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.
