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- Story Listed as: Fiction For Adults
- Theme: Horror
- Subject: Character Based
- Published: 01/04/2024
CROCODILE TEARS
Born 1972, M, from Srinagar, IndiaCrocodile Tears
Mushtaque B. Barq
From my school days, God knows why in the backyard of my junkyard—I call it brain—I was never given approval to dissent; these crocodile tears had illegally occupied much of my gray matter like my nation. I used to nurse the notion that crocodile tears were insincere expressions of sorrow. But when my gray matter started to lose its viscosity, the rush ruined old bridges and wrecked the towers that my teachers had once elevated for me to touch the peaks of excellence. I was there to stand before my own fall. It triggered my rush, and I started to reconstruct tracks and lanes that would take me out of the cesspool of ‘yes man ship’. It was not at all easy to start, but a good start is half done. While I was on my way to give the skin all the impression of my newly found fineness, a storm took over, and in no time the dust laid its eggs in the safest nests of human breasts. The progeny multiplied like my own curiosity. The crocodile tears cascaded down the cheeks, and as a sadist, a man tries his best to satisfy his selfishness. In the rat race, men of class explored the trade and trend of empathy. What a way to shed crocodile tears!
In a village, a doctor learned that his gray matter was infected. He rushed to the city and settled after pleasing many headless heads. The storm was no longer a laughing stock but a package of lethal infections for a compromised immune system. The mischievous spirit of luxury summoned the village doctor and settled on his infected gray matter. Thus, both learned how to shed crocodile tears. These crocodiles were in a jolly mood, for they had already predicted the outcome of the doctor’s infectious mind. I could see crocodiles in human form wandering and weeping, shedding tears as their trade mark, but in disguise, waiting for the feast.
As the dust passed from an ignorant man to careless mankind, the doctor felt the pulse of the devil and moved back to the village, where the general gender was already affected. ‘In the country of blind men, one-eyed man is the king, the saying echoed within the empty cans of my consciousness.
"I have come to treat you," the doctor proudly announced.
Slogans filled the air, the echo puffed up the doctor’s malice, and he smiled, but to gain sympathy, he started to shed the crocodile tears, which people mistook for human salt leaking through his ice-blocking eyes.
The dust was whirling, sowing its seeds into the soil of human existence, but the doctored devil let it reach every door; he let it grow and grow rapidly. Pace to a ravenous raven is what wine is to a drunkard.
The devil entertained the malice of a doctor who, while crossing a pond, found a long line of crocodiles on its banks. He was terrified, but the devil infused in him a consideration for beasts, and the devil, in the company of the doctor, started to shed tears for crocodiles, thus changing the maxim like a bitter truth erased from the chronicles.
The dust in the village had reached every door, so let the doctor step in.
He announced, "Death is inevitable; I cannot save all."
Initially, when an old man died, no one claimed his body. The devil knocked on the door.
"Yes," he declared.
A team of his favorites got clues to carry on shedding crocodile tears.
Only a few survived. Survival was a drama, and death was hit-and-miss fiction.
No funeral, no cremation, no burial—only a formality—but in the guise of formality, various formats were followed. A protocol drafted by a sick mind
With the fall of dusk, a siren would say, Keep counting. The siren would lock the people in, and the team would do the rest. The rest were arrested by fear; the horror was the only apparatus to put a ceiling on the footfall.
These crocodile tears in the back of my mind started to irritate me. My wits that I had after an unremitting persuasion flattened to the extent of flexibility somehow encouraged my wrath to take a forward movement. My newly found flow of intellect started to ooze the dew on my dry leaves that, on the boughs of my repentance, were looking for salvation.
A graveyard and cremation ground on the outskirts of the village were marked, and at the rear of their masks, God knows how many crocodiles had been pissing on their cheeks. Pissing was a trade mark that, behind the masks, had choked their taste buds to the extent that sweet and sour had no stakeholders.
A crocodile in me stirred too. It was a brawny push I felt in my thin gray matter. Graveyards and cremations too were shedding crocodile tears, but unlike me, there was nothing save a deadly silence. Bones and ash on one side, heaps and heaps of loose soil on the other side, and a tin board reading Death Keeps No Calendar were adding frustration. I was buried and cremated, yet I was breathing—breathing for the rest at the cost of my empty coffin.
Hundreds died; no one claimed the dead bodies for fear of infection. Fathers denied, sons claimed not, daughters and mothers attended not, and the rest followed suit. Mourners, for the first time, had put on the veil of silence. The screams of mothers, sisters, daughters, and wives had long since died away. Silence and sorrow, sobs and shouts, were on the receiving end.
What impulse brought me to the pond that day is still a mystery, and perhaps it will remain so. The gigantic crocodiles on the bank of the pond were shedding tears. This time the salt seemed common, and I realized crocodiles too weep and empty graves too speak. On my way back home, the ambulance had met an accident, and human organs in a box were still pulsating like my lively heart.
CROCODILE TEARS(Mushtaque Barq)
Crocodile Tears
Mushtaque B. Barq
From my school days, God knows why in the backyard of my junkyard—I call it brain—I was never given approval to dissent; these crocodile tears had illegally occupied much of my gray matter like my nation. I used to nurse the notion that crocodile tears were insincere expressions of sorrow. But when my gray matter started to lose its viscosity, the rush ruined old bridges and wrecked the towers that my teachers had once elevated for me to touch the peaks of excellence. I was there to stand before my own fall. It triggered my rush, and I started to reconstruct tracks and lanes that would take me out of the cesspool of ‘yes man ship’. It was not at all easy to start, but a good start is half done. While I was on my way to give the skin all the impression of my newly found fineness, a storm took over, and in no time the dust laid its eggs in the safest nests of human breasts. The progeny multiplied like my own curiosity. The crocodile tears cascaded down the cheeks, and as a sadist, a man tries his best to satisfy his selfishness. In the rat race, men of class explored the trade and trend of empathy. What a way to shed crocodile tears!
In a village, a doctor learned that his gray matter was infected. He rushed to the city and settled after pleasing many headless heads. The storm was no longer a laughing stock but a package of lethal infections for a compromised immune system. The mischievous spirit of luxury summoned the village doctor and settled on his infected gray matter. Thus, both learned how to shed crocodile tears. These crocodiles were in a jolly mood, for they had already predicted the outcome of the doctor’s infectious mind. I could see crocodiles in human form wandering and weeping, shedding tears as their trade mark, but in disguise, waiting for the feast.
As the dust passed from an ignorant man to careless mankind, the doctor felt the pulse of the devil and moved back to the village, where the general gender was already affected. ‘In the country of blind men, one-eyed man is the king, the saying echoed within the empty cans of my consciousness.
"I have come to treat you," the doctor proudly announced.
Slogans filled the air, the echo puffed up the doctor’s malice, and he smiled, but to gain sympathy, he started to shed the crocodile tears, which people mistook for human salt leaking through his ice-blocking eyes.
The dust was whirling, sowing its seeds into the soil of human existence, but the doctored devil let it reach every door; he let it grow and grow rapidly. Pace to a ravenous raven is what wine is to a drunkard.
The devil entertained the malice of a doctor who, while crossing a pond, found a long line of crocodiles on its banks. He was terrified, but the devil infused in him a consideration for beasts, and the devil, in the company of the doctor, started to shed tears for crocodiles, thus changing the maxim like a bitter truth erased from the chronicles.
The dust in the village had reached every door, so let the doctor step in.
He announced, "Death is inevitable; I cannot save all."
Initially, when an old man died, no one claimed his body. The devil knocked on the door.
"Yes," he declared.
A team of his favorites got clues to carry on shedding crocodile tears.
Only a few survived. Survival was a drama, and death was hit-and-miss fiction.
No funeral, no cremation, no burial—only a formality—but in the guise of formality, various formats were followed. A protocol drafted by a sick mind
With the fall of dusk, a siren would say, Keep counting. The siren would lock the people in, and the team would do the rest. The rest were arrested by fear; the horror was the only apparatus to put a ceiling on the footfall.
These crocodile tears in the back of my mind started to irritate me. My wits that I had after an unremitting persuasion flattened to the extent of flexibility somehow encouraged my wrath to take a forward movement. My newly found flow of intellect started to ooze the dew on my dry leaves that, on the boughs of my repentance, were looking for salvation.
A graveyard and cremation ground on the outskirts of the village were marked, and at the rear of their masks, God knows how many crocodiles had been pissing on their cheeks. Pissing was a trade mark that, behind the masks, had choked their taste buds to the extent that sweet and sour had no stakeholders.
A crocodile in me stirred too. It was a brawny push I felt in my thin gray matter. Graveyards and cremations too were shedding crocodile tears, but unlike me, there was nothing save a deadly silence. Bones and ash on one side, heaps and heaps of loose soil on the other side, and a tin board reading Death Keeps No Calendar were adding frustration. I was buried and cremated, yet I was breathing—breathing for the rest at the cost of my empty coffin.
Hundreds died; no one claimed the dead bodies for fear of infection. Fathers denied, sons claimed not, daughters and mothers attended not, and the rest followed suit. Mourners, for the first time, had put on the veil of silence. The screams of mothers, sisters, daughters, and wives had long since died away. Silence and sorrow, sobs and shouts, were on the receiving end.
What impulse brought me to the pond that day is still a mystery, and perhaps it will remain so. The gigantic crocodiles on the bank of the pond were shedding tears. This time the salt seemed common, and I realized crocodiles too weep and empty graves too speak. On my way back home, the ambulance had met an accident, and human organs in a box were still pulsating like my lively heart.
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