Chaos

FOREWORD: Although I wrote this in a blinding hurry for a competition, I think I'm onto a good idea here. :) So far though, I've never managed to rework a story so that road looks like a dead end. But never say never, eh?  
NOTE: If you'd rather read the .doc here's the link. 


It started off as another day; gloomy for the most part, but with occasional periods of blazing sunshine. Mother certainly was her usual self; humming and bustling around, pausing to shout passionlessly at me to help with the chores.

‘I have to leave a little bit earlier today. I told you already didn’t I? I’m getting a new shipment of those infernal Blacks which all your friends seem to want. It’ll really drive the business up.’ she said, without interrupting a quick sweep of the living room.

Mother owned a provision store two streets off the highway. It was one of only a handful of shops that catered to the townsfolk proper, and not the passers-by; it was definitely the only one that sold the things it did – milk, eggs, bread, soaps, toothbrushes and other odds and ends that everybody needed everyday. Like the Blacks.

I trudged off to wash the dishes in the backyard, while my mother went off to heat some milk for a last coffee before she left for the shop. Presently I heard her frustrated voice drift from the kitchen.

‘I thought we had some milk left over? Did you finish it off?’
‘No, mother. And we didn’t. Remember, I told you last night that we were running out of milk and you said you’d pick up some today?’

‘What? You didn’t!’ but this time she couldn’t help the note of doubt that crept into her voice.
‘I did’ I confirmed sagely. ‘Maybe you’ve forgotten?’

There was this thing I did. I liked to call it a superpower. Simply put, I was believable. People would rather doubt themselves than disbelieve anything I said. Perhaps it was my sheer inconspicuousness that worked in my favour – I was of average height, and had an average build, average skin tone and average looks. My hair wasn’t funky and I wore glasses that weren’t too thick. Surely this guy wouldn’t say or do anything out of the ordinary? Or maybe it was that my voice was modulated just right to always ring true. Or maybe my body language oozed frankness. Or maybe I had this knack of speaking just the words people expected to hear. Maybe it was all of the above – it probably was. Whatever it was, it gave me power and I used it freely.

Mother was only slightly flustered by the milk incident. She gave me a quick hug and the usual warnings about doing well at college and she was away. I watched houseflies chase each other around the living room until it was time, then packed my single notebook into a redundant backpack and left for college.

‘College’ was an extremely run down rambling four storey building that stood all by itself, furthest from the highway excepting the farms. And ‘college’ wasn’t really a college – it was a school, kindergarten, playschool, all in one. It was the only place for education in the whole town. We had children and teenagers in the thousands but most of them did not study for long. It was understood that as soon as they were old enough they would take up the trade of their parents.

As I approached the dirt track that marked the last half kilometre, the reason for the name became apparent. A giant, spanking clean, whitewashed stone archway that spelled the word ‘college’, thoroughly incongruous in its neatness, slowly came into view.So did a gang of rich kids – we had a lot of those – standing under the arch smoking. One of them stubbed out the ash on one of the archway’s stones, leaving a stain. As I passed them by, one of them waved nonchalantly, seeing but not really noticing.

There was something about walking down that solitary dirt road, something about the mundane nature of the activity that always fouled up my mood. Some days were worse than others, and today was one of those – the way the rich kids were always there, in the exact same spot, doing the exact same thing, like partially animated statues, made my head throb. By the time I passed under the doorway, I had a full-blown headache. That was probably why I decided to stop for a chat with the rich kids.

Pointing to the stain I said ‘I passed the watchman on his rounds a minute ago. You know how the fellow walks. Slow as a snail, but he should be coming up here shortly.’ That was a complete fabrication but a believable one. Only a few metres from the archway, the dirt road curved out of sight, hidden by a clump of trees. And everybody feared the watchman – he was free with the stick and had a strong arm. And we suspected that he was the reason why the archway was always so squeaky clean.

‘Yeah?’ said the tall one with the slick hair. He was the one I’d pegged as the leader of the group, a not difficult conclusion. He took a few careful seconds to stub out his cigarette, and then shrugged as if to say that he was leaving because he was done with whatever he was doing, and not because he feared the watchman’s wrath. He signalled to his mates to join him. I shrugged back.

‘Thanks man’ he said tonelessly. My headache had cleared up rapidly because I knew they wouldn’t return for a while. I was even in a good enough mood to give him a brief smile, which he didn’t see.

Classes were a pain. I slipped out through the bathroom window after an hour of mind numbing dreariness which brought on the headache again. However, that wasn’t what was different about that day because I played truant almost everyday. And it wasn’t just me too – everybody did. Curiously enough, the teachers would probably never notice because the classes would always have the same number of attendees. Different students had different truant ‘times’. Mine was usually after the first couple of hours, when most of the other students came in.

I chose a different destination everyday for my classtime walks. That day, I decided to go to the paddy fields in the farthest corner of town, about five kilometres east of the highway and two from college. I didn’t usually go that way because the old man who looked after the farm was cranky and righteous; an unbearable combination. That day though, my headache was worse and I needed more time to get rid of it – that meant a longer walk and I didn’t have many other options. And it wasn’t just a different destination I chose everyday – I even chose different routes to the same place. I took every little goat lane, dried up canal and open sewer I could, hoping to get lost but never actually managing to do so, until half an hour later the first of the coconut trees came into view. Those trees protected his farm from the often torrential winds, but they helped me in a different way – the old man wouldn’t see me until I only a few feet away from his hut.

As I crossed the coconut tree line, I immediately realized something was different about the place. One of the windows creaked slightly on its hinges; copious amounts of dust lined the usually spotless walkway to the house; the grass was too tall and most importantly, there was a fat padlock on the front door. Had the old man left for good? What hadn’t changed though was the boxy white car parked a short way off. A little dusty and a little the worse for wear, it was perfectly usable nonetheless. My eyes were drawn to it, and my headache hadn’t passed and I felt a strange yearning tug at my consciousness.

I checked one of the doors – it was unlocked – and climbed in. I’d never seen the old man actually use this car, so I was mildly surprised to see the lush – and well maintained – interiors. Sinking into the rich leather, I put both hands on the wheel and pretended to zoom down an empty straight, tyres screaming and brakes forgotten. This was different, this was exhilarating; my headache eased up a little and presently I made my slow, convoluted way back home.

The following day, Mother could not find the coffee powder. I told her she’d run out of it at the same time she ran out of milk. I reminded her that she’d intended to pick up both of them from the warehouse together but somehow she’d forgotten and brought only the milk. She was bemused but took the slip up in her stride. Before she left for her shop, I asked her a question.

‘Didn’t you want to go to the city to check out the new supermarket?’ I asked innocuously.

Mother looked vaguely surprised at the question. Yes, she had intended to go, but she had always intended to go on vacation to Goa too. It was one of those things that tended to occupy permanent places on a to-do list, vague, vacuously pleasant ambitions that perhaps helped dull the pointlessness of routine, but surely not something one would actually go out and do. I knew what she’d say before she said it.

‘Yes, but it’s not really necessary right now. Besides, what about college? You really need to pick up your grades – you’re smarter than the scores you get.’ Her voice grew fainter as she started to walk towards the front door to wear her flip flops.

‘I have three hours off before lunch today, Mother’ I lied. ‘And I can borrow our neighbours’ bicycle and I’d be back in no time at all.’

‘Oh, all right then.’ she said, her mind already elsewhere.

The ‘city’, I knew from my geography lessons was actually nothing more than a large town. Seeing, however, as it was the only other sign of civilization within a two hundred kilometre radius, the name was appropriate. Like us, it lived off the highway, and the anonymous people who came from unknown places and passed us to go on to unknown destinations. Unlike us, it lay near a junction of no fewer than seven highways, a fact that made it a ‘city’ and us a ‘town’.

The city was fifty kilometres away and I covered the distance in a little over an hour. Pure joy rushed through my veins as I absorbed the journey in all its richness. Farms lined the highway on both sides – paddy, wheat and corn, so different yet so alike in the way the stalks seemed to dance to a hidden symphony, one played by the restless wind. The wind was never predictable and I loved the way it dived in and out of my hair, frivolously whipping it this way and that, threatening to knock off my glasses one moment, and steadying them the next. The sun burnt fiercely off my right shoulder but that felt fine too, curiously. Illusory pools of water glittered like gems on the sparkling asphalt in the distance, and the odd brick kiln added a spicy, heady aroma to the earthy background. The sheer break in routine was exhilarating yes, but that was not all of what me almost delirious with joy.

Something had changed yesterday. The sight of the car and the feel of the car had combined with the persistent headache and the foul temper to unlock things from my childhood I’d long forgotten. I’d like to call them memories, but they were more schools of thought stirred into existence by the right stimuli, stimuli that no longer existed. Back when Father had still been alive, he used to drive me to the city everyday. He’d been some sort of transport broker and this had been part of the job. I wasn’t sure what it was that had driven these memories out of my head, but with their return came an overpowering conviction that this was where I was meant to be, and this was where I had to be if I weren’t to waste away in sickness.

Days passed, and I didn’t visit the old man and his white car again. Each day, I convinced Mother to let me go to the city on the bicycle – I brought back enough gossip, and enough shiny, plasticky things from the supermarket to keep her happy. My headaches stilled for a while, but that wasn’t to last and they came back soon enough. I knew what to do though, and I’d known ever since the fateful encounter with the car. That day, when I saw a truck approaching on the other side of the highway, I switched the bicycle over to the wrong side and started pedalling furiously.

The truck driver was not paying attention to the road. I’d observed their lot keenly the past few days – their senses were so dulled by the routine nature of their job that they’d built up a resistance to anything that would actually break the monotony. Like little bicycles, no larger than one of their wheels, riding suicidally right into them. He did notice me eventually, but when I was only ten feet away. His eyes lit up in shock, and my heart leapt with joy. His hands worked the massive steering wheel frantically, but the truck was never built for that kind of response. An instant before the collision, I swerved off the road into a muddy ditch that lined it, and unable to control the bike at that speed, crashed it heavily. My knees were bruised, the skin had peeled off one forearm and my neck had suffered whiplash; but my mind raced ahead furiously, clear and completely rid of the headache, for the first time in a long time. I looked back to see if the truck driver would stop and turn back to berate my recklessness. But I’d read him correctly – he probably thought it was his fault, and that he was making a quick getaway. I laughed mirthlessly.

Mother wasn’t happy. I told her some of us had been trying to climb the archway in front of college, and I’d slipped and fallen. I hid the whiplash. She muttered and grumbled about growing up as she bandaged my various cuts. She wasn’t a bad woman, not really. I owed her for my very existence – a token debt, perhaps, because it was her duty after all, but it was something. But she was so predictable. Our neighbour was, surprisingly, not worried about the state of the bicycle.

‘Keep it’ he said generously. I found out soon enough that he intended to buy a scooter to speed up his newspaper distribution, and that he planned to expand to the city.

Perhaps it was my imagination but I felt the nature of my equation with the truck drivers change. They drove slower than ever, and many of them kept their eyes on the road longer. Chaos. I targeted the car drivers next. They were different. They drove faster, much faster, but with more concentration. I couldn’t merely cycle on the wrong side of the road as they’d notice me a long way away. Also, with them I had to pick and choose who to target, unlike the truck drivers. My first victim was an elderly lady who drove incongruously rashly in her little hatchback. I knew right away when I saw her approach that she was somebody who’d driven these roads a long time – somebody who’d expect things to work a certain way, and believed that they would, deep in her bones – a perfect customer for my trade by all appearances. I clung to the marks dividing the two sides of the road and when the car was only a few feet away I swerved right across the path of the car onto the wrong side. A startling childlike scream, almost unearthly in pitch, rent the air, and was immediately followed by a squealing of tyres and the earsplitting sound of shearing metal. I turned around. The little hatchback had crashed into a tree, and there was no movement inside. The ensuing silence was ominous. I searched my mind for any trace of sympathy, or even fear, but there was nothing; only a savage sense of pleasure that burst through my lips as a chuckle. I rode away. Chaos.

I stayed away from the road for a couple of days. It was torture. I started fights between two rival gangs of rich kids – one of them was nearly beaten to death, but I was only temporarily satiated. I sneaked to the warehouse in the middle of the night, picked up one of Mother’s new stocks of Blacks, and left it by the archway. The next morning, I walked in to find the rich kids arguing again, this time over their loot. Mother was distraught and I consoled her. I was glad to see that she broke her routine to add an extra layer of security to the warehouse.

Inevitably though, soon enough, I found myself making my way to the old man and his coconut tree lined farm. The padlock was still there, and the hut was dustier than ever. My head throbbed as I made my way to the car. Hotwiring the ignition – I’d picked up the trick from a trucker in the city – I spent a moment listening to the car thrum, and then turned it onto the back road that connected directly to the highway.

As I turned the car onto the wrong side of the road, a fatalistic mood of philosophical inquiry gripped me. Did these people even understand the incredibly fragile system that a simple highway was? Hundreds and thousands of variables, all perfectly balanced in the most complicated of protocols, a ceaseless dance that maintained the pretence of humdrum everydayness that the highway seemed to be. A truck appeared over the bend. Did these people respect the dangerous weapon they so carelessly wielded, or did they persist with their sense of entitlement? If they did, and I knew they did, they deserved to see differently. Now the truck driver saw me, and I saw the familiar series of expressions rapidly cross his face. Shock. Anger. Fear. Joy oozed into my mind like a drug and unfogged it gently; but I wasn’t satisfied. He swerved away from me, and I followed him. Resignation. In that split second before the collision, when my mind was at its clearest, I saw that he understood. I’d stripped away layers and layers of expectation in a moment, and he was, in a strange away, properly alive for the first time. Exhilaration ripped through my head like a wildfire, burning away the last vestiges of the fog.