|
This writing was accepted for publication in the 84 page perfect-bound issue... cc&d magazine (v215) (the December 2010 Issue) |
|
Order this issue from our printer as an ISSN# paperback book:  or as the ISBN# book “Entering the Ice Age”:  |
| ||
The Indian Curse
ArunPrakash Dn.
He quivered in the frost French cold, under the thick down-comforter filled with fluffy bird feathers, even as the bedroom heater murmured with its golden coils, nearby. It was stark dark and chilly outside, and he needed more than just the warmth that he savored under the blanket to keep off from the frigidity. He shook more, thinking it would help shiver the cold off him; and it did. He was getting a hold of the warmth surging through his body, while the Angel beneath him quivered along, in pleasure, helping him to culminate in the place, he wanted to achieve. Slight shrieks and gasps of delectation added flavor to the moist air and Natasha’s face showed expressions of extreme pleasure. “Séduisant”, as they would call in the Romantic Language, was the right word to describe the environment Jake was in - Frosty dark night with snow fringed glass windows, chilly atmosphere with a cozy fake-fireplace, the faint hum of the electrical heater which looked out furtively from within the hearth, the stardust French architecture with a mix of contemporary and medieval modernism, and the luscious English woman wanting him more every second, under the quilt. Natasha was a frequenter, and was known for her throbbing lips, amongst Jake’s associates. “You could even bargain your life for her kiss.” Arthur had said ogling at her, back in La Piscine - The Swimming Pool - that morning. “Do your job!” Jake had dismissed strictly, except his eyes still glued, till she entered the bath. ‘Her lips are mine, now!’ And when Jake saw it parting with another gush of delight, he muzzled, helping her deliberately to breathe in his breath.
Tyler, a Voodoo practitioner in his early forties, with gray strands already sprouting from his head, had four PhDs in his backpack. This rare mix of mysticism and science projected him exceptionally in the Indian neighborhood. He started studying this arcane art, since a year before Jake, to research on the craft, when he fell in love with it - with the power it pledged. Tyler was just another regular megalomaniac who wanted power in his hands, men beneath his legs, and the women between them.
“Notice the girl in the yellow sari.” Tyler nudged Jake as they entered the small thatched mud-hut where the man who taught Tyler - his Guru - practiced. The hut was daubed on the inside, with a sticky powder of low-grade limestone - a typical whitewash - which prevented Jake from leaning over. There were frequent visitors from all the distant villages and Tyler’s master was well famed for his craft.
Jake concentrated on the girl. She was petite and cute, clad in Indian sari, of the holy color – yellow. With long pleated black hair, the girl swayed devotionally along with Tyler’s master. “What’s with her?” Jake responded. He realized that it was a part of the teachings, as Tyler had promised.
“Notice the lemon in her hands.” Tyler whispered as Jake followed his command. Sure to Tyler’s words, Jake marked that the girl had a large lemon tightly clutched between her palms, but never rolling it.
“Yea, what’s with it?” Jake whispered back, questioning.
“Not now...” Tyler hissed. “...I’ll tell you in the night.”
Jake focused his attention on the hands of all the people who followed - through the noon, the afternoon, and even when the sunset and twilight overlapped with a faint description of an evening, and through the dusk - till the night: Apart from the petite girl, the lemon was not given to any other.
“What about the lemon?” Jake asked when he met Tyler again, that night.
“You’ll see!” Tyler grinned. It appeared as if he was pleased to mention those words. Jake saw as the voodooist take out the lemon from where he had dropped it that morning - near a closed brass cup - and placed it as the cynosure, before him, over the plastered floor on which some weird geometrical shapes were strewn over, drawn. The man in his usual attire, a saffron robe - another color which was considered holy in the country - chanted some words in some Indian language - which Jake later learnt from Tyler, was Sanskrit - in his own lilt, and slowly, the man’s apprentices, all clad in the same saffron clothing exited the hut, in a single file, leaving Tyler and Jake alone with their cantillating master.
“What’s he doing?” Jake hissed, unable to withstand his curiosity.
“He’s going to use the lemon to seduce the girl.” Tyler whispered back.
“What?” Jake shrieked, making the disturbed voodooist turn at them in an angry glower. Tyler perspired instantly, and silently walked out of the cottage, pulling Jake with him.
For thirty-three year old Jake Foster, getting Natasha into bed was like a piece of emblazoned Dacquoise from the La Boulangerie Française. All he needed was the meshed locks of thin dark-brown hair, entangled between the pointed cotton strands of the soft bath towel, that she had left after her hot shower. Actually, he just needed a tiny chip for the DNA. Every night, the Demon within him demanded an Angelic beauty to devour, and Jake had to deliver. Success in anything demands a sacrifice, and Jake had to lose his picturesque future, for his concupiscent present - a result of his ghastly past. He now had the power of control over them - the power to attract women and to enslave - a rich souvenir from the putatively poor India. His Theological studies in various countries gave him nothing less than awe. But his knowledge on the Indian Voodoo transformed his life, endlessly. Two years back, in the last few months of his course at the Theosophical Society of India, he visited the suburbs of the Holy Indian places, where voodoo was still practiced. That was where he met Tyler.
“I... I’m sorry about that.” Jake confessed, when they were outdoors.
“Ah! Toss it, Jake. You saw what you wanted to. He was going to push us out in sometime, anyways.” Tyler eased him, as they walked out to the deserted street. Within a vast number of tiny conterminous cottages on either side, touching each other by only a streak of small space, the narrow street looked like an alleyway without walls. “Ever heard of biometrics, Jake? The ones they use to identify a person uniquely?”
“Fingerprints??”
“Right! Fingerprints, Iris patterns, DNA... of the sort.”
“Yes?”
“The lemon is the ancient Indian way of doing it - identifying a person.” Tyler chuckled, as he began to feed Jake with stuff that he longed for. He was so proud that he explained a native, a foreign theory, in a native language. “When the lemon was given to the girl, today morning, it was given with a volition. He had decided to have her on bed tonight.” Tyler explained.
“Really?” Jake spluttered innocently. He hadn’t known how to react. “I thought it was always with the sacred words these people chant, which makes the magic work.” He scratched his head. It was his theological way of thought.
“Well, not completely! That was how I used to think...” Tyler laughed. “...until I did a research on it.”
“So, what’s it, really?”
“The magic is not in his words. But on the tune his words make - the cantillation.”
“I... I don’t get it.”
“Ah! Let me explain it to you. Come!” Tyler guided him to a nearby heavy lump of sand, gathered together with a preconception of a sand-seat. It was right below the rustic yellow streetlight, where the flat mud-way bulged suddenly to a huge rift, at one corner. Jake had seen the huge rift serving as the visitor’s waiting area in the daylight. Now it took the form of their little chat area. Tyler sat over, and Jake followed. “These magical words that this voodoo man spells, though it possesses some meanings, doesn’t make any sense at a larger scale. Because, the end results of these chants are mere sound vibrations, triggered by his lilt – the rhythm. This acts as the spell or the curse or whatever you call to seduce the girl. But how do you identify on whom your spell should work on?”
Too much of knowledge blocks the brain, and Jake felt it. He felt numb. “Le... Lemon??” Jake replied in dubiety.
“Precisely! The lemon fills the space. When the girl is given the lemon, she is asked to clutch it tightly between her palms. As she perspires in the mud-hut’s hot atmosphere, her sweat covers the lemon as a thin layer. So, the lemon just acts as a device for storing your biometric information, temporarily.” Tyler declared.
Jake nodded. He felt a sudden sense of satisfaction. A mystery, demystified. A sudden crackling sound in the silent night-light, startled them, and they both whirled back. It was a remote village and even the footpaths to the mud-huts were covered with dry thatches - apart from the ones overhead - which broke with a crackle when people walked over it.
“There goes my guru’s dinner...” Tyler dragged as he poked Jake. Jake noticed the faint figure of the petite girl in yellow sari, now in what appeared to be a a pink night dress, walking like a zombie, approaching the wooden door - the hut’s entrance. The door creaked open and Jake saw the dark hands of the voodooist pull the girl by her waist.
“Shut!” the door closed.
Jake felt a spasm near his waist and his face tightened. He looked below on Natasha. She looked like she was about to cry. Her beautiful wrinkle-less faced crumbled to a thousand marks of desire, and Jake loved it. He had seen many faces through his nights, but Natasha’s topped them all. Her lips were the icing on her gorgeous face, and Arthur had said it right. ‘You could even bargain your life for her kiss.’ As the Demon within him pounced out, Jake forced him in her, making Natasha squeal in both pain and pleasure. When he saw her lips part, Jake did the same thing he loved doing: he covered her with his lips, thereby feeding and feeling the short pressurized gasps in the inner walls of his mouth. With her last gasp, Jake felt his nerves twist as he released Natasha from his clutches, and tumbled down from her soft body, lying there, beside her, in crude satisfaction, as the Demon within him smiled from within his eyes, for the scrumptious meal.
“I’m going to meet her soon.” He declared as frames of a cute little girl, in her tightly stitched gown flashed before him, blinding the satisfied Demon within, with a ribbon of heart-felt emotions. “I’ll meet her this week.” He grinned, still lying on the bed, beside the sleeping beauty. “My daughter... my baby... my Catherine...” Jake jumped off, leaving Natasha alone to continue her numb sleep, and walked over to the fireplace mantel. With his night trousers on, he fell back on the single-couch which was already warm, by virtue of the heater, holding a small framed portrait in his hands. It had an image of him, younger by just six months, the image of a lady in her late twenties and a little blonde girl, who looked like she was two or three years old. He outlined the image of the girl with his fingers, pulled it closer, and kissed the portrait. “I’ll see you in no time, baby...” he kissed again, and held the portrait close near his heart.
“Catherine...” Patricia called out, and a little moving doll came jumping before her with a stuffed teddy in her hand.
“Mommy! Look... Ted doesn’t want to speak with me!” she held the pink colored teddy in her tiny hands and displayed it gracefully before Patricia.
“Oh honey! I don’t have time for this. Now, be a sweet little girl and have your dinner. Here...” she pulled the little girl over to the table, in the dining hall. “Have your bread and drink your milk, now. Mommy will be back in a jiffy.” Patricia rushed to check on all the doors and windows - to check whether they were tightly sealed - as if she expected someone unwanted. She sped back to check on Catherine, and saw the little girl dozing off on the table, with the last morsels of bread still on her plate, and the last few drops of milk still in the thin glass. “I’m sorry baby.” She confessed to the sleeping kid, and carried her to her bed. “I’ll finish it off today, dear. I promise!” She kissed the drugged little girl, good night.
There was a sharp electric buzz and Patricia whirled, from within Catherine’s room. “Jake! Is that you?” she trembled as she walked out slowly from the small room, into the hallway, towards the front door.
“Yea! Open up.” Jake demanded.
On hearing his voice, Patricia stopped, and her face turned red. She stirred as her heart melted; she juddered and sobbed. “Go away Jake! Go away...” she sniveled.
“Open the door, will you?” Jake challenged.
“Get lost Jake!” she wailed. “I don’t want you to harm my baby. Get lost!” Weeping desperate tears, she ran back and cuddled herself on the bed. Jake never knocked again, and Patricia heard him start the engine and whir off slowly, his whinges muted in the engine sound.
Patricia heard a sudden thump, and blared open her eyes. Her bed jiggled, and the corner of her eyes grasped the faint light of the morning twilight from the window. She had fell asleep crying, only to get disturbed again by a heavy painful thump. She tried turning, but her neck muscles failed. The more she tried, the more it pained. Puzzled, she tried getting up, but could not. It was like the body beneath her head, dissented to obey her commands. Rolling her eyes downward to check what stopped her, Patricia was alarmed to see a shining thick iron, with a wooden handle, hindering her vision. She understood what stopped her. She understood who stopped her.
“I just asked my girl!” Jake’s face bulged in before her terror-stricken eyes. He was the terror who struck her. Jake smiled at her pale face expectantly, and ducked down on her, muffling tightly the last puffs of her life, with his demented lips, sucking away the only existence from within her. The live head was dead; and Jake pulled the iron axe from the late Patricia’s neck - late by only a few seconds - thus separating the head from rest of her body.
“Catherine... O... Catherine... Baby... Where are you?” Jake crooned, as he lurched gingerly towards Catherine’s room, and opened the door. “Oh there you are... Sleeping as usual... My sweetchums...” his sweet-talk faded as the door behind him closed with a soft click.
Jake squinted as the healthy sun’s rays lighted his face, through the window. Composing himself that he had slept on the single-couch the earlier night, he stretched his limbs out, and in the unmindful act, the small portrait he withheld, all through the night, glided down, hit the floor, and toppled till it came to a stop, touching slightly a small closed brass cup placed near the hearth. In effect, the brass cup jolted and the reddish-brown liquid within the closed container oozed through the capped brim. Trickling over the smooth semi-golden structure, two drops of human blood touched the stark brown wooden floor, thereby tracing a semi-circle of the cup’s base on the laminated flooring. Jake carefully replaced his precious portrait over the mantel, atop the fireplace, and turned to his bed, disregardful of the small brass cylinder or the red trace. He noticed the bed empty, and smiled. Natasha had already gone; the trance lasts only till an additional few hours after midnight, after which the target recoups herself with a confused mind, straight back to her home. The voodoo seduction was foolproof and safe as nobody gets harmed; almost.
Dawdling over the chill wooden floor, Jake walked to the dining room, through the hallway, and reached his new target - the refrigerator. Pulling the door open by the hard white plastic handle, he drew a bottle of fresh milk, kissed its mouth tightly, and gulped the contents voraciously, till the bottle surrendered all its contents unto him.
“Ah!” he exclaimed, as he stopped till only few ounces of milk remained. “That’s it! That’s the girl I’ll have for tonight.”
“So, the girl just goes back without even knowing that she was ravaged?” Jake enquired. From the time Tyler had explained how Voodoo works scientifically, Jake was inclined to rake more.
“Yup! That’s the beauty of the Indian Voodoo. No harm whatsoever!” Tyler grinned with pride. He was merely advertising for the craft, but felt as if he was the creator.
“So.. So...” Jake stuttered. “All you need is to know the chanting words, and some DNA samples?” he was probing Tyler for even the last piece of information he possessed. He was now changing to another megalomaniac, thanks to Tyler. Also, it was still human to take the less resistant path to achieve difficult things, and Jake was no exception.
Tyler primmed. “That is where alchemy plays an important role.”
“Alchemy?” Jake looked flustered.
“Yea, like the chemical which turns lead to gold?”
“I know... I know... But why here?”
“Have you ever noticed the small brass container before him?” Tyler queried. Jake nodded in reply. “That is the storehouse of the energy, and is the most important entity in the whole process. It is the one, responsible for transforming the chanted vibrations into magical radiations. So, in order for the voodoo to work, the seducer had to fill it.”
“Fill it? With what?”
“With four ounces of his blood. And that too, right from the heart.”
“What the...?? How can that happen? I mean... a person cannot live after shedding four ounces of blood from his heart. Even if you manage to get it, it’d cause an seizure.”
“Exactly! That’s right! You can’t.”
“Then how?” Jake was already in the edge of sanity.
“If it’s not your blood, then it’s blood from your blood.” Tyler grinned at his own witticism. It was wicked, and Jake’s blood ran out; he turned pale.
“That... That means...” he gulped. “...the blood of your... your...”
“...your child!”
“Ah!” Jake declared. “That’s it! That’s the girl I’ll have for tonight.”
“Patricia!” he said. “Patricia Rose! The girl from the University!” he shouted excitedly.
“Wait a minute, do I know that name?”
“Who?” a fresh English accent replied, and Jake twirled as he saw the image of a crude English man, with silvery hair, in a beige Mackinaw coat and a black suitcase, standing before him. “Welcome, welcome my Guru! You’re late today.”
Tyler grinned as usual. “So, what’s on your plate today, Jake?” he winked.
“Patricia!” Jake blurted out, as he bent over to place the milk bottle, with the last few drops, back into the refrigerator.
“Sorry, who?” Tyler’s eyes bulged out and his face shrunk in daze.
“Patricia Rose! The girl from the university! Weird, the name sounds so familiar.” Jake voice echoed as he arranged the bottles within the cooler, still stooped, with his head inside the chilly doors.
“Oh that... that hot brunette! G-Great Jake! I must admit you have some good taste in selecting women.” Tyler tried to smile, but managed to open up a small crack. “How was Natasha, by the way?” he questioned deliberately, trying to cover his reaction, while wiping the sweat droplets on his face, which had oozed out even in the chilly weather, moments back.
“One word – awesome!” Jake beamed, as he closed the door. “Just as you said!”
Tyler chuckled. “I’m happy if you’re happy! Look, I’ve to go now. It’s getting late.”
“Gimme five minutes, Tyler. I’ll freshen up, and join you.” Jake yelled as he walked back into his room, to the bath. After a crisp five minutes, Jake noticed Tyler, in his room, before the hearth, staring at the small portrait of Catherine.
“She’s a doll! Isn’t she?” Jake spoke over, and Tyler fumbled, as he turned to see Jake with a white towel around his waist.
“Y-Yea! She’s cute.”
“Hey! I’m meeting her this weekend. She stays with her granny, downtown. Wanna accompany me?” Jake offered.
“N-No thanks! Eh... Jake, it’s really getting late for me! Shall I take leave?” Tyler maintained a low note.
“Man, Tyler! You just stay in the next room and you can’t even wake me up at the right time. Then you just hop in suddenly, and urge me to get ready.” Jake whined. “You carry on! I’ll take the bus today.” Jake replied reluctantly.
“Well, o-ok! À bientôt!” Tyler receded, and backed out through the door. An engine jumped alive outside, while Jake resumed putting on his dress.
Back in his car, Tyler couldn’t stop from hiding his reactions. It was not a shock, it was neither sadness; it was a derisive smile. He adjusted the rear-view mirror to face him, and looked at himself. He smirked continuously, as pleasurably as he could, while his Indian Master’s words resonated his ears. “This is not a boon. It’s a curse! To get women, you must lose your family... You’ll never know that your family existed... The curse makes you forget who your family was... You cannot get everything in life at the same time...”
“Well, I can!” he grinned, as his eyes met itself in the mirror before. “I still have my wife and children living safely at London, while I have my own job and a servant who looks after my carnal desires!” he chuckled.
“Till midnight, the girls are his! But after twelve, they are mine... all mine...” he guffawed amusedly, as his car veneered through the snowplowed streets. “But it was indeed a curse to you, my Guru!” he pouted. “If not, why would you lose your life in the hands of your own student?” he simpered. “I’m sorry, dear Guru! Had you agreed, when I forced you to lure Jake to kill his child, things would’ve turned different. But you never gave me a chance, and I had to place my Javanese dagger on your throat to make you lure him.” Tyler gave a dissatisfied pout. “You had to do it. After which, I had to do it - kill you - because I wanted to maintain my reputation, you know?” There was a red signal and Tyler screeched to a heavy stop.
“But how does he still remember Catherine?” Tyler wondered. “The curse must’ve made him forget his family, just as he forgot Patricia!” he clarified himself.
“Ah! He must’ve loved her so much.” Tyler shrugged. The signal went green.
