As she wound the towel around her back to absorb the moisture, her arms stretched out wide. She looked at them in the bathroom mirror, nearly admiring how taut they were. Not an ounce of excess flesh or flab; pure perfection, she thought contentedly. As her eyes traveled the length of her arm, from her long, tapering fingers to her firm shoulders, a greenish line caught her view. At the junction of the right arm and the shoulder was a maze of green lines. Veins? Not really, she thought. I never had such fine skin before.
As she stared, the vein network grew darker. It began to move underneath her skin. It grew in length, the network broadened. Before her amazed eyes, it spread downward from the upper arm, moving towards her elbow. On the other side, it moved towards her collarbone. As it spread, it became more protuberant. In fact, it appeared to throb with an almost-violent intensity. The color changed from pale-green to darkish green-black and the entire network started wriggling violently under her skin like a gang of worms. As she stared, a faint crack appeared near her shoulder bone. A stream of orange fluid trickled out of the crack. It appeared heavy and unwilling to move. But it resolutely made its way over her shoulder bone and disappeared from view. Another stream appeared, immediately moving downward. It looked as if it was tracing its path along her collarbone before it suddenly slipped underneath and moved towards her right breast. Her entire shoulder trembled with a shudder that chilled her to her very core. As she frantically looked around for a towel to stem the flow of this strange fluid, a sudden spurt from her right eye almost caused her to lurch forward and lose her balance and grab the side of the cabinet for support. The bathroom mirror was splattered with sticky, orange fluid.
She blinked. The mirror was spotless.
lalunadiosa says:
Your creative juices seem to be over-flowing…am glad you are managing to utilize them wisely….liked this piece as well as the Farewell one…..this one could do with a better title I think….something that doesn’t poke fun at the piece ‘cos it is a pretty well-written piece….of course all this is imho 🙂
August 30, 2004 — 9:55 am
Lakshmi says:
The vision was conceived in the bathroom, Yasho.. and it barely stayed for a second. The fact that I strung it into some quasi-horror tale seems rather funny to me…:-) An exercise in writing, that’s all!
Thanks anyways.. and yes, I batter myself to pieces pretty often over my writing..:-)
August 30, 2004 — 10:01 am
rileen says:
Kyon daraati ho bhai :-p !!
August 30, 2004 — 11:44 am
Lakshmi says:
🙂
Can you imagine what kinda chill set in the instant the thought flashed across my mind?
August 30, 2004 — 12:25 pm
rileen says:
An overactive imagination is both a blessing as well as a curse 🙂
August 30, 2004 — 12:28 pm
Lakshmi says:
:-))))
August 30, 2004 — 3:08 pm
hariputtar says:
if something of this nature happened to me i will stop bathing.
i did get spooked once – last year. when i was taking bath at 3 or some such unearthly hour … and i noticed a certain hum – a noise seemed to be repeating itself. and that too in apparent response to my actions. i got really alarmed. and slept in the living room that day (the bath was attached to my bedroom). i do get spooked fairly bad whenever i have such experiences.
August 31, 2004 — 12:25 am
fugney says:
I had a spooky dream once. A skeleton dressed in a hood enters my room and is about to grab me by the leg. I scream “Go away!!!” or something to that effect. The skeleton turns into a curtain and I am awake. It was scary.
August 31, 2004 — 4:46 am
Lakshmi says:
Did you ever figure out what the sound was??
August 31, 2004 — 5:36 am
hariputtar says:
beats me still. in the dead quiet of the late hours of night, a lot of noises from adjacent apartments can get elevated to audible-zone – this cud have been a dog from the apt above or some equipment (cleaning robot, dryer-washer).
August 31, 2004 — 6:19 am
fugney says:
First reaction : “Huh?”
August 31, 2004 — 4:43 am
fugney says:
Damn television. Words don’t scare me anymore.
August 31, 2004 — 4:47 am