The Last Stand
Flash Fiction: ‘It is as if the book-eaters have seeped in through cracks and crannies, like succubae swarming up from the hellish bowels of the earth itself.’
I fight termites for a living. So, when they wreak havoc again, I get summoned.
By the time I reach, it’s long past closing time and a lightless pall blankets the alley.
*70% flat off*
I am surprised; Dada is not the one for discounts, and especially after his prolonged treatment, we can barely afford more cuts. It’s only been two months since I wheeled him out of the oncology ward.
The bulb above the entrance flickers yellow and moths crowd around. There’s chitin husk on electric fruit. The door is wedged open with a well-thumbed dictionary, likely still in use when not moonlighting as a door jamb.
Inside, the ceiling fan is dead, yet the tassel of bells by the door jingles with each incoming draught. Dada sits in his easy chair, reading, his nose almost touching the page, a woollen scarf round his neck. His glasses cast shadows over his sunken eyes, and his cheeks seem to be little more than wrinkled skin, dry and paper-thin, draped over his cheek-bones. He draws on his cigar till the tip glows a deep red, rich and heavy, and rasps out a cough. The smoke makes curlicues. Books parcelled with brown paper and thread stack up in one corner—this week’s orders, to be mailed.
I grew up in this place. Every day after school, I helped Dada run his small bookshop while my mother chaperoned other people’s kids. Something of a taskmaster throughout the day, Dada transformed at closing time. We went on literary adventures—he and I—stalking man-eaters across elephant grass, pursuing criminals through shady back-alleys, flying to the galaxy’s edge, voyagers and pioneers, chasing little green men through demon-haunted world. The little boy in Dada, and the little me.
There are fantastic secrets in here still, entire worlds even; though increasingly frayed, tattered, tunnelled through.
Dada looks up and makes a sweeping gesture. He has removed the tapes over his arms. I can see that the puncture wounds in his arms have not healed yet.
“It has spread everywhere, run amok,” he whispers. His voice stirs within me dark murmurings of unease.
I look around. It is as if the book-eaters have seeped in through cracks and crannies, like succubae swarming up from the hellish bowels of the earth itself. The laminates over the shelves have gone lumpy, the bumps and knobs and veins and knots show an obscene infection within. Outside, there are mud tubes all over the walls, slithering and worming into every corner, every niche, mirroring the tunnels and nodules inside; overworld, underworld, tentacles, each connected to one all-devouring organism.
“One hell of an infestation,” I say, “I’m surprised it returned so quickly.”
Outside, there are mud tubes all over the walls, slithering and worming into every corner, every niche, mirroring the tunnels and nodules inside; overworld, underworld, tentacles, each connected to one all-devouring organism.
“Back with a vengeance,” Dada mumbles.
I need to fight them. I am the warrior; these are my lands.
I get to work: mechanical, precise, thorough. The poisons cannot be sprayed in such a tight space; I bring out the syringes, load them with my lethal concoctions and inject into tube and nodule, into plaster and brick and ply, into paint and tile and veneer. Pungent liquids, pulsing death. In no time, tiny little bodies with orange heads, like translucent beads, crawl out of the woodwork and pepper the shelves.
Thousands of termites annihilated. But I wonder if it’s enough to defeat the malignancy once and for all.
The coffee Dada offers me, usually robust, is swamped today by the bitterness of the aftermath.
“Good job,” he says, and promptly stumbles into a deep cough, wet with gargle, the type that dredges up mucus and sputum and phlegm. When he stops, I notice a few spots of blood on his handkerchief, jellied black.
“We’ll keep fighting,” I say, desperate to hide my alarm.
The books on the lower shelves are damp; Dada has stood them on their covers to air out the soggy pages. Some of the volatile poisons bubble up and evaporate. The moist pages appear to sizzle in the dim light.
***
Rahul Kanvinde is a Mumbai-based social sector professional who also writes stories. You can find him on Twitter: @RahulKanvinde
