Microfiction Monday #6: Footsteps

…wherein two gentlemen have a bit of fun…

Kevin and his exotic-looking friend Calvino spent the afternoon in his room, with their ears firmly fixed on the comings and goings in the hallway outside, engrossed in a game that required them to guess who was walking down the hallway, using just the sound of their footsteps as a clue.

“Two men, carrying a heavy box.” Calvino called at the sound of two sets of rapid irregular footsteps accompanied by grunting. A moment later, two men walked past the door carrying a heavy-looking case.

“Two children and a woman.” Kevin excitedly offered his guess at a new set of steps coming from the hallway.

“Not just any woman, their mother, and it’s three not two, she’s carrying another on her back.” Calvino added confidently.

Soon enough, a weary-looking woman passed, with a baby strapped to her back with a leso and two chubby kids dressed identically in tow, holding hands and struggling to keep up with her. Calvino seemed incapable of containing his joy at how accurate his prediction turned out.

Presently, the sharp unmistakable sound of high heels on tiled floor floated in from the hallway.

“Easy, this one.” Proclaimed Kevin, “Must be one of the nurses.”

“Not quite.” Calvino beamed once more.

“Well who else would hear high heels?” Complained Kevin.

“Wait and see.” Calvino seemed about to burst with laughter.

Not long after, Mr Jones from Ward C next passed, fully dressed in attire befitting a lady of the party-going type, from a blouse and skirt all the way down to a cherry lipstick and mascara, and looking so comfortable in this dress configuration it was all Kevin and Calvino could do not to roll on the floor laughing, until he’d passed.

When finally their fit of laughter came to an end, it was to be promptly followed by another set of high heel footsteps, except these ones came with an urgency that could only mean one thing.

Calvino looked at Kevin once more, only this time he wasn’t beaming, but had a look of alarm on his face. “Oh dear, you’re in trouble my friend. Laters.” He flashed a deuces and then disappeared in a puff of smoke at the snap of his fingers.

An angry-looking nurse appeared in the frame of the door looking like she might melt away and morph into a volcano how cross she looked.

“Just look at him.” She snapped, “All jacked up on stolen morphine he is…and smiling like a fool. Are you planning on getting released from here, you sorry cud-chewing ignoramus? Because am having enough trouble as it is taking care of a cross-dressing middle aged married man and father of two gallivanting around like he owns the place without having a junkie who does not intend on getting better wasting my valuable time and effort.”

Or is it simply that you’re making your case to be transferred to ward C?”

Kevin felt troubled at the last words and he wondered if Calvino would ever teach him that vanishing act he was so good at.

Microfiction Monday #5: Frozen.

…wherein Razim is stuck…

Razim never once passed a chance to complain that he never had enough time to do all he wanted to, and so it was quite a surprise that when time froze one day, he had no use for it.

To his credit though, it wasn’t just time that froze, his body too was stuck in stasis. At best all he could do was count all the raindrops hanging in the air like diamonds. There was more than enough time for that, or to be more precise, there was none to worry about. He couldn’t remember exactly how it happened, except for the bright flash of light that came immediately before it all, and then after that everything just stopped.

Given his lack of motor functions, his mind naturally wandered.

It took him back to high school, where he remembered a queer little girl who turned down the romantic advances of the school’s most fetching guy, with his cleft chin, chiseled jawline and all, because she found his chi repulsive. Oh, what a laugh it caused around the place for a month or so. The poor guy, never having experienced such dejection before was absolutely devastated, if at least humbled.

Martha, or Masha was her name?  He couldn’t recall, because presently his mind slipped away to a less cheerful memory, the day when he lost his leg in a car accident and blown away were any lingering illusions that he’d move on to university in the States on a football scholarship. He remembered every painful detail of that horrible day in stunning clarity and well-ordered chronology like sequences in a movie. He’d lost a lot that day, and gained just as much, like the metal leg that stuck to him now like an endless taunt.

Then his mind fetched another memory he’d forgotten but ought not to have, and he couldn’t quite remember why he’d forgotten it. It concerned the girl, Masha was her name, there was no doubt of that now. Another thing there was no doubt about was that Masha was in fact, his wife!

Yes he remembered now. Masha the little girl who confounded many with her quirks, had found his chi endearing and married him. And she was now carrying his child. As a matter of fact, he’d left his bed tonight to fetch her almonds from the store around the corner because she so craved them.

He suddenly had a burning desire to be released from the time void. He desired to reunite with Masha because she needed him and he wanted desperately to see her again. He wanted to be released, to be unfrozen.

The master of his prison seemed to be listening, for soon he felt motion return to his limbs, but with it came a great heat that enshrouded his body with blinding light like a massive beacon. The heat would not let up and increased steadily and when finally the bolt from the sky released him, he was crisp as a leaf in the summer sun and rain drops fell once again, eager and unfettered.

Microfiction Monday #4: Of Extroverts, Introverts and The Troglodyte.

…wherein animals talk and do…stuff…

He approached the pride of lions with well-founded apprehension at first. Upon realizing they did not plan on being hostile to him, he walked more confidently and joined them as one would his own family.

They took him in. He reinvented his life around their endless pilgrimage through the Savannah. He learned how to spring upon the slow-witted wildebeest. He tossed himself in the scorching sand playing with the cubs. He howled and roared into the night sky as the ground below melted under their might.

Until one day he left, to seek less rowdy company.

He passed by a hyena, and measured the size and look of her. He found her features dismaying, the shorter hindquarters, the arching back, the dirty spotted brown coat, the perpetually damp nose.

“Ugly, ugly creature.” He beheld. To his surprise, the hyena reciprocated the remark and leaped off, laughing and wagging her tail.

He came upon a cheetah, and was taken in by her grace and beauty, her cunning and movements, her graceful silence. She put too much stock in her own company, however, and soon he was unable to keep up with her because she was too fast for him.

The hyena came back, taunting him with the same words and the same laughter.

Hurt and confused, he crawled back to his house, as all tortoises tend to do from time to time, and vowed never to come out again.