THREE: Crewcut's Chink

"What the hell is wrong with you Crewcut!"
"Nothing Man! I found this chink! Man! you know! Shoelace!!!"

Avik and Deep Shankar were roaming in the college grounds.
Deep wanted to be cool, and tried too hard!
He even had a crew-cut.
The crew-cut gave him the name "Crewcut", and accentuated his wiry frame in all the wrong ways. Small head and sunken eyes apart, Deep was still, Avik's best friend.

And today Deep was in his humpy-jumpy, excited mode again, that irritated Avik the most.

"Crew, dude, you're not making much sense, I mean, like, try walking without a jerk for a second..."
"Yeah! Man! if you'd be in my bathroom, you know, you wouldn't be able to make any sense out of it either!"
"Make sense out of what?"
"I found a chink in my bathroom man!"
"Huh! and that's cause for you to jump around? I'll see how we can get your tiles fixed."
"No not a chink! Oh! Man! A CHINKEE chink dude! As in, you know, from the Indian North East Chink!"

"Dude! I mean that's like blasphemy or something, you know, North East people are Indians just like us, I mean like, 'humans' dude, they are not chinese! We shouldn't call them 'chinks'! I mean I dunno the real term, but, calling them chinks is, like, sodomy or blasphemy type shit! I mean, basically, its not a good idea....", Avik's patience was almost running out, Deep was being particularly thorny today.

Sensing this Deep tried to calm himself a bit, with some obvious discomfort.
He tried telling his tale again.

"Okay, okay! beginning from the beginning of today Man! See, I had this real pissy dream, you know like dragons chasing me into a pond and all? and I woke up to realize I really needed to pee."

The dream came back to Avik, but he did not want to acknowledge the weakness in his heart, turning to Deep he said, "Yeah! that makes sense... so what you were telling me is that you wet your sheets in a dream... yeah! like, that is typical 'Crew' dude! hehehe!", slapping Crew's back in jest.

"No Laugh Man! So what I really do is go to my bathroom, and you know? MAN! There is a chink sitting on my pot! And I don't get it the first time? so I go 'you're on my pot man!' and he's like 'yeah!', and then he gets up and then I get it! He appeared on my pot out of nowhere! I was a little sleepy, so the phenomenon didn't register well... but, you know, kind of 'un-vanished' into thin air! It was way cool man! He's, you know, from the past or something! and still cracks the coolest jokes! We had a fun time in the morning, and then I had to rush for college!"

"Dude! He's not from the past! He's probably, like a burglar or something, who almost got caught, and found out, he's too smart for you...", Avik was alarmed at Crew's casual attitude.

"No! No! Man! trust me, you're getting it all wrong!", Crew pleaded.

"Yeah? and like Mister Crewcut Soapsud got it right?"

"Okay okay Man! Piss me, if nothing's up, but, you know, you must meet him first!"

This for a strange reason appealed to Avik too. Atleast it would distract him from thinking about his dreams. "Okay! good, let's meet him, this guy in your loo, like, what did you say his name was?"

"Its 'Shoelace', Jhonny 'Shoelace' Dow" Crew smiled.

TWO: Sweet Dreams

“As he looked around him, there were countless bodies lying as far as he could see. His face was covered in dried blood, his robes were tattered and bloodied, he was wounded and tired. ssswissshhh….ssswissshhh…..swwwissshhhhh. He raised his head to see a large bird flying in the sky. The sky was filled with cries of the vultures..carrion eaters.. but this bird was different , it looked bigger than the others and was stark red. He realized that the bird was flying towards him, growing bigger all the time as it approached him. As the bird came near, he raised his right hand and a bolt of energy ensued from his forefinger and struck the bird in its chest with a resounding noise.”

Rnnnnnnng…. Tttrrrnnnng….. tttrrrrrrnng.. avik woke up to the sound of his alarm. He was drenched in sweat and surprisingly very tired, as if he had run a mile. It was those dreams again he thought, you would think that at 18 you would stop having these dreams with all the fantasy and magic. You were supposedly an adult at this age; surprisingly the frequency of these dreams had increased since he had turned 18. He generally got up feeling tired every morning after he had these dreams and they all seemed so real.

At 5”8 avik was one of the people who just didn’t put on weight, he had a good physique but he didn’t exercise at all. He was the envy of most of his colleagues who went through grueling gym sessions just to keep fit. He had turned 18 a few months back and was an avid science freak. Avik was a first year science student studying at St Xaviers, a college which was not far from his home.

It was 8.30 am and as usual he had very little time to get to his college. Knowing that his parents had probably left by now, he made his way lazily across the room to the wash basin and began washing his face. He quickly brushed and bathed, got dressed and slammed the door as he left his house. This was a usual routine for avik, but today was a bit different; in his hurry he didn’t notice the juice which was left by his mother on the dining table neither did he notice the thin crack on the wall opposite to his bed or the blackened nail on his right forefinger.