DISCLAIMER: This chapter features some crude language.
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Everything is too vivid to be true.

'Momma!' he yells, but in vain.
He forces a barefoot self down the arching, wooden staircase, massaging his temples. Once or twice he makes as if to stumble, but catches himself on time. He does fall eventually, but only on the last step, by which time his head is ready to explode and he does not really care.

A lute is playing somewhere in the main foyer. Each string pulled causing his heart to shudder.

'Mom! Is that you?'

No response.

Shivering, with a twisted ankle and an aching head, he picks himself up and slowly limps toward the porch. He can see the outline of an old-fashioned, mushy ole' recliner. The lute is playing louder than ever, louder than the drumsticks clobbering against his skull.

A distasteful rank reaches his nostrils, which dilate in irate reflex.

'What's that?' he says, and all of a sudden he knows this is a dream. He never says such idiotic things aloud to himself in real life. He is too mature for that.

But he is again reminded by the torturous pain in his head, of the vividness of the whole scenario. In fact, he feels a strange sense of dejà-vù take over his own self.

'Momma! C'mon!'

The lute stops playing. His heart stops too.

The recliner moves. Someone is sitting in it.

A hand slides into view, a slimy, glistening thing. Like a centipede with those five fingers instead of all those legs.

His heart is racing so fast, it might leave his body behind.

'Uhm . . . excuse me?'

It is Grandma.

'No! NO! NOOOOO - !'

*

Avish jerked awake short of breath. A pretty, corrugated face was swimming in front of him.

''re you fi'e, sire?' said Antra.

'Uh-huh,' he wheezed. 'Bad dream.'

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More oft than not, things end when you least want them to.

The few days at grandma's had been fun, mostly because he had been able to spend so much time with Bhoo. Avish now knew of Vaven and Inira and the Hand and the Trident (all made up tales, he presumed, but which Bhoo treated as history). He now knew of tales kids his age wouldn't dream of imagining. He was now, as they say, enlightened.

Or that's what he thought.

During his stay at Grandma's, Shweta had the opportunity to flex her muscles a bit. A load off of her chest. She almost didn't want to go back.
Most everything had gone smoothly.

Well, there was Antra. She thought Avish was behaving a bit . . . off. She told this to his mother. How she'd heard noises in his room every night of their stay. How he'd been staring fervently at the portrait in the aisle.
But far as Avish was concerned, things were going good enough.

And then came the time when they had to return home. Get reminded how gristly life can be.

Back to her SSDD. Same Shit, Different Day.

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'Daddy!' yelled the kid, and sprinted straight toward the smoker.

The handsome-looking father threw his cigarette aside on the gravel warily and picked his son up in his arms. The mother stood a few yards behind them, lugging a suitcase across the highway. She was looking imperviously at the father-son reunion, as a robust wind bustled across with the wings of a dragon, scattering her hair all over her face. The father revolved his son in the air a few times, while the son laughed, the father twinkled and the mother looked, before setting the eleven-year-old down.

Dhruv flexed his back muscles, out of breath. 'God, you've gotten heavy! What was she feeding you? Rocks?'

The son giggled.

Shweta's face finally broke into a smile; seeing her child jolly, she couldn't resist.

'I'm not gonna be giving you the swirl anytime near now, boy,' Dhruv panted. 'You're a big boy now. Learn to be hard. Like a man.'

The poor stripling did not understand. Dhruv ruffled his hair and he started giggling again.

Presently a loud noise launched itself along the whoosh of the wind. The unmistakable thunderous drone of a large vehicle approaching. Shweta was still on the road, hauling the case along. She didn't notice.

The truck was going relentlessly fast for such a narrow road. It was a ten-wheeled, chromeplated monster, glistening evilly in the sun, charging like a bull at a red flag. Faster than the wind. Scarier than the Bible.

Now Shweta looked in alarm at the looming threat. She panicked and darted, dropping the suitcase there and then. Her son began to scream, then squeal, then both. Dhruv swore and started, waving his hands frantically at the truck-driver to stop.

As the brakes were applied and the sense of the imminent emergency settled in, the truck jerkily slowed and moved in a zig-zag manner, the driver not knowing what to do.

Shweta was now actually crying; she had never had an experience as close shave to death as this before, and she had always had a sensitive heart. She was hastening, but the truck's pattern-less motion was confounding her. Perplexed, she stopped for the hundredth of a second before continuing to run. Her son's screams and squeals distracted her furthermore.

But the poor truck driver had no idea how to handle the situation. He freaked out and blindly turned the wheel. Mother looked ridiculously formidable as she bolted, but things have a way of messing up when they're not supposed to: her right ankle twisted wantonly and she fell over, landing face-first as the world got on cocaine and rose up to her face. She braced herself for the inevitable as she lay there on the road, which juddered with the approaching wheels. Whimpering. Praying.

What a clichéd end, her sub-conscious complained.

The truck came to a stop barely two inches ahead of her.

Both mother and son were drowning in tears by then.

Although this episode had taken less than a minute to unfold, the drama and the tension in the atmosphere was palpable.

Dhruv set his jaw and looked at his son. 'Be a man, Avish. You can't cry like a baby every time a fuck-up shows up. Come with me.'

The child could not control himself, but his father was a different man now. He held his son's arms and took him toward the truck. In front of which his mother, trying to pick herself up. Not wanting to be a pussy in front of his father - who was a man, a man, a man, a man always knows better - he swiftly wiped the tears off of his tiny innocent face, being pulled toward an ugly situation by his unflappable father, his father who had but steel and stone in his eyes.

'Get out, you piece of shit!' Dhruv yelled.

The truck-door opened and a portly, chubby man jumped out, his face red like he had been holding his breath forever.

The child, Avish, thought he looked like he might just puke - and, as if on cue, he did. The vomit was a green, sickly thing, and even stopped his hell-bent father for a second.

Meanwhile, Shweta got up, sobbing. Her arms were all scraped. She limped toward and made to hold him, but Father dismissed her by raising his hand sincerely without even sparing her a glance.

'You ass!' Dhruv bellowed. Shweta gave him a look of silent disapproval for swearing in front of their son. They had talked about this. He had hardly listened, though.

The chubby driver took a step back. He was dead sick. You could see it, clearly; like when you look up at the stars you can tell how high they are, you could easily figure the sickness in the man. A fleck of vomit was stuck in his uncouth beard. His eyes were starry. His face was still red as the insides of damn stag.

'Hey, man. I'm sorry, I - '

At this point the man's back arched forward, his nose almost touching the ground, and he barfed. But the barf was a belch; the belch was a roar; and the roar was disgusting.

Even standing at least two foot away from the man, Avish could smell the barf - urgh, that offending, repulsive odor. Avish looked at the tiny puddle on the ground, immediately averted his gaze.

'I-I didn't mean to, sir - '

-but this time the driver was interrupted not by a barf but by Father, who in a long stride lunged himself at the man.

The driver was smashed hard against the truck and grimaced, barfed and cried at the same time. Father had him by the collar.

'You ass,' Dhruv drooled in his face. 'You almost killed my wife. That's my fucking wife right there, you see? I'm going to skin you like a pig.'

He punched the chubby man in his face, drawing blood from his mouth, banging his head against the truck. The man tried to yelp - he was in agony, that much was obvious - but again a barf came out, accompanied by a rank so revolting it could shrink your nostrils to nonexistence.

Something was dreadfully wrong with that man. Maybe that was why he'd been driving like that. Father had a satisfied grin pasted on his face.

He looked so scary, Avish thought. Not the man; his father himself.

His eyes gleamed a dismal red, like the blood leaking out of the sick man. Father was a vampire now; he would stop at nothing for blood.

'Taste that, huh?' Dhruv said with satiation in his voice. 'Taste that?! How's that taste, huh, cocksucker? Huh!'

The driver attempted saying something, but a rasp gurgle came out instead. His ruddy face was redder than red wine. His facial muscles strained and made it look distorted as a broken Lego Metropolis. It was eerie to look at. He made weird rippling sounds and made as if to vomit, along with wheezes as though he were running out of breath.

Dhruv put his hand on the man's mouth and squeezed. The man's eyes started rolling in no time; he was being asphyxiated.

What happened next happened so swiftly it was almost unbelievable, surreal.

The driver pushed Father back as he barfed/belched/roared. Father fell on the ground. The driver climbed hastily into his vehicle, slammed the door shut. Dhruv got up and plunged himself forward, but the truck drove away, while its driver shoved a middle-finger out the window. Avish thought he could see a shadow beside the driver, but he couldn't be too sure.

(Bhoo it's Bhoo come to teach your father a lesson)

Dhruv cursed with rage. He dashed after the truck for a few meters, then stopped, shouted and beat his fists in the air.

Shweta failed to usher a word. Their son cried helplessly.

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Being back in his own room gave him no ounce of comfort.

Even locked in there, the angry reprimands his father kept making for hours after the incident could be heard. Him and Mom had gotten into a fight again (father venting his unfounded fury on her). Right after her return.

Not for the last time, he wondered what kind of a person his father was. Whether most father's were that way. Was there any difference between Father and Raghu? The Boogies bullied to derive pleasure, to get rid of their own misery; that was what father had done today to the truck driver. Sure, he had deserved something but . . . and to think Mom went through that every single day of her marriage.

Almost on hint, he heard his mother's blood-curdling scream.

Avish shut his eyes, willing himself to be strong.

Mrs. Pratibha had said he was a brave kid. He could prove that wasn't utter nonsense.

The void. Yes.

(a curly white smoke)

Maybe it could help.

(-rising up to your chest)

Whatever Bhoo had taught him was meant to assist in times like these, right?

(-turning into pure stark energy as you exhale)

Rule the void.

Rule it. Calm.

But when he heard another painful shriek from the other room, Avish became the weasel his father always said he was. He broke. Plugged his ears tight. Shut his eyes. Tried to rule the void, the void, the void.

Soft, stingy tears licked his cheeks.

Home sweet home.

So there's that . . . and no harm done.

""Double double, toil and trouble
Forests burn, 'n' humanity's a bubble""