the hatred that has consumed for for so long. I want to get out of here. I want to leave this place, where ever this place is. My life is a complete lie. If you could call what I had a life. I feel like I’m dreaming. I could do anything, The floor is hard but strangely mailable. I can touch it. Caress it. I can feel it’s story, See it’s past. I am a parasite. I am a parasite. I see through objects and people and they never have a clue what I am. Good and Evil never existed in my head, Just them. They are what keeps me awake. They are what put me to sleep. They are everything and nothing to me. They give me advice and they punish me when I am “Wrong” or what is deemed wrong. They are long gone now. They will be forever. So will I. They will never understand why or how. They will never understand what has happened to me. Why it’s happened and why it has to keep happening. I am dead, I feel dead. If there was a mirror there would be nothing on the other side. I’ve tried reflecting but nothing comes back just darkness, Empty cold darkness. They never say me either I was completely invisible before They went away forever. Gone. They vanished in cold plain sight just as quickly as my reflection.

Parasite. The word rang in my head louder than any bell that had ever tolled.  All that had stuck with me through all this was a poem I had once read. “With god forsaken I am mistaken as nothing more than worthless. I am a man without a plan, yet a damaged one at that. I have no direction or any affection to an infection such as you.” The reason that I hung onto these words like I had nothing is because I did have nothing.

It was unreal. Control. She controls. She was unreal. Celeste.

He felt her eyes on him. Burning through. Controlling him. His every move, his every action, his every word, or lack of it. Almost like she had him on remote control. Was she really doing this to him? Why? Was she making him do this? Like the way he would stay up late at night, alone in his room, dark, silent, staring at the ceiling, doing things boys his age shouldn’t be doing anymore. The guilt. The shame. Pathetic. Was it all because of her?

He looked upon her like his elder sister. But that would just be wrong. He always did feel strangely protective over her, even though she didn’t really need anyone’s protection, like he did with his sister. But no, not like a sister. She was much more than that. Beyond that. No, ‘sister’ was just wrong.

Her lips moved. The Universe moved with them. With her. Around her. Around him as well. With him sucked in. Like a black hole. Inescapable gravity.

And as her words flowed around him, and the others whose presence, or rather, existence he never noticed anymore, her casually brief glances would feel like intensely burning hair-thin lines of invisible deadly laser beams searing right through his body, his skull, his soul, his ribcage. Yes, that’s just how it felt. To be under her ‘surveillance’. Like an escaped convict running from the blinding spotlights that seemed to be chasing him one moment, then pass by without a care, until the next beam intercepted him.

But he didn’t really want to run from the deadly beautiful laser beams or confounding spotlights of those emerald green eyes.

So why couldn’t he face them? Her.

“Kieran?”

Oh, the softness of her voice. The sound of his name on her lips. The resonance of the vibrating sound waves, too soft to move quarks, but powerful enough to move galaxies, even send them crashing into each other. But so lacking in any real emotion. Like the winter breeze. Cool, deadly beautiful, and sending chills down his spine. How that felt, good or bad, he wasn’t sure. Just unreal.

She called my name? he blinked. She called my name!

She moved towards him. Like a comet. A shooting star. Shining brightly against the darkness of this cold, empty Universe.

Celeste.

Oh no.

She moved closer. Towards him. Or just his general direction, he suddenly hoped.

And with that bleak half-hearted hope, space-time seemed to suddenly distort. Seconds dilated into aeons. The far edges of the Universe around them seemed to come to a standstill. Sounds became as loud as a vacuum, and it didn’t make sense since sounds don’t exist in vacuums. Yet she still moved.

The comet Celeste still hovered towards him at her steady pace. Her long brown hair slightly lagging in the space-time vortex behind her. And then the comet came to an impossible stop. Right before him.

Towering high above him like a beautiful Angel of Death, she asked him, softly, “Are you all right?”

“Um…” he struggled to find the words, “y-yes, Cel– …Miss Samson.”

“Really?” she asked again, so soft almost mocking, so casual almost teasing, “Have you been following everything I said?”

There it was again. Control.

The shining star was now the overwhelming black hole crushing him to the tiniest worthless particle with its infinite mass. Again.

Kieran only nodded helplessly.

Celeste smiled. Like a beautiful predator. Again that subtle mocking. That which only he could perceive. “Good then. Kieran Pittman, define Planck’s constant to the rest of the class, please.”

Now he was seriously doomed.

The melted chocolate was poured in the batter. The batter mostly included of well kneaded flour with butter and baking soda. She used the hand-blender to mix the two together. The two adapted the dark color of the chocolate.

My mouth watered. My hands trembled.

————–

Khichdi! I think that was my first favorite food. One of the staple diets of an average Indian family, it is given mostly when a person is unwell. It consists of nothing much more than rice, pulses, turmeric powder, bit of chilies and of course, the mother of all ingredients, salt. You take all of them, boil them together and the healthiest fast food is ready.

And then my as I grew older the range widened. From south Indian dosas to Italian pastas, to American style pizzas to Chinese noodles; I gobbled them up with utmost delight. And not just from my plate, but from plates of people who couldn’t finish their meal.

I took special liking to anything with meat and cheese. I ate these with almost anything. Bread, rice, chapatti or sometimes even if there was no main dish.

And just when, my friends began to come to the conclusion that there can be no bigger food lover than me, I met her.

——————–

She buttered the sides of the baking tray before pouring the batter into it. That is done to avoid the cake to stick to the sides of the tray. Very neatly she laid out the dark brown colored batter. Then very carefully, she placed the tray into the pre-heated oven.

Following this, she took some of the cooking chocolate and kept in a bowl over a pot of boiling water. Even from my amateurish culinary skills, I assumed that you needed to apply indirect heat to the cooking chocolate.

I played a quiet spectator to all of this. My hands shook as if the temperatures were very low.

—————-

I don’t think I ever heard her say no to food. Anything you give her she eats with up great pleasure. In fact, when she is eating, nothing much can distract her. So much so, that once her baby sister went missing, while she was busy munching on French fries and sipping hot chocolate on the snow clad peaks of the Alps.

Over the years her love for food has spread over across to other aspects of her life as well. Nothing proves this statement more than the fact that she actually worked on a thesis on THE PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPACT OF FOOD.

I took a liking to her at once. Besides food, we did share interests in other fields like books and films. But whenever we have met, we have had quite interesting food items. Kati rolls, tiger prawns, pork, beef steak, carrot cake and many other delicacies.

———————

She couldn’t reach out to the smaller baking tray perched on top of the cabinet. With a slight stretch of my arms, I fetched it down, glad that my height came to some use.

She took the tray and kept it aside, not acknowledging my heroic deed. She checked on the pressure cooker placed on the second flame of the stove.

Then she took the smaller tray and laid out the remaining batter into the small tray. I took a step towards her, my hands trembling ever so slightly.

By now I was inches away from her. She laid out straightened the batter in the second tray. No one was there in her house. The only thing I could hear was the sound of my breathing and she patting on the batter to smoothen it out.

My hands continued to tremble.

With great concentration she straightened out the batter. I asked her to look at me, with a slight twinkle in her eyes. She glanced upwards.

I waited only for a moment before moving. But the moment seemed longer than a lifetime. All the past memories came flooding back into my head. The first time I saw her. The first time I touched her. The first time she hugged me. The trembling hands. The sweaty palms. Within that one moment it all flashed in front of my eyes.

I took in a breath. I bent down. She stopped her work. The batter in the oven bloated up . The cooking chocolate in the pan began to melt. The whistle blew on the pressure cooker. Our lips met.

My hands stopped trembling.