He watched The Detective closely. The man had been on the trail far too fast, and the fact that he was on it at all suggested that someone was behind him. Someone was backing him. All he needed to find out was whom. How could he have missed it? Of course he would have missed it. The Detective had not been one of the key players. But now that he was here, maybe his position on the board had changed. It was as if a pawn had been promoted. He made a mental note to keep a screen on for The Detective at all times. To keep an updated file. Find out more.

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He sighed as the steel was removed from his throat. The man brandishing it put the knife back an a holster that he noticed was very intricate, patterns built around the leather - was it? - holster. Beautiful, intricate, gleaming. Telling a story. The steady drip of water continued, the place was dim, lit only by the glow of lights that hung somewhere up high, but he could not see where. He was in a large cavern, and he suspected that if he screamed, his voice would carry very far.

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Cold steel glinted as it pressed up against his throat. His heart was beating fast, and yet he was not thinking of death. He was thinking of what he had just seen. How little he had known of the world. He could smell roses, he could feel the Reaper standing nearby. He wondered what would happen next. Most importantly, he wondered how it had all come to this. Not for him, but for the world. He was

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The Detective saw memories of his childhood as he walked past this idyllic landscape. He saw memories of the past, the present, and the future. He saw memories that were not his. He saw everything and he saw nothing. He walked through beautiful plains, through places that smelled of heaven. What did heaven smell like? No, on second thought, not of heaven, but of what he imagined earth had been bef

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She was old. She did not look that old. Her hair was gray, rough, you could tell just by looking at it, rough, and brittle. Her eyes were still sparkling, just like the ones in her youth. She was sitting up, but barely, it felt as if a strong wind would push her down. She was thin. She was haggard. Wherever she went, she didn’t go to very many places, but wherever she went, mostly her living room,

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The Detective stood by the edge of a roaring raging river, looking down. The water was fresh and clear, the air was cool and calm. He wondered why they let him carry on with his job. No one else cared. But maybe that was it. That was just it. No one cared. They didn’t. What was the harm in letting him carry on. And so he did. He knew there was only advantage to this search. He knew, he felt it in his bones, in his very soul, that this was the one. Once he got to the bottom of this mystery, he would understand why what was happening in the world was in fact happening in the world. He would understand. And maybe he would be able to stop it.

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The man looked at the photo of his family before putting on his white coat and running out. He was late. They were supposed to be starting a new project today at 9. He had been on this island for many months now and he missed his wife and two daughters. He looked around, the sky was clear, the shrubs were impossibly green, the water blue and transparent. The ground felt nice and cool, the air smelled burnt. But it was nice. Like warm cookies.

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The roads were busy, the smell was strong, cows and bulls and mud cakes, and smoke from trucks with croaking engines. The sounds were loud, horns, munching, a constant humming in the air, engines idling, engines roaring. Cars, trucks, donkey carts, motorcycles, cycles, a stray cow standing in the middle of the road here and there, a broken, bumpy road. The air tasted of the third world, diesel and poverty, and smells that could not be eradicated. Greens grew sparsely. Broken mud huts grew like weeds. You could almost feel the lives of the people living here.

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The dog was lounging in the sun nearby, his tongue lolling, outside, longer than one would expect. It was hot, the dog was sweating. There was a plate of warm water, that it slowly got up and licked. It was thankful regardless. It had big wide eyes, brown skin. It was a street dog, this was its home. The grass behind it, the lines of trees that ran parallel to the road were lush and verdant. The parks smelled of dew and were evergreen. The grass and mud felt soft, and natural. No one took care of them, they grew naturally, by their own force and power, eating the beautiful rays of light, and producing full, beautiful green things. Right next to the lines of park was a busy road. Cars thundered along it mightily. Heavy metal beasts. Sometimes there were motorcycles, smaller metal beasts. Still very heavy. And sometimes, there were trucks, ranging from small blue ones with cloth roofs, to ones with no roofs at all, that were long and could hold dozens of fat juicy cattle. The sound was deafening during busy hours. On the other side of the road, it knew was a canal. It felt no urge to go there. And yet, sometimes it did. When it was especially hot, it wanted to. But the dog had survived all these years by not crossing the busy street. It had seen others try to. And they never made it.

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The boys laughed, the girl closed her eyes, and smiled. Two boys, one girl. They were going so fast that the air felt cold, stop at a traffic light, and it would be hot. The sun was harsh. The engine was loud, but they were used to it now. There was an impatient driver behind them, honking his horn. The smell of diesel danced through the air, as they passed a petrol pump. You could taste the fumes from the aged bus in front of you. One of the boys stretched out his hands, his mother slapped them down, cautioning him to be careful, snapping at him. The mother was sitting at the back, the eldest boy in front of her, the daughter in front of him, her hands hugging her father, who was driving, and the youngest son in front of dad, watching the road. They were on an old motorcycle, all five of them fitting impossibly on it. Yet when you looked at them, it seemed natural. They were one family, one unit.

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They gave him a day to mourn the loss of his hands. They kept him in the same room, and he watched in darkness, the people wake up and realize they did not have ears, they did not have eyes, they did not have limbs. They were crippled in some way or the other. For women that were the age of mothers, they brought them dead infants, to carry around, for some others with children, they drugged the wailing kids.

They gave him a day to mourn the loss of his hands. He did so in silence. Inside him emotions swirled. A tsunami of anger, a thundering of sadness, an ocean of emotions. His arms twitched, his eyes burned. His nostrils smelled. His feet tingled, afraid that they were next. They would not be. His head hurt, his back ached. The ground was cold and wet. The air had piss and fear, and defecation.

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tingled. There was a fancy air conditioner spewing out heavenly cold air. That was the only sound. That, and the prayer beads clinking onto one another, as the man who had just finished his prayers repeated the names and praises of his god silently, counting them out on the well worn beads.

He looked outside the window, the silence continued. It was hot and sunny. His heart was thumping loudly. He clenched his jaw, he heard his teeth grate against one another. He had to do this. He didn’t want to do this. He imagined his mother welcoming some man with some amount of money in his hands, and imagined his hands all over her body. He had to do this. He winced. Could feel hot tears welling up in his eyes. He shook his head. Looked towards them.

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He waited in line, hands shaking. He did not know what to expect, and he knew what to expect. What they would do to him, he did not know. He knew what they would do to him. There were sobs, steely determined faces with fear lining the creases. There was the smell of piss and defecation. Beautiful, glimmering sunlight streaming in from the moth eaten cloth that only barely covered the outside world. He fixed his gaze on the windows. After it was done, things would change. He would be able to help them.

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He walked among the ruins. Shadows danced among them. The building looked magnificent. It had been left untended for far too long. But he felt a power here. As strong as the forests. As ancient as the forests. But it seemed malicious. The power emanated, a glow, a warning. He walked among the ruins.

The man that had been shot was dragged away in the cover of the night, people were questioned about what he had said, they had answered, in a trance. But none of them, it seemed, had said the right thing. Their town was razed to the ground in the cover of the night. No one found out. No one knew. No one cared.

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A woman shouted down from the open terrace. The man with the cart answered back. She was haggling for wares. He was selling them. It was a few years after the second war, the one that had led to the secession of a large part of this country. They had lost their east wing, it was bound to happen, east and west had been separated by ‘the enemy’, the very same enemy that they had been brothers and sisters with once. It was bound to happen, they had taken what the east produced, sold it, and spent the money in the west. It was bound to happen. So after a struggle, after interference from ‘the enemy’, the two had separated. She screamed down prices, the haggle responded in kind, screaming up his pars.

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The road was bumpy and harsh. The truck he was sitting in the back of, among piles of hay, and one goat that was chewing on some hay, looking at him with a blank look in its eyes, as if to say, now what. The sun bore down heavy and hard as it did in this part of the world. Dust swirled in the wake of the truck. In the distance, a city loomed, and became smaller with every bump and every turn, and every roar of the engine. Dung and diesel danced their dance in the atmosphere. The open trunk of the truck felt rough, lathered as it was, sparsely, by dust, which rolled around. The goat kept chewing.

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The board trembled. The two men kept on playing. Their faces haggard, lines drawn like so many dots in the sand. Their eyes still twinkled, but now it was with a manic light. The board trembled, the pieces shivered. It was all coming to an end. But when? The men moved the pieces still, played their game fast and played their game slow. The shadow was now fully formed. An object, a black man, a genie, heaving, heavy chest, narrow torso, barely any legs. Around him, his minions, some of them, slithered. They hissed and whispered, almost as loud as the thunder that crackled above, the rain that shattered through the clouds, the fire that screamed and raged below. The arid tasted dry and arid and felt moist and humid. The rot of decay was permanently in the air. The new world order was coming. The men kept playing, occasionally, they would stare at one another, occasionally, their twinkling eyes would look at one another as they moved the pieces, not needing to see where they were on the board to know. They would look at one another, once they had been friends, they still were. But now the stakes of their friendly games were tied to something more urgent, something neither could explain, and yet they were tied to

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The board was starting to tremble.

Come daybreak, Hūr would walk the streets, he would see the people, so different from his own, yet so similar. The sun would shine, hot, burning, yet these people had the resilience of some very resilient animals. They would not seem fettered by it. He would walk among the common classes, the proletariat. Donkeys swishing their tails slowly, chewing on the meager grass they were provided. People braying, donkeys chewing. Yet. it was strangely human. It brought his heart a certain joy, just as the knowledge of his mission sucked out the light from it.

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“Now back to our semi regular scheduled programming.”

The TV shuddered as it buzzed off, a little playful spark in the air. Outside, the air crackled in anger and irritation. Heavy balls of water fell on the steel roof, each drop making the house shudder. The man sighed in despondency, his eyes downcast. His once immaculately trimmed beard was bedraggled, worn down by his desperate search. His hands were gaunt and callused. His face was worn down by years of lines belying the fact that it had only been a few months since he had begun.

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It was late and early, objectively both, calls to prayer had not yet started to pierce the darkened sky. The air smelled of ittar and roses. The ground tilted unevenly on a slope. If he put his head down, focusing on his phone for more than thirty seconds, he would stray towards the other side of the road, the part tilted downwards. The gravel road was hard and tough. The dusty path running around the park was soft and littered with all kinds of objects.

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