42 Quirks

He stood out among the crowd. He was alone.

The other kids are having a field day in the park. They run, scream, yell, fall, bawl, and are picked up and soothed by their parents.

He simply stands alone on one side and looks at them with a wan smile on his face.
» Read the rest of this entry «

The story so far:
Aw, what the heck! Read it up!
****
I saw a sly smile on my face.

(This confusion of pronouns is really getting to me now.)

“What makes you think there’s only one of us??”
“What? Look, there’s only one…”

And then it struck me.

“You mean – ”
The sly smile again.
“But – ”
The sly smile widened a little.
“Look – ”
The sly smile was now a grin.
“Oh, wipe that silly grin off your face!!”
The grin disappeared. Literally.
“I didn’t mean that!! Get it back. GET IT BACK!!”

The grin came back. Literally.
» Read the rest of this entry «

The Story So Far:
I am returning home from work and encounter disembodied humanoid voices. When I ask them (boldly) to appear in front of me, they do. And I scream.

*****

It was me.

No, no. I mean I was standing here and then I was standing there. And I hadn’t even moved. Which meant there were two of me. Here was me and then another me.

Puzzled, confounded, confused, and all the synonyms lent themselves to immediate reference. But none found their way to provide the adequate and corresponding exercise to the tongue. And that was indeed novel for me.

And then I spoke.
» Read the rest of this entry «

The story so far:
On my way back home, I encounter disembodied voices. Takes me a while to actually figure out they are disembodied. But when I do, I freak out. The story continues…
*****
Very slowly, I started to back out, throwing occasional glances all around, trying to ascertain if the voice-without-a-body was just that, or if it had other surprises in store, hidden away somewhere.

I must have hardly taken a few steps, when I heard the same wheezy, “Excuse me?”

“Yes?” I noticed that my voice came out an octave higher, what was commonly called a squeak.

“We detect fear. Are you a-fear?”

“Afraid. The word is afraid,” my TA instincts took over, “And the answer is yes. I don’t talk to disembodied voices everyday, you know!!”

“No, no! You have gotten us all wrong. We are not dis-whatever-ied. We are humanoid voices!”

“Humanoid?”
» Read the rest of this entry «

Did I tell you about the time when I saved the world?

No, really. I did.

It happened like this.

I was on my way home after a long day’s work. And I was really looking forward to some R & R, mindless channel surfing on the telly coupled with a hot cup of coffee and jelly-filled cream biscuits…

Along the way I was cogitating – thinking, that is – about the problem I had left half-solved on my lab desk.

The solution to it was just around the proverbial corner. Except, the proverbial corner was not in proverbial sight, far as the proverbial eye could see.

Too many proverbial what-have-yous spoiling the proverbial whats-it-called.

Engrossed in my thoughts thus, I was traversing my daily route, almost robotically, when I heard a wheezy, “Excuse me?”

I stopped to see who it was that the voice addressed.
» Read the rest of this entry «

One gulp.

That’s all that was remaining. And a gulp was a life-line.

Should he use it now? Or should he wait for things to get a little clearer. But, using it now would mean that they would get clearer. Yeah, he’d use it.

No, wait! What if things would get clearer anyway? What if using it was actually wasting a perfectly good gulp? And the only one? No, he decided. He’d wait.

The horizon stretched before him, and his vision was sort of blurred at the edges. A trick of the light, he told himself. A few meters more, and I’ll find it.

Find what, came the question. Whatever it is that I am supposed to find, went an answer from nowhere, to nowhere. An oasis, another question was instantly shot back? Yeah, maybe. Just keep moving.

And so, he kept moving.

» Read the rest of this entry «

It is now time to introduce a surprise element into the story. Nothing about her existence will be revealed except for one small fact – that it is an entity of the female specie.

Alright, alright, it is a woman, to be precise.
——–

She watched the events warily as they happened

Each time the universe collapsed, she had distinctly felt an almost uncontrollable urge to snap her fingers.

Of course, she had no clue that doing that would bind her irrevocably to three other destinies that she had been following closely – albeit, merely out of curiosity.
Mercifully (and surprisingly) she had not yet given in to her almost uncontrollable urges – snapped her fingers, that is.

She had observed the entire proceedings right from the beginning. Her interest, however, had been piqued when she saw the duo collide.

Before that she had been vaguely aware of six cups of black coffee being delivered to the same table – all within a short span of two hours. Only, she wasn’t sure if the coffee was being consumed by the same person each time.

You see she was trying to focus her Chi. So she couldn’t really have noticed. You can’t focus you Chi if you are busy noticing inane things such as six cups of black coffee being delivered to a table and wondering whether they are being consumed by the same person. Tut, tut!

» Read the rest of this entry «