Time leaks into vacuum with ease, like tail of a cat. I stare into the darkness, digging into the emptiness with hungry intensity. A flash of smile, a passing look, untold words — hallucinatory, worthless mental figments dripping into pigments of black — evaporate. Replacing them are dentures dropped into a fizzing solution, an eyeball in formaldehyde, scribbles on wall. And they fade as fast as they feast upon my mind. Darkness again. Staring again. Stare better.

So it is a blow to the card-house of hope. Smithereens.

The world whirls. In flakes and scales. Red.

Light slips away from the sky like blanket from skin, and a sudden chill steals over the soul like darkness upon heart. It is falling apart, what appeared to be invincible in the beginning. Fraying. A garment gorged by gnats. A furniture maimed by time.

The planks beneath my toes creak. I look around, the decaying furniture, the musty clothes, the old clock ticking. They look like objects of curiosity under the gloom, secreting the sweet sweat of past.

The air is redolent of wet seasons, fresh, raw, full of crickets and water-skippers. It is wafting in from the window, which opens to a sky of bruises, black and purple. The few clouds that are there float in fuzzy red, twisting and dispersing and congregating again.

Beneath the zenith, a vast paddy field fans out, swaying in unison with the screeching wind, daring the sky to spew rain (blood) again. A mute lightning zaps across the red masses. The clouds snarl. The wind hollows. And in that instance, the lonely scarecrow that is stabbed at the heart of the field lights up his Cyclops eye and smirks.

It is a strange world out there. Why does it look and smell and sound so eerily familiar?

Something sidles up against my ankle, and I shudder.

A little word,
A little wave,
A little whisper,
A little wink.

And the wand twirls in the air, darkly elegant.

The air roars, awash with golden light.

Eccecuse me, your books have been long overdue.

I will give you one more day, to c’fess up, to clear up this messy presence of an absence in my library …

Or I will clear you up instead.