Tales from the Neverbeens

I had always been an introvert. I had never really made friends. Those that I call friends are the people I hide my insecurity behind. They protect  me from those who feed upon other's insecurities. But I have this one particular friend who is different. Different in the sense that is the same as me. We meet everyday in the library, and we hide our faces behind the books in the same way, shielding ourselves from the real world and immersing ourselves in the harmless new world at the same time. "I have never had a friend here since Helen," he said one day. It startled me. We never talked to each other much, a confession was a far cry! "Who was she?" I asked plainly. "She was my wife," he said, "We lived here in the library house." Who lives in a library with family, I wondered. "If you don't mind, what happened to her?" I asked. "She got lost in the books. Never found her since. 'been ten years." There was som...

I was reading a novel. The clock ticked. Half past nine. The book said page 300. The story was quite an extraordinary one. I don't have the liberty to share the story, but I can of course give you the gist. Toby was a boy who lived in a small cottage beside the woods. He liked to watch the animals among the trees. And he liked bee-keeping. These two hobbies took up most of his time. But he had another one which he kept secret from his parents. They were not of the type who would like that habit. Reading. Toby's family was one of the forest families that were scattered among the trees, and hardly interacted with each other. As a result he had no friends except for a squirrel, a snake and a crow. Hunting was the prime occupation of the people, and reading was an entire waste of time for them. So what Toby did was build a secret tree house up in the trees and hide the books up there. Once in a while he would climb up, sit on a bower and get lost in a book. Sometimes he even for...

This boy often visited my dreams. Today he came with his family. They looked hungry. Normally they looked healthy and well fed. Today they looked famished. These people are cannibals. They have the biggest source of food in the world. But today they looked tired. They wanted someone to bring them food. That was why they came to me. I had never been a Reaper before. People in my dreams never shouted. So I never knew if I looked like a Reaper or a clown. And I didn't know if they were good enough. Finding people in my dream was difficult. They keep on disappearing. So I decided, I should go into the real world. I should wake up. Maybe I can pick some and serve them on a platter, and if I did the dressing well, maybe they'll never know the difference!

What I have seen just now is not for a weak mind to take in. Not that I claim to have a strong mind, but I had no option. I guess I can explain better after I narrate the events that have led to this. Not long before I was talking with my friend over the phone. I had a really sad tale to tell, and my friend did not seem to be in the best shape to listen to it. We talked for a while and then hung up. What the sad tale was is an entirely different matter. But right now, I had no one to talk to. So I tried to go to sleep. Insomnia kicks in at the worst of times. Like tonight. I've been increasingly losing sleep over the last couple of days, and I remember being painfully sleepy while in the class earlier this day. But now it was like a dozen cups of coffee running through me. I took to writing a blog. This was something I was going to do after a long time. And then I fell asleep. Or so I thought. When I woke up it was still dark. The clock read 3 am. I walked upto the window and o...