Ornate: A Bizarre 150-Word Story

“I apologize; I’m not capable of using such ornate words, Mademoiselle,” recited the French diplomat with a heavy accent.

“Never mind, Monsieur, it is alright even if you remain mum.”

The hostess continued the tour of the plush Victorian-villa for her guest.

“And this was the working lobby, where the soothsayers would fret all day, waiting for their lives to please Grandmother.”
“This is a photograph of that time,” she gestured towards an ancient snapshot, “You can imagine those men and women, some bare-chested, others wearing turbans, and yet others in even more bizarre clothing, looking into those globes or cards and some in the waters, supposedly brought from the holiest of rivers, gazing into the unfathomable layers of future.”

“Your ornate words are so ornate, Madame.”

“Would you like to know more?”

“U! Huh!”

And she continued to enunciate, as in the words of the gentleman, her ornate words.

.

* Written in response of VisDare 23: Ornate

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Light and Dark

The thoughts of light had come to haunt her once again, when she was safely cocooned in her darkness.

“Why? Why do they come back?” she cried but there was nothing she could do. She had to face them because they were as real to her as her darkness.

She had left any hope for a bright future and was finally accepting her light-less fate. After falling down again and again, she had accepted her defeat against her demons who were now ruling her from within.

“Let me be alone. Let me be.”

The white glimpses of the happiness, the word she had forgotten, wouldn’t stop tormenting her. They were there to kill the very essence of her soul.

“Please go away. Please, I beg you,” she whimpered, suffocating in the brightness of those thoughts.

They were the instruments of her demons only to end whatever was left of her.

.

*Written in response to VisDare Writing Prompt.

a certain trace

the days of past

leave a certain trace

on the life’s mast

which is not always a grace,

.

they do leave a certain trace

which influences our future sail

which won’t always be a grace

because of the troubling gale

.

which influences our future sail

on the life’s mast

because of the same troubling gale

of the days of past.

(Poetic form:- Pantoum)

that feeling

you know that feeling

when out of nowhere,

a thought comes across your mind

and you want to jot it down,

.

not because it is an important thought

but because something within you is urging you

to bring out the flicker of that light

that passed by the contours of your mind,

.

scribble it on a piece of paper

with a blue ink or black or even red,

keep on writing till the time

you have completely puked it out,

.

then store it inside a table drawer

already flooding with many such others,

place it carefully at the top

to be read some time in the future,

.

when you have almost forgotten about it,

one day you find it lying there lifeless, still

and read it in the light of the day

and simply smile at that cold thing from the past.

31 December

I hope you all have a wonderful 31st December.. Party hard but take care- don’t start the new year with a hangover. Happy 31 December- the last day of the year… the last day of the diary marking 2012!

Begone this year

for there is another one

to take your place

on our desks

and in our diaries

and on our walls

and in our schedules

but you will still remain

somewhere within our hearts

in the form of memories

both good and bad

but you will not be lost

forever

you will come back

in the night

and sometimes during day as well

to remind us

that you were there

to guide us forward

to the future.