#VeryShortStories

#VeryShortStories
The young couple seemed like perfect buyers for the quaint cottage – they were friendly, bubbly, successful! During the two-hour long property visit, they had walked around the house with keen interest, pointing things out to each other and marvelling at little conveniences put in over the years.
Their incessant chatter revealed a lot about who they were and how they lived – a nice balance between party weekends and quiet times. They planned on getting dogs, they said, since they now would have the space larger dogs required. And the wife shyly revealed that she was expecting a baby!
A baby in the house would change everything. Life would continue after a long interruption, when the cottage was abandoned after a ghastly incident with the last residents. The sales representative had a ready-made little speech about the accident – he knew exactly when to recite it. And at the right moment, he started!
“. . . . but of course, none of this has ever been verified, nor do we know for sure that the father killed three daughters and his wife before shooting himself in the head!” he finished. 
The wife had listened carefully to the morbid story. She was quiet for a moment, then drew a deep breath. The poor sales representative felt his sales commission start to slip away. This was the fourth time he had brought prospective clients to this property.
The wife looked into the representative’s eyes. “Every bit of what you just told us is true,” she said quietly. “I know. I was there,” she concluded, her hands clasped around her belly now full of new life! (271 words)

#VeryShortStories

In an instant, the young lad knew what had to be done to repair the situation. She was on the verge of going completely berserk, and she had to be stopped at all costs! Already, her mane of wild grey hair had started to fan out around her head, she moaned deep in her throat, and she swung back and forth in a rhythmic dance-like movement.

            So, he took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and started humming his soothing lullaby. To others, it sounded tuneless, a mere four-note progression that a newbie singer might be asked to repeat endlessly. But to the entity that had started churning inside her, it was a calming balm!

            Once the sound of the lullaby reached the unseen entity, she started slowing down her frenetic movements. He breathing steadied, she was no longer in danger of hyper-ventilating. Gradually, her head was still, and her hair no longer fanned out like a crazy halo. She sat down on the ground, then drew up her legs close to her chest and was curled up in the classic fetal position, thumb in her mouth, eyes closed!

            The child stared down at her, then reached out to caress her sweaty brow. His grandmother looked after him completely on all days except two each month. On those two days, he had come to realise, it was his turn to return the favour! (233 words)

Sunil Ganu

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Sunil Ganu
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#WithoutThisPlace5
His hands shook with excitement as the stooped man opened the rectangular box. Yes, there were the documents he had expected and hoped to find! For well over 30 years, he had looked for verifiable sources about the library of al-Sīmāwī, a 13th century expert on alchemy and magic. But in vain. The old man’s dogged determination had led him to Cairo, to Istanbul, to the Vatican, trying to sleuth an ancient ‘paper’ trail.
He had painstakingly established that while al-‘Irāqī’s 13th-century autograph manuscript was now lost, one source of his illustrations was recognised: the Book of Images. It has been traditionally attributed to the 4th-century Egyptian alchemist Zosimos of Panopolis and preserved in a copy made in Egypt in 1270! And today, finally, he had been allowed access to the vaults of the British Museum where a kindly academic had led him unerringly to this section of treasures.
The old man examined the contents of the box carefully, his heart racing. There was the familiar drawing of three men with their hands raised as if in surrender! There was no doubt any more – this indeed was the source for the drawing he had found in the book written centuries later!
A lifetime quest had just been fulfilled. Slowly, the old man looked all around him. Thousands of boxes in the vaults held the past in sacred trust – waiting for mankind to rediscover what had gone before. Zosimos of Panapolis and al-Sīmāwī smiled, as it were, from their places in the Universe. The old man whispered to The Book of Images, “Without this place, I would never have found you!”

#VeryShortStories

#VeryShortStories

"I won't go, I won't!" The message was clear. Emphatically so. The old woman had been as cantankerous at 74 as she had been at 27 ... when she turned down her fifth suitor and decided to remain 'a spinster'! For the remainder of her working life, she was Head Mistress at a posh Girls School, and there were hundreds of students who remembered her sharp tongue and scathing wit. But she had also been their true guardian at school, and she had lavished upon her wards care and nurturing which were of her own brand and fashion!
So, her refusal to leave her spacious flat and go into a Home for the Aged was not at all surprising to the reluctant youngsters of her own family: they had anticipated stiff resistance, clenched fists, and a tongue-lashing.
Finally, Time achieved what no-one else could : a stroke left her so incapacitated that the family were able to cart her off to the Home of their choice with no remonstrations from her, not even a whimper! She had been unconscious at the time!
And now ... Time had scored again. The formidable old lady lay in her casket, packed and ready, it seemed, for the Final Dispatch!
The mourners gathered in the small church spoke morosely of their memories ... video cameras recorded the event for the local news and for personal You-Tube channels. Finally, it was all over!  It was time to hoist the casket and get to the cemetary.
Four able-bodied young volunteers put their shoulders to the task, helped not all by two infirm cousins of the deceased who were along 'to represent the family!'
As they lifted the wooden box, they froze! 
A loud thudding started up from within! Clear! Emphatic!

#VeryShortStories

      The master peered through the glass at his creation. It had started to rise just a little bit, and he paced up and down in front of his oven; in a rhythm his crew recognised well – he was indeed nervous when he walked four paces to the right and five paces to the left! They all busied themselves with tasks that would keep them in other parts of the large hot kitchen – who had the foolhardiness to cross him on a day like this?

       Forty minutes after he had slid it in, he slid the creation out! Plated it and scrutinised it from the top. His face revealed nothing. For long minutes he was motionless. More than a few eyes looked at him curiously, as his staff busied themselves as before, but a little closer now.

The busy kitchen fell slowly silent.

The master narrowed his eyes as he gazed lovingly upon his creation. Several hours later, he lifted it ceremoniously and took it into the dining room, where at the best table waited his lady love, with roses, champagne, ready for her birthday-celebration-cum-proposal meal!

Twenty minutes later, the chef thundered out of his own restaurant, his face dark and brooding! The media present went crazy. Rumours started immediately!

In the kitchen, the ingredients the chef had used for his oh-so-important cake still stood in a row with military precision! Isn’t it unfortunate that powdered sugar and salt cannot be told apart when one cooks in a hurry? (245 words)

#WithoutThisPlace7

The auctioneer’s hammer knocked the worn podium and he yelled “Sold!”  The relief in the crowded room was palpable as buyers heaved a collective sigh of relief. The agent who had won the bidding war against powerful investors wiped his brow and made his way first to the desk for the preliminary formalities of acquiring Lot 31: a painting titled simply “Portrait of a Mother”.  

            The posthumous price of this particular artist’s works had more than quadrupled in recent months, ever since some invisible corporate raider had started bidding ridiculously high sums of money at auctions in important art sales the world over. Every sale, concluded via telephone or in person by agents or representatives, was reported breathlessly on Society pages and TV channels.

            Today’s lot was the crowning glory of the artist’s oeuvre. The agent looked at the back of the vast gallery, he smiled at the figure hunched in a wheel-chair. The two men exchanged satisfied smiles.

            Later, in the privacy of a room in the art gallery, he showed the painting to the old man, whose hard-earned money had paid for this celebrated painting. Wordlessly, the old man stared, then reached out and touched the frame gently! His cheeks streaked with tears, the millionaire orphan stared at his mother whose charms were laid bare on canvas. He whispered, “Without this place, I would never have found you!”  (230 words)

#WithoutThisPlace6

Sumukhi stifled a sneeze and then a cough as she looked around her with some trepidation. She had dared to enter this closed, dusty room in direct contravention of the house rules – “no-one must go to the third floor unless accompanied by an adult!”

            Today was her turn to slip upstairs, snoop around, and return with some trophy item as proof of her daring escapade. Within ten minutes, she was emboldened to touch some of the boxes she found in the room. Of course, she chose the prettiest box in wicker. Inside was a bunch of loose sheets of paper bound by a pink ribbon. She shook off the dust. The rising cloud choked her slightly, and she coughed!

            She started to read. It was a diary written in the 1940s by her long-dead aunt. The one sister her father never mentioned at all, although Sumukhi had heard that she herself had been named after the departed aunt by the grieving grandmother. The contents of the diary she found extraordinary, for they told tales she had never imagined possible in the family. It was clear that Sumukhi the Elder had not been the paragon of virtue her parents would have wanted.

            After an hour of reading, Sumukhi felt a connection with the other girl. She regretted not having known her, and resented the fact that the girl had been declared persona non-grata by her own family! Sumukhi felt a tug at her heart. She looked around the room that had been the other Sumukhi’s private domain, and silently sent a prayer: “Without this place, I would have never known you.”  (270 words)