#bonestobones #nanoseries

At first, they won't let me sleep.

Now, they are rising to meet me.

I can hear it at night, in the dead silence of the house.

Step by step, stair by stair, door by door, they rise.

It's in the creak on the staircase. The rattling of the windows. It's in the shadows that slink about outside the door of my room. It's in the slow, hesitant turning of the doorknobs.

They want something from me, something of theirs I took.

I think I know what it is. And I don't think I can give it back to them.

-

#nanoseries

The Dead Playboy

The shape in the black trench coat stood at the end of the dark alley on a balmy, moonless night. The heap in front of him was the size of a small house.
There was a click as the shape flicked a lighter, and set the flame to the edge of the heap
And the heap of magazines turned into a small house sized bonfire. The smell of burning paper rent the air.
It was a symbolic gesture, but one important to him.
Playboy, his brainchild, was dead now.

It was time to give birth to the Dead Playboy.

-

#bonestobones #nanoseries

They howl incessantly at night, and keep me awake.

The noise carries on the wind, sneaks under the door of my room and enters through the windows, into my ears. Their cold, chilly fingers reach in my brain and keep me awake.

They cry. They cuss. They beg.

The people in my basement.

They remind me I am cursed with listening to their dead lament forever.

Blood to wine. Organs to pie. Bones to bones.

-

#bonestobones #nanoseries

I do not like to torture them.

Torture feels wrong, messy. Something you cannot clean up or forget in a hurry.

Torture taints the human body.

Those who torture human beings before killing them are tainted, stained perverts.

Death, when granted, must be a quick, painless process. Which is what I do.

It's what comes after that interests me.

Breaking us down to blood, bone and tissue. The unmaking of what nature made.

And yet they trouble me, keep me awake.

What are they complaining about?

-

#bonestobones #nanoseries

Mandy's Patisserie

That is what I do for a living. I bake cakes, pies, pastries and sell it to the townspeople. I am the only one running a bakery here.

They all come to me.

'What makes your pastries and pies so special ?'

'Love and care' I answer.

'The people in my basement. Their flesh and blood,' I want to answer.

But no one must know my secret. That's the cardinal rule of doing business, isn't it?

-

Nayantara's Other Life

He knew he would kill his wife.

The only questions were- when, where and how.

-

Even before the henna on my hands and feet dried, I regretted marrying Vishal.

--- Nayantara's Other Life

-

What he wanted was to kill his wife.

But there were problems.

One, a lack of opportunity. Courtesy his cushy corporate job, which hardly left time for plotting murder.

Second was his acute lack of imagination.

Every way possible he considered was too obvious. It had been done before.

And then, the husband is, more often than not, too good a patsy for suspicion if wife dies in mysterious circumstances.--- Nayantara's Other Life

-

Nayantara's Other Life

No one knows this, but I like being disciplined. Physically.

When my parents punished me in childhood, I used to actually enjoy it. They wondered why I didn't cry out in pain often. Little did they know.

Smacking, whipping, slaps...I like it all.

-

Nayantara's Other Life

I lie there, night after night, as he violates me. I close my eyes, and assume I am a statue.

I cannot tell Vishal my 'preferences'.

Not because he won't like it.

But more because I don't think he cares.

I am but a receptacle for his pleasure, with no agency of my own.

-