The World That Once Was

I am writing this with a nine inch nail, on the floor of the cellar where I am hiding. I can hear the mad shrieks of the radiation infested animals outside. It's scary and it's horrible, you don't want to be in my foot rags right now. Whatever I have left of my feet after the frostbite, two toes I guess. But I do not feel pain when I walk though. The times I am not crawling through the debris of the world that once was.

The Big War has ended and there aren't enough of us left. Life was easy once, now it's all survival. The scientists said that cockroaches would survive the nuclear holocaust. As anyone could see now, they were wrong. It was not the cockroaches, they got eaten by the penguins.

No one here really remembers how it all started, which year the Big War began, or how many countries fought. It's all pointless really. What we know now is that its one planet and it's either us, the few groups of humans, or the penguin packs.

The radiation from the fallout of the nuclear wars triggered some nascent gene in the penguins and they transformed into the most vicious, ruthless killers in the history of mankind. Worse than man. They rose from icy pits of Antarctica and swarmed the cities like a plague of locusts. The animals were the first to get eaten. We tried weapons, but they were all useless. The penguins healed quick, bred quick, moved quick and killed like thunder from the Gods. For every one of us, there are more than a hundred of them. They have heard the sound of the nail on the floor, I can hear them slam into the door of the cellar. Any moment they will break in and they wil

The Voices In the Well

In a remote village somewhere in the foothills of the Himalayas a well starts to speak. Shadows crowd around the ancient well. A strange sound, a disjointed amalgamation of a wail, laughter, and hysteric shouting blast forth from the well. The villagers are scared, apprehensive, some of them stay away from the well but curiosity pulls others near the well's mouth and they shine their makeshift wooden torched high above the well. Only the screams pour forth from the impenetrable darkness.

The head of the village is sombre as he hears the menacing cries, " We should sacrifice a goat to appease the wicked deities of the well."

The medicine man puts forth his view, "Each person in the village is a sinner, we should throw food into the well till the voices stop their screaming."

"Bah!" says the village butcher, "this is something beyond our ken, we need to bring the shaman from the next village who will know how to appease the screaming well."

Meanwhile, the screaming modulates into something different and now they hear the disjointed voices of people speaking and singing from inside the well.

"The spirits of our ancestors need to be appeased," the fisherman said, "listen how they sing out of their hunger."

Another sound attracts the attention of the villagers. From the east, a helicopter flies towards the village. Everyone holds to their clothes and their headdresses and they run away from the big flying metal bird. A zipline swings out of the helicopter and drops straight into the darkness of the well. A second later a soldier dressed in full battle gear descends from the helicopter and enters straight into the dark well. He stays in there for no less than ten seconds when a tug on the rope confirms the chopped pilot to start moving up.

The soldier swings up on the zipline, with a radio in his hand which they had dropped in the village on their recon mission.
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Radios, funny things. Who even listens to them anymore, really.
I'm trying to get back on track with writing. There will be one more later. Not related to this one for sure.

I Can Haz SkullCandy Skullcrushers!

 

This is kinda off topic from our blog's theme. But given the awesomness of the subject at hand, we have to talk about these. I got these babies in mail yesterday. At my office address because I am mostly in office in daytime.  So, it is this BIG package that is wrapped tighter than tight which ofcourse makes for excellent security for the headphones. I took the package to my desk, opened it and  out came these beautiful babies, SkullCrushers. Everyone in office was asking me where I got them from and the burning jealousy in their eyes was a sweet sweet high. Yeah, let me remember and savor that moment for a sec.

Right, so at home I started to open the package and I couldn't figure out how to! Oh Woe! So, out came the trusty SwissKnife and I delicately and surgically went MEDIVEAL on the plastic packing. After 15 minutes of careful cutting and slicing, these babies were in my hands. But I didn't have a battery, and they need a battery for the bass to operate. I prodded through the package looking for what else was there and...i saw an AA cell. Batteries included. Wow. When was the last time you bought an electronic item with the battery included. (Don't say your cellphone!). It's the small touches that matter when a person opens the packing of a new gadget. I got a carrying case, 3 different kinds of adapters, a cell, an awesome warrenty card, and the lil skull logo in the package is actually a sticker that will soon be placed somewhere nice and cool.

That said, i put in the battery, switched on the headphones, plugged them in the laptop. Played a song and nothing happened. No sound. Then silly me flicked a switch on the bass gadget on the headphones and BOOM! I was a fan! It literally made my eyes go wide and my mouth hang open in a WOOOOAAAAAHHHH!

I listened to songs I have probably heard hundreds of times and there were new sounds on those songs with these headphones. Too awesome. Beyond awesomeness, really.

Right, now i hear some voices from deep inside your soul, what you want a pair too? Yeah, well you can check out SkullCandyIndia's Facebook page Here and you can bother SkullCandyIndia on Twitter Here.

The headphones are still getting launched all over India, so best time to snag them and make your friends jealous. And yes, the bass will melt your brain into a slush of awesomness!

 

SkullCrushers and Sups. They can both crush your skull.

The Proud Father

"Look," he said, "you are doing it wrong."

Selekaw looked at the man and then at her blood stained hands,  her eyes widened a bit and her lower lip started to quiver.

"Aw, frush, come on girl, don't start with the routine now."

Selekaw dropped the needle from her hand and ran out of the room.  The sound of her loud sobs followed her. The  woman on the table stirred. She opened her eyes, unable to  recognize her surroundings, confusion marred her ghostly pale features.

"Oh shit," the man said and turned few knobs on the IV pouch and the woman slowly drifted back to sleep. He picked up the needle from the ground where it was dropped by the girl. He closed one eye, threaded the needle with fresh string, stuck out his tongue and started to sew up the woman's half open chest. Her heart was lying in the glass jar on the table and it slowly pulsated. The glass jar was filled with a conducting liquid that kept electricity flowing through the heart, giving it a quasi-life, saving it from the virus that coursed its ragged way through the woman's body. He finished stitching and pulled the sheet over the woman's head.

He went out of the dingy room. Kicked a stray dog on his way out and pulled a heavy trampoline sheet to cover the exit, preventing mosquitoes and other insects from getting in the makeshift operation room. He found Selekaw sitting on a broken wall outside the room. Her feet dangled in the air and her face was wet with tears. She heard him approach and wiped her face with her sleeve, smearing dirt on her face in the process.

He sat on the wall near her. For a few seconds no one spoke.

"Why do we do this da?" Selekaw broke the silence.

"Because no one else will." he looked her in the eyes as he said that.

"I don't want to do this anymore."

"You don't really have a choice my dear," he said, "my hands shake these days and my eyesight is not what it was. You are my onl-"

A shuffling sound attracted their attention. Behind them the  woman from the operation theater slowly advanced towards them with her arms outstretched and a murderous hunger on her  face. The man picked up the axe lying near the wall. Selekaw looked up to him.

He smiled and handed her the axe. Selekaw jumped down the wall and in measured furious strokes dismembered the zombie woman in six neat pieces.

The proud father had a tear in his eye.

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All we have to be is something more than our parents, even if we have to do the things that we do not like or completely agree with. If we are one up than our folks, it will be something for them to be proud about.

I'm warming up for the next big thing. When? What? Even I do not know.

Any discussion about the story is open in the comments section, or you can bug me on twitter, @fubar69.

Happy Hunting!

Echo Of My Name

"Excuse me," the man with the briefcase said as he sidled into the seat near me. He sat down with a 'whump' and put his big black briefcase under his seat. I fixed my ear phones in my ears and went back to listening to new album by interplanetary death metal  band The Planet Crushers.

The six inch holo of the safety robot appeared in front of all the seats in the ship and it went through the motions, explaining the actions we had to take in case of a pressure leak, the procedures to be followed in vacuum evacuation, how we can send emergency broadcasts if the plane crashed on a hostile planet. I watched the girl in the hologram move her hands like a small puppet tied with invisible strings. Some of the motions were in sync with the music in my ears and it was a strange and weird experience.

Something touched my shoulder.

The man on the side of me had a tentacle out and he rested it on my shoulder, his mouth moved and he continued in a sentence that I could only catch the last word as I took out the earplugs.

The last word he said was my name. I was frozen with shock because no one knew my that name. It was a name that my Za-grandmother used to call me with. It was not my official name, there was not another name like that till the last end of Andromeda and I had not been called with that name in the best part of the last century.

The man spoke my name again.

I felt hot tears rush into my eyes and my throat locked up with a surge of emotions I could not explain. The space ship shuddered once with the powering up sequences and whatever the man said next was lost in sounds of a hyperspace drive. Soon, sweet hypnomuzak lilted down from the speakers hidden in the walls and I felt myself drifting into a blessed sleep. In my dreams, when the man called my name again, I froze the sound in my mind.

When I woke up at the end of the trip, the man was gone. We had landed on Terra XVI and all the passengers rushed past me to the exits. The echo of my name still hung in my head and I held onto it like a child holds on to a favorite toy.