Equinox ( An Original Story) – Prologue

     “If you look hard enough, there’s the galaxy!“, yells the naive 6-year old in my memory.He’s quite the sweet lad, if a little active, and takes fondly to his older brother, an engineer and friend to all. The little one yells once more to his parents, all three of them staring in front of a very loud television set. The news stations were livid, “Our proud nation eagerly awaits the return of the first men in all of History to have gone further than Mars!“. “There he is!”, screams the child, as the news camera pans to a bright-eyed, short-haired, young man reassuring those present on-site that the descent and subsequent retrieval would go safe and sound, just as predicted. Both parents exchange loving, proud glances at each other, their boy had made the family name proud.

        Minutes go by, and the retrieval craft is seen slowly passing into the horizon. “It’s here! They came back from space!”, the child’s excitement simply cannot be contained. People, everywhere, are ecstatic, and rightfully so — this was Man’s very first step on the dark side of the asteroid belt, thousands of miles past the grand old red moon, Mars. The craft makes a curious, booming noise as it slaps down on the sea, parachutes deployed right on time. But, lo, the television set just shuts off, and so do all of the lights. “Damned power cut ..” swears the father, just enough to express his grimace but never too loud for his youngest to overhear, “… just the right time to screw things up.”.

Likewise, the child and his mother are both displeased with this sudden turn of events. There is much grumbling on the couch, and soon the father gets up and head out onto the lawn. He shouts at their neighbors for assistance, but there’s no answer. Nobody wants to co-operate with the outsiders, a family of Firangis. This was a locality of closeted, racist folk, heavily xenophobic. And, to add salt to the wound, it was from the “Firangi filth” that a nobody had risen into a national sensation, a benchmark for all other households to look up to in envy. If co-operation was a rarity before, expecting it all these years later would be the equivalent of asking a brick wall to stop being stiff.

Not to be fazed by the lack of cordial assistance, the father stealthily creeps back indoors, and decides to make a secret phone call. He had not yet told his wife that his eldest, despite heavy restrictions and strict regulations against informal phone calls, had always maintained unbarred communication with him. A proud father he was, back when his eldest had been selected into the country’s most prominent Space Research Organization, and he sure hadn’t misplaced his pride now. Silent as a cat’s paw, he treads to the edge of the wall, and peers into the drawing room to make sure nobody was looking. “Prrrring-Prrrring“, goes the shoddy little cellphone, over and over, as the father beams with obvious anticipation and, steadily, anger. “Damn this afternoon..”, he swears again. He needed to talk to his eldest, he would do anything to get through.

The child in front of the whizzing T.V. set looks at his father inquisitively, as if expecting some gracious candy, such was his excitement at the events he had been missing out on. Unfortunately, he soon replicated his father’s own look of dismay, and turned to the static on the T.V. display once more — the power had come back on, but they couldn’t see anything on the T.V. screen. A few minutes, or maybe more, go by, and there’s an odd silence in the room, broken only by the muffled static from the T.V. , and an even more odd chill settles down upon the three occupants. Although they all feel it, only the young child senses the subtle dread in the air. Out of nowhere, the silence is shattered by the father’s cell-phone screeching its horribly crude ringtone. All three jump up in surprise, and the child stands still in front of the T.V. finally hearing the rushed voice of a news reporter through the gray box. The light from the screen momentarily blinds him, but he steadily gains back his vision. As he now sees clearly into the screen, he also stares into the frenzied eyes of a bright-eyed, short haired young man in engineer’s garb, phone in one hand and gun in the other, pointed to his head. All cameras, all eyes, and all fingers pointed at this rambling mess of the glowing lad from minutes before, birthing chaos and confusion in the Firangi household.

There’s a sudden flash of silver and crimson on the screen, and loud thump both on ahead and behind the child, now ice cold with fear. Moments age in centuries, and each second passes in grueling pain. He’d stared madness, and death in the eye, and watched a young life, his own loving brother’s, snuffed out with no recompense, and he falls to the floor beside his unconscious mother, both having fallen into shock, and so i woke shivering, at the nightmare from ages past. As i sat up, wet with a cold sweat, i knew all too well the aftertaste it had always left behind. “Twenty four years..”, i mused to myself, “… and you still won’t let me sleep in peace.”. I’d spent the better half of 2 decades, haunted by the utter collapse of my family. Everybody i’d called my own, dead & burnt to cinders. And, yet, there I was dreading every waking moment that i had to live without them. Why? Well, they’re all a bunch of unforgiving folk, never ken to realizing the extent of their ire. But, they’re all dead, aren’t they? Well, and truly, yes. The last vestige of the people i’d called family died years ago. But then, it’s as they say, what is dead may never die.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Catch my reading of this chapter, and more, on my weekly YouTube series .