Short Fiction Articles

In a time and in a dimension long ago and now, Demiurge (the creator god) and the supreme Mother of Light that resides in the eighth heaven begat a child called Sabaoth (the god of the Jews) to rule the seventh heaven. Sabaoth then begat Abaddon (the devil, Satan). Sabaoth placed the devil on the Earth, which reside in one of the lower of the seven heavens of the Archons to rule. The soul of humans is the food that the Archons cannot live without. Demiurge was not pleased that Sabaoth should place Abaddon on the Earth without conferring with him and ordered Sabaoth to remove the devil from the Earth. Both Sabaoth and Abaddon made every effort to convince Demiurge that a demented and horrific seed were now beginning to sprout in the minds of their worshippers (the Jews and Arabs) that will keep the Earth at its lowest state of radiance and in a constant state of turmoil. Sabaoth also argued that the heavens are fixed in their place and that no heaven should be allowed to ascend to a...

They dance from space as the shine that is bright falls on upon the planet that is our world. We bask in the intensity of what we cannot put into focus with the vision that is our sight. The beams of what cannot be seen affect the perception of what can be seen as our walk though the world engulfed by beams is what's done daily. The beams do not saturate only one side of the planet as the moon circles. The beams bend around the planet as a snake wraps itself around its prey. Moon beams pass though objects with the density of wood but cannot penetrate dense material as in metals, stone and hard soil. The moon beams swirl around the world and persons that are blocked by the dense barriers of nature cannot be positively affected by the beams or they are not in the path to be touched. Some have a born in barrier of bone that is thick and dense. Moon beams are effective only when they can enter the brain matter. A human with a skull that is overly thick and dense will not be touched b...

It was a hazy evening and the students of the ballet class were returning to their dorms. The fountain was pouring its heart. It was singing a sweet goodnight to the angels who would soon have their dinner and go to bed. The ballet academy had a vast playground and several trees flowers and rides to play with. The spring-well fountain was the centre of attraction and the favourite place of the students. They used to practice their dance-lessons until they reached perfection. Their shoes would wear out at the end of the month but they did not care. They wanted to be ideal. Such was their dedication and their ballet teacher Mr Meow was equally good. He had strange whiskers like a cat and a funny temperament. If he found a student dull-as-ditchwater in his/her performance he would go wild and run around the hall and scream and ask them to fetch loads of Jalapenos for him to eat. It was quite amusing to watch but the students loved him and knew he was worried about them. The class saw it...

The song of the nightingale is perceived to be melancholic as it stirs a feeling of compassion and gratitude of the long-lost, pawing over the branches of the birch tree their music seems to present the cascading glitter of self-belief and escape from mortification due to the harsh realities faced by the oblivion traveller. The tragic tale comes from the account of the famous poet Ovid's metamorphosis as described in the second century BC of the ancient Greek culture. Philomela being nailed by Tereus: her sister's husband, retaliated with the help of her sister, leaving the king and everlasting grief by making him eat the boiled the corpse of his son. According to the myth, Tereus ran to kill the duo and after having prayed the Good God, the pair was metamorphosed to birds with Philomela changing to Nightingale and her sister Procne to a swallow. However, the statement forms a basis of discussion as argued by the critics of the possibility of it being vice-versa since Tereu...

Ogyam was the sixth born in a family of ten. His demeanor and general appearance differed greatly from his other siblings. He was the only one who bore a different surname though he was a true progeny of the Kyei family. Right from age five, he felt the heat of the financial fever that existed in his family. His co-equals had play kits like toy cars and dummies but he had none. His attempt to play with some of the play kits often met the abusive talks of the parents of the kids in their house whose common theme was "Let your parents buy some for you!" in a harsh and loud tone. Weeping, Ogyam would coy away and mold his own play kits from clay, a true likeness of those he found the children play with. The only difference was that theirs had life while his was corpses. Always rejected and avoided by his mates due to his family's poverty, he grew up as a cold, dull and an introvert teenager. His father, Mr. Kyei, though warring with his deteriorated finances, was highly re...

I have been watching a television show called 'Pyaar Tune Kya Kiya'. It presents one unusual love story every episode and it has many seasons. I have watched most of the episodes. Among the several amazing love stories the one I liked the most was about a guy who was a writer named N and a girl who was a prostitute named K. It was the usual kind of romance where the boy and girl meet each other coincidently and fall in love. Also, the difference was not because the girl was a prostitute. The story was unassuming because of what the guy thought about the girl and the way he behaved with her. There is a subtle difference between showing that you care about the atrocities faced by the prostitutes and sharing the pain with one of them. Most of us in our society think that speaking out loud about our acceptance towards them or writing articles about how we can put an end to their suffering is most generous gesture we can afford to show them. I do not disagree that it is the first st...

The doorbell rang. "This could be my Chinese friend, Xiao-he." I murmured as I walked toward the door. I guessed rightly. It was actually him-that droll of a man. He was oddly amusing. Xiao-he, (pronounced Shiao-he) and literally translated as "small river". His real name was Lee Chiang-I, but nicknamed Xiao-he by all his friends. He could make you laugh by whimsical, eccentric conduct. He was a short and plump person in his mid-fifties. He was bald-headed and had unusually large ears-for a Chinese. As he entered with his dog, I realized he wasn't that character I knew. I could tell from his doleful face that he had experienced a great loss or was in serious trouble. He had been drinking with friends all day at a bar not far from my home. Xiao-he's foibles included a tendency to spend more time with his dog at the expense of his family. Soon after his arrival, he excused me to visit the toilet. He stayed there so long that I thought he'd gone back ...

At Fort Snuggly, Alaska, a U.S. army drill sergeant stormed into the barracks unannounced where 20 soldiers stood at attention fully dressed in camouflage fatigues in front of their beds at precisely 5 AM. The sergeant walked up and down the aisle, between ten soldiers on the right and left of him. He stared sternly in the eyes of each soldier to his right and then on the left, intimidating them. Then he looked intently at each soldier's bed, which were all made up. He shouted, "Now! I believe every soldier is as good as how well he makes up his bed! Your covers should be tight! So tight, in fact, that a coin should bounce when it hits the cover! Now, I want to know who really made their beds!" He pulled out a penny from his pocket, and shouted, "I have a penny here and if it doesn't bounce on each of your beds, you will run an extra five miles this morning!" The sergeant walked to the closest bed to the right of the door and stared at the first man. He ...

As soon as the officer darted into the restroom to respond to nature's call, the chief nurse stood up from her chair by the doorway and walked straight to the clerk at the information counter. "Who's that man?" "He's a police officer." "What makes you say that?" "I saw his police badge." She whispers. Folding her arms, she says with trepidation: "Then I'm finished." The officer is coming out of the restroom now. The chief nurse is moving toward him as fear and anxiety gnaws at her heart. She's now trying to put on a veneer of politeness. Gnashing her teeth in rage, she says: "Why didn't you tell us you were a police officer immediately you entered this ward? I would have personally seen to it that your wife was given an express service." Behaving like a demonstrative to a dying dog, she instructs the junior nurses to quickly take me into the observation room on a stretcher. As soon as I wa...

The Manhattan hairdresser asked with genuine intrigue, "But, darling, how did your husband ever find you in Australia?" Amy could see that he was envisaging Arthur setting off from the United States on a quest to find his wife-to-be and, against all odds, finding her amongst the wild kangaroos of outback Australia. There was more than a little truth in it. Amy laughed. Arthur was everything that Amy was not: sophisticated, wealthy, and worldly-wise. If it had not been for Arthur's mid-life crisis and a conscientious effort at finding a spiritual path, neither would ever have come into contact with the other. After significant professional success and a few failed marriages, Arthur decided that his move to Australia would be the opportunity to find a new direction in life. He was serious in his quest. A very quick and sharp intelligence guaranteed that he read every trailblazing spiritual and psychological book that caught his attention. After friending young Amy at a sp...

Many civilisations from time immemorial have the habit of worshipping icons, murals, carvings, animals and sometimes human beings also as incarnations of God. Especially in India, worshipping saints as Swamijis (God incarnate) is very much in vogue. At the same time there are iconoclasts who never believe in such form of worship. Also there are some intermediaries who sang " If you consider it as a mere stone it is stone, If you consider the same as God, it is God", thus fixing the onus of judgement with the individuals. This is a story of such a Saint worshipped as a Swamiji by villagers. He had opponents too. The story deals with the theme "who wins the war'. Suri, young lad in his twenties came to his native village after several years on completing his graduation. Suri is the abbreviation for Surya which again is abbreviated from the full name Surya Narayanan. Surya Narayanan means Sun God, Suri was born as a result of worship to Sun God and the same name was...

As he stepped into the meeting hall, Ayomah realized how difficult it was for the majority of parents attending the PTA meeting to reconcile the color of his skin with the sharpness of his mind. In his own young mind, it seemed like there was an unwritten universal law stating that - the lighter your skin, the smarter you are. It was a rare occurrence for such a poor boy like him, who was being taunted due to the thickness of his skin, to be honored in front of such an audience. Majority of whom were either white or Asian. As Mrs. Ryder, the school's headmistress, tried to give a speech about the virtues of being responsible parents, her speech was interrupted twice by one Ms. Jemima - an ex-con - who had been jailed for seven years for drug-dealing. She was such a nuisance at the meeting that, she was asked by Mrs. Ryder on two occasions to keep silent. She was nearly ordered out of the meeting hall at a point but for the sake of Ayomah's mother's intervention. Every par...

The big headline splashed across the Jacksonville Daily News read: Billionaire Malcolm Fellerhouse III Dies. The tycoon who contributed to America's growing wealth since the end of the Depression had died due to natural causes-old age and a weak heart. As a matter of fact, when each of his family members were called about his death, none were surprised. Fellerhouse didn't have a big family like so many of his wealthy peers; he had just two children, their spouses and four grandchildren. Malcolm taught his children, John Fellerhouse and Sally Fellerhouse Thompson, important principles about leading modest, moral lives that made them honest, upright people. In turn, John and Sally raised and taught their two children the same moral lessons. But there is always one relative who was born far away from the apple tree. Among the four grandchildren, 30-year-old William, John's younger son, lived a reckless life. William spent a lot of money on cars, drugs and women, he begged hi...

[Cultural Introduction: In traditional Hindu culture, cremation involves barefoot (as a mark of respect) friends and family members carrying their dead, on a cot, to the crematorium. The cot is added with support arms, usually bamboo poles which are carried by the mourners on their shoulders. While on the way to the crematorium, they chant: Bolo Hori, Hori Bol. Hori in Bengali language refers to the Almighty and the word Bol is, "to say", "to invoke the name of". So Bolo Hori means, "In the name of God"] A pair of baleful pale-yellow glassy eyes with dark vertical slits, stared malevolently at me. With ears laid back, tongue sticking out and the face contorted with a horrendous snarl, it was the face of the devil alright, about to launch itself into an attack. The owner of that hideous face, the spotted skull, was resting comfortably on a small, intricately carved, mahogany vanity table, set against the living room wall. The wide open mouth revealed a pa...