The Great Boot

This is a short story by my brother,Pranav. I loved it so much I decided to put it up! His writing style is very different from mine and unique in it's own way. Give as much feedback as you like, I'm sure he'll be glad for the encouragement!
-Ayesha/ Maya.

The Great Boot
By Pranav George Thomas


I scurried as fast as eight legs could carry me, arriving just as the boot crashed down behind me. Entering, I saw two eyes staring at me. I resumed scurrying.

Hoping the rat was too shocked to give chase, I ran to a crack in the wall and squeezed myself in. I thought back to how it had all started. There I was innocently spinning my web when a large juicy fly got caught in it. I hadn’t eaten for days and was starving. Seconds before I reached it something large and heavy hit my web. I was almost squashed under it but I managed to jump off, landing on the ground. Another immense structure crashed down beside me, this time hard and black. I recognized it as the god my parents had referred to as The Great Boot. What scared me was the fact that it was notorious for killing my kind. I have already told you what happened next. Now it was time to find a safe place to build another web. To my extreme surprise, the crack I was in led me to a ground studded with many boulders and bathed in an unearthly yellow light. I began to scurry through this strange landscape.
After what seemed like many years of scurrying, I came to a sea of moving mountains. In the midst of it all stood a long white giant. On what I assumed was its head, I saw two towers bending toward each other. One was green, the other yellow. As I turned to run, something that felt like a rubbery cliff fell on me.

And now in spidey heaven, I tell you, people, if you think a dog’s life is bad, then just take a look at mine!

You would probably think that I’m happy up here? Sure, they say heaven is God’s gift to life, the place of eternal rest, blah, blah, blah, but the hard part of it is the fact that spidey heaven is connected to human heaven. Now every five minutes we have a bunch of humans coming over to gape at us. None of us really care about this, but what we do care about is that they keep treading on us, muttering fake apologies and running off. And they seem to derive particular pleasure from stepping on Me, of all spiders!
I made the mistake of telling this to a friendly spider I met. He instantly gave me a disgusted look and ran away, leaving me standing and staring after him, until a human stamped on me and left me squashed and staring after him. Now, there’s a rumor circulating around spidey heaven that a self-important brat of a spider, who thinks too much of himself is wandering around spidey heaven.

Sometimes I think of jack-o’-lantern, not being fried in hell or being squashed in heaven.

Lucky chap.

Bead

CAN YOU SMELL THE BEAD FACTORY?
CAN YOU SMELL THE BEAD FACTORY?
SEE IT
HEAR IT
SMELL IT
THE BE-AD FACTORY

Silver black
Red and yellow
Beads
Rows and rows

Heaped in piles
Like chilies in the sun
Beads
Left out to dry

Long and fat
Thin rounds
Curves winking
Pale glass
Watching

Ceramic, wooden, metallic clay
Colourful stones
Like seeds
Pits retrieved
From your stomach

Orange fuchsia
Noiseless blue
Tanning themselves
Stretching, sighing
Under the weight of their
Friends

Beads

Waiting.

Dream

Her hair is tightly wound, drawn into a bun at the back of her head- twenty bob-pins and a little gel. She is wearing a black, low-back swimsuit and white tights. And ballerina shoes of course. As we watch, she lifts her arms, slowly, softly…and then she is dancing, twirling, bending, an ecstasy of movement, so purely beautiful. The auditorium is so quiet; you can hear her arms cutting through the air, a whoosh as she spins- it is as if the air is moving with her, jumping here, falling there, flowing around her…you can almost- just almost- see it.
The light is cold, white, single, drawing patterns on her black skin, her feet as light as feathers, her eyes closed- iris pulsing beneath. And yet, she radiates heat, those sitting closest, like me, are already sweating. The curve of her back, black, babelicious.
A gasp as she stops, frozen in mid-step, and begins to shimmer. At first we think it is our own eyes that deceive us, then blame it on faulty lighting- but no. She is shimmering. Like gossamer, blue oil on water, silk threads in a Cinderella dress… she shimmers.
Back flip, she’s solid again, bowing, turning, a hint of a smile on her lips- a private joke with herself. Nobody claps. We just stare- immobile- her fingers pat out a tune in the air- absentmindedly, distracted, her hair is slowly beginning to come undone, her skin glowing, radiating something akin to light but not the same. And then she’s gone. An empty, soundless stage. As if she were never there at all.

Brunch

I’m so hungry
You could put a scraper
Inside of my stomach
And not find anything
But vapours
From the food I can smell in
Your kitchen.

Stories

EVER WONDERED, ABOUT ALL THOSE STORIES,
POEMS, ARTICLES, THOUGHTS, FEELINGS
IDEAS
BILLIONS AND TRILIONS OF THEM
ALL OVER THE WORLD
THAT NEVER GOT TRANSALATED
INTO PRINT
AT ALL…?

2oo metaphors
Broken lines
Word choices
Scattered

Messy offices
And baskets filled with paper
Torn and crushed
Tears

Empty pens
Fingers stained blue black
Green and red with blood
Spent

Sweat washed
Saltily down the drain
With hopes and dreams
Flashbulbs
That never came

World of a writer
Poet Poetess
Spurned rejected
Volumes of language never
Ever published.

People I was

I like fruit
I like chocolate
Bright colours
And rooms without lights

Cold weather
Hot bubbling bathtubs
Coffee
Cream
And rubber slippers

Spicy curries
Pink gypsy skirts
New shoes
Old friends
Happy days

I like roses
Black white and red
Perfume
Cold water
Swimming in the sea

Somewhere somehow
Last millennium
Something happened
Somewhere
Somewhy?

I don’t like children
They remind me of him.

Our Vows

Redacted
Retrieved
Taken back
Unsaid
Cut, chop, cleanly sealed
Staunch the bleeding
We’re officially divorced

My Morning Backyard

Blue Birds
I can hear you
Early morning
Softly Softly
Singing just for me
I can hear you
Your voices
Carried in the wind
Blue Birds
Gently Gently
Through the summer
Singing away the heat
Tell me Blue Birds
What’s your name then?
Blue Birds
Like a warm sea
Never seen your color
Blue Birds
Just singing
For me.

I am sitting on the edge of nowhere, looking down into the depths of nothing. A vast white canvas -that is my life, and my brushes, my pen is dry. Somewhere, somehow, the ink is stuck and I cannot write. This whiteness is blinding, it makes my head hurt- but my body can feel no pain. Deep down below, a gravity is pulling me, tempting me calling out

to jump.