Dream Girls

She knew she was seeking fortune in a snake mine still...

Dream Girls

 

It was one more monotonous moonless night. Once again she was waiting for him in the darkest alley of the city. In the pleasant narcotic stillness, her eyelids were becoming heavy and she just wanted to collapse into a deep slumber there and then. But soon enough, a stray bright amber appeared from nowhere and settled in the middle of thick darkness. Her heart stopped beating for a second but then she recognized it as nothing more dangerous than the burning end of his cigarette.

 

He laughed meanly, “Oh Dear! I try my damnest but temptations pursue me everywhere.” 

 

She winced but as instructed did not say anything. Her only job was to hand him the well-sealed parcel and to collect the cash in return. As she gave him the little box, her delicate fingers touched his sinewy hand. Fear shuddered through her whole frame. But then she tried to put up a brave appearance. An uncanny, wicked smile flickered across his face as if mocking her very obvious pretensions.

 

 

She really didn’t know what was there in the parcel. It could be something like heroine, cocaine, morphine, any banned drug, precursor chemical…it could not be something too innocent. At worst it might be some substance used for assembling explosives. All right, she didn’t know and she didn’t care. She was born without a conscience and these questions were irrelevant. Right know, she had got her coveted wad of cash and a slip containing the coded message for her next assignment. At fifteen, she was becoming a veteran, and in her view that spelt success.

 

Ha! Her peanut sized heart did not leap into her throat any more at the sight of something unfamiliar or even unearthly. She had grown up in the folds of darkness. A million thanks to her friend Nisha who had brought her to the kingdom of murk from the common world of superficiality and squalour.  Nisha would often crack jokes on the grave psychological conditions of growing tadpoles. And one fateful evening she touched her on the shoulder and assured her that she could be much more than a temperamental oyster. After that every thing changed. So now even if she traded in drugs, she was not the culprit. People were buying death at their own accord and with their own money. Deep down, she knew : people can rationalize any folly as she could rationalize any sin. Something was certainly wrong. She shook her head reminding herself of her Diva: Nisha, her great fashion sense, her cosmetics, her glazed artificial but breathtaking beauty and the barest fact that the most handsome guy in the school admired her like insane. A strong current of jealousy scattered away the few remnants of conscience and hardened her resolve to end up just like Nisha. 

 

She walked on an on passing by the poor and the destitute who sleep and, in fact, live and die on the pavements only. But she didn’t care. It was not an uncommon sight. At a distance, somebody was playing the flute in a shrine. “What a vain attempt to heal the wounded silence.” thought she. Then she passed by the boundary wall of an old desolate garden where it was rumoured – once hundreds of women had committed collective suicide to save themselves from the dishonouring hands of  invaders. She looked up. The trees were all black and bare. On a few of them, only bats were hanging in place of the leaves. She didn’t care. It was a usual scene for her.

 

A stray ambulance screamed past her. She didn’t even lift her eyes in that direction. They were already heavy with dreams of a bright tomorrow. No doubt, she was mining fortune in a vast, boundless snake-field but then she had a firm belief of possessing certain  qualities that set her apart.  So she walked on with a confident and mordant smile on her face which seemed to declare that this person is the only genius in a mob of hopeless morons.

 

The ambulance also shrieked on…. carrying the delicate weight of Nisha’s bloated dead body.  

 

 

 

Author's Note

I am not a story writer, this is experimental... kindly tell me how to improve it.