Moonchaser

“Death of centuries! Moonchaser! Blasphemer! Monkey! Vase of prehistory. Finally to Earth, and finally born.”
- F.W. Marnau while filming Nosferatu

First they took away the furniture, then the houses and in the end they put the sunset in the back of a huge moving truck and drove away leaving us in the thick black smoke that the vehicle exhaled.

Everyone stood there quietly for a few moments and then one of them spoke:

“You smell of French Fries.”
“I do?”
“Yes, in a good way.”

The crowd suddenly started to scatter like oil on water and everyone head off to their own wanderings. Some sat against the brick wall with their hands in the pockets of the thick tweed jackets they wore. Some walked to where their houses used to be and pretended to open doors that weren’t there. Still others fell straight to the floor trying to sit on the sofas that weren’t there either. As they hit the ground a cloud of dust swelled up from under and covered them with a thin amber layer.

An old man spoke while adjusting his hat, “Where is the damn furniture?”
“They took it with them.” His wife with silver hair answered.
“Have they left anything?”
“Only the television and my bathroom slippers.”

****

It was much after the Rosario’s moved in and roughly about the time when Shaftain Sahib jumped off his sixth floor balcony onto a sabzi wala. The vendor, Salim, died right away as two hundred and seventy six pounds of muscle, fat and bone landed directly on him; first breaking the poor fellow’s neck and then his spine. Shaftain Sahib survived the fall only to attempt another suicide – and succeed - just two days before they came.

“Yeah I saw the heavy set guy throw himself in front of a water tanker.”
“And…?”
“The truck is doing at least fifty if not more and suddenly this half naked man comes running out of no where and then BAM!!!”
“Ooohhh, no sh*t.”

The noise that the impact made was something like hitting a bag full of potatoes with six or seven cricket bats made of steel. The driver braked after the impact and by the time the tanker came to a complete stop, Shaftain Sahib was lying in a pool of blood, some twenty feet away with broken ribs, nose, teeth and the left eye missing. The people who later tried to lift him onto an ambulance said that he was mumbling something inaudible at first but then it became clear.

The face had become grotesquely blue and black and red. There was only a black slimy cavity where the eye used to be. He opened his mouth with strands of red spit trembling slightly between the lips.

“Monkeys, death to moonchasers.” Of the many assertions that made rounds that day this one had the highest credibility in terms of the number of people backing it. Shaftain Sahib, after saying those words, went brain dead.

****

It was mostly dark, a sullied abysmal sheet of black that enveloped everything. A strange puerile sucking sound made its way to our ears every once in a while. It came mostly from the alleys and from under the wooden floors. Initially they were dismissed as apparitions related to acute communal trauma, and then the Banas were found slain in their house – all six of them. The children had strange puncture wounds on their necks and the adults had them on their chests, near the heart.

One of the witnesses claimed to have seen a gaunt, resource-less woman outside the Banas’ house somewhere around three or four in the morning. He said she looked like a heroin addict desperately in need of a fix. The murders were as mystifying as the weather those days. The mornings were mostly cloudy in a city where it rarely rained and the evenings were almost always a threatening orange. The conversions had begun.

****

“They left an old teakwood table and four glasses.” The old man with the funny hat looked around and shrugged.
“That’s strange, we have the silverware left and my old Russian Mosin-Nagant.”
“A rusted oven and my daughter’s sleeping pills.”

The inhabitants shared this in a poignant soliloquy. It had started to rain then, turning the earth grey and pliable; very hard to walk on if you had been wearing regular shoes.

****

I happened to meet Sameera a week before the entire town was converted. She had pale skin and placid features with pining eyes; she spoke with a strange portentous accent. It was her teeth that made me very uncomfortable, even with her mouth slightly open the snaring never completely went away. She was smoking a cigarette in the rain and I stepped out of my car to offer help. She accepted.

In the car I felt drawn towards her. I risked a few glances but she would always be looking out the window. And then it suddenly occurred to me.

“Where to?”
She kept looking out into the rain and blackness. “Keep driving I’ll tell you when to turn.”
“What if I have to make a turn before you?”
“We’ll see.”

I looked at her and noticed that she had what looked like blood on her shoulder. It was inconspicuous on the black top but it was blood nevertheless.

“Is that blood?”
“Yes.”
“Are you hurt?”

She turned her head for the first time since she had entered the car and smiled.

The next thing I remember I was running through the rain, I didn’t have the nerve to stop and look back or maybe keep running and turn my head. After a while when I thought I’d run enough and that the distance between the car and myself wasn’t threatening any longer, I stopped and put my hands on the knees and tried to catch some breath.

I looked towards the car and could not make out much in the rain, just a faint silhouette that the raindrops formed as they crashed onto the car metal.

****

First they took away the furniture, then the houses and in the end they put reason in the back of a huge funeral bus and drove away.

No one said anything; we simply looked at the bus as it disappeared around a far away corner.

“You smell of baked potatoes.”
“And you smell of fear!”
“I do? No way. I haven’t felt this secure in centuries.” Sameera smiled and you could see that her canines were a little longer than usual.

And thus began a parable in the reign of the moon.