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 shake.

'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 - !'

*

The nightmare. Again.

______________________________________
It was in August that Shweta finally returned home. Well, grandma's home. Which was now theirs, too - so yes, home.

Their old house had been sold to an affluent businessman who was going to convert it into a storehouse of some kind (or whatever, Shweta didn't care) at a hefty price. Court was convened. Dhruv would have no share in the property money. Their marriage was no more. Much physical damage had been done to Dhruv, too, and his lawyer - a cheap, government one - fought unenthusiastically to prove his innocence. Dhruv had shown up haggard and drunk on a date. Bibi slapped him in court one fine day, and the drunken dog could but growl, not bark or bite.

Antra was supportive, but Shweta liked independence - it had always been her way of life -and no house-maiden would be able to convince her otherwise. Yet Mom-Senior, the legendarily worldly Bibi - on her command, Antra rarely left her side.

Sometimes Shweta would stand in front of a mirror and just look at her permanently scarred face and just scream and pull her hair out of her miserable scalp. Sometimes, she would claw at her own face, hoping to maybe rip out the mark from her once guileless and beautiful face. The following days Antra would find fresh gashes on her face.

Whenever Avish came to her - which wasn't very often, not anymore - she held back impromptu tears. He looked so much like his father. So much. And his grandpa as well. Hopefully, he would make his own mistakes, not inherit them. Hopefully he would survive.

She just didn't want for him to have a life like hers. Marrying the wrong guy, spending years in perpetual torture, then ultimately ending up staying upright on the shoulders of better people: synopsis of her life. SSDD. Oh, to be young and to be free and to be able to make all these mistakes. If only she could face those youthful dilemmas, those big juvenile decisions again. If only.

_____________________________________

Come September, Shweta was again in the hospital for two days. The doctors had to check on her and see if everything was fine and whatnot. So Avish was alone at home with the house-maiden and his grandma.

A lot happened in those two blasted days.

______________________________________

He was asleep at first, he was sure of that. Disturbing dreams that he couldn't decipher or remember woke him up.

At, but obvious, two in the morning. Or night, as is preferred.

There was no fear. There was no heavy breathing, no sweat, no feeling at all. He was just . . . conscious. Things were too colorful, too lively.

Everything was too vivid.

(no)

And suddenly he knew what was going on. A hunch told him, clear as a fertile grassland.

'Momma,' he muttered absent-mindedly, but it wasn't him, Avish the fifteen-year-old Avish the Dad-injurer; it was Avish the thirteen-year-old, Avish the weasel.

But Momma wasn't here. Momma was in a hospital, and Momma was not coming to the rescue, like that uneventful night.

Nursing an aching head, Avish robotically jumped off his bed, twisting an ankle. It did not hurt much. What hurt was the knowing in him, the knowing.

Barefoot, each step timid against the cold wooden ground, Avish moved towards his nightmare. Literally.

_*_

'Miss me,' Bibi said to the portrait of her husband, 'and I'll miss yah.'

She limped away - she felt sick, terribly sick and emotional. Her bones, she thought, had large gaping holes in them - that osteoporosis Mrs. Gupta had informed her of. But her muscles were no better; they groaned at even the slightest of contractions, then refused to relax. She hadn't slept for two days in a row now. She found herself unable to lay down without worrying about the clutch in her gut and, especially, the cruel pain in her chest. It felt at times like her sternum had cracked, and it had cracked on purpose. She could almost see her breast-bone snickering at her: Take that, sucka! If you're an oldie, then I'm the Queen Bitch!

Age had never been as bad a disease.

But this wasn't ageing. This was something else, something she knew would eat her alive.

Meanwhile, as she left, another frame - a taller, leaner, fitter frame, barefoot and troubled with deja-vù - crept up to the silver-rimmed portrait.

Avish couldn't help himself. Looking at his grandpa, holding that sleek cane and posing so classily, reminded him overwhelmingly of his childhood. Of Bhoo.

He did not hear the painful moans coming from the adjacent living room.

_*_

To think that it was possible for her to get lost in her house where she'd been living since the last god-knew-how-many years. But it happened. In all her pain and the ruckus going on up there at her upper apartment, Bibi somehow ended up in the living room instead of her own "bedchamber".

Bedchamber. That was what Manohar, her husband, had called it.

(cigar I need my cigar)

She hit a wall face-first. Adding to her already tormenting pain.

Agony gripped her feet and she collapsed into her favorite recliner, clutching at her chest in unbelievable pain. In her brain was the image of her husband, posing that day for the portrait that now stood in her house's aisle.

She waited. For something she didn't quite understand.

_*_

A distasteful rank. The one from his nightmare.

Music. From a lute.

(how do you know it's a fucking lute?)

'Momma,' he whispered again.

She's in a goddamn hospital! Get a grip!

(grip grip grip-y grip-y grip grip)

What the hell is wrong with you?!

The smell was all he could register at the moment.

'Momma? That you?'

No, it isn't her, godammit! She is in a fucking hospital!

His feet took him towards the stench. Agh, it was a stench no one should ever have to smell. Disgusting. Offending, even. Something decaying.

_*_

Bibi felt the pain rise up from her chest, descend down from it, like a giant, intricate cobweb. A heat crashed into her, boiling her intestines.

_*_

Avish saw a recliner - a brown-leathered comfy chair his grandma was so find of.

_*_

She was not herself.

It felt like she was suddenly a passenger in the car she had been driving for so long. It was like she was reaching out, groping for the steering, but a stoic new driver was denying her the privilege.

It was haunting, to feel like a prisoner, a slave, in her own body.

_*_

The door was slightly ajar. A mellow light spilled out.

Avish saw the recliner move.

(run)

Someone was sitting on it.

(it's him it's Bhoo)

The music stopped abruptly.

A hand slid into view on the armrest of the recliner, a slimy, glistening thing. Like a centipede with those five fingers instead of all those legs.

Avish plodded ahead. Advancing as slowly as possible. For he knew that which awaited him.

Still, he tried to convince himself otherwise. Maybe it's Antra, he pacified himself. But no; his nightmare had come to life.

It was Grandma.

'No! NO! NOOOOO - !'

(wake up wake up wake up)

But this was no dream. This was a dreary reality.

Avish crept towards her.

She was lifeless, that was sure.

Her skin was as wrinkly as it had ever been, and paler than chalk. Decomposing.

(how long she been dead cannot be long no she can't be dead can't decay no smell O smell)

She had died with her eyes wide open; they were glazed, a glassy, indecent look in them. Her eyeballs were absent altogether.

A cigar, with a receding ember head, lay idly in her motionless lap.

Avish nearly vomited as the stench took over his senses and messed up with his very soul.

And then he noticed several red suckers were seared on her arm and neck. Like on the tentacles of those giant fantasy squids. Perhaps the most repelling sight he had ever seen. Looking at those ring-like sucker-thingies made his stomach curl in an extremely unnatural manner.

(it's not her it's a damn alien not her)

What on Earth had killed her? An octopus?

'Bhoo,' he mumbled.

(what Bhoo Bhoo isn't here)

(he is he is he is here)

Avish extended his arm. Touched her neck.

No breath, no pulse.

Bibi was dead.

The nightmare had come true.

Just then, something cold and clammy grabbed his wrist.

_*_

Antra was done. She had ran all errands for the day. Prayed. Cleaned the house. Gardened the plants. Bought rations. Cooked lunch (mix vegetables and curry). Now she took an omelet to Missus's room, only to find it vacant. So she called out "Missus" a good ten-eleven times before she heard a muffled sound coming from the living room.

She turned tracks and proceeded.

_*_

Avish struggled; he squirmed and wiggled and whatnot, but grandma's grip was firm and stolid.

Her sucker-cupped hand - her dead sucker-cupped hand - had ahold of his own.

She was dead, sure, but not utterly so.

Her moldering, chilled skin against his soft, warm wrist initiated a gradient of reactions which led to him repeatedly holding back from spewing puke.

He pulled, hard, harder, hardest, but her grip was no jest. Dead Grandma was stronger than grandma alive.

Eyeballs returned to her glossed-over eyes, but not her eyeballs. Rather, dirty-green, fusiform, smoky orbs.

Her putrid, defunct mouth opened a tad, then closed, then opened back again, wider than a cave's mouth this time. Avish could see her tongue, moving along the rim of her mouth like a shambling grey snake.

Her vocal cords creaked. The swathe of cupped skin on her throat rippled.

The lute started playing again, louder than ever, like it was playing in his ears themselves.

'Aah,' grandma creaked sonorously over the music. 'Aah . . . aaaaaahhhhh . . .'

If not for the circumstances, this would have been nearly comical - but Avish felt no inclination to laugh.

On quite the contrary, he screamed as well, adding to the great din.

_*_

Antra heard a lot of commotion there in the living room now. She sprinted with the plate still in her hand.

_*_

Her grip tightened.

Dead Grandma spoke, in a voice that could belong to any animal between a liger and a peacock, but sounding mechanical all the same:

'He will always be there for you.'

(Bhoo yes Bhoo she's talking about Bhoo)

'He will always be there for you.'

('When all hope is lost, when the skies turn grey and the heart yearns warmth)

Avish shouted as he jerked his arm.

(when pain is a familiar rival, and each breath breaks into puffs; when no one is there for you, and you are not truly yours)

Grandma would not leave him. She was repeating the same thing over and over again. In that same haunting voice.

( . . . I will be there for you then, my friend)

He could hear footfalls now. Hasty footfalls.

( I promise in the name of the Holder and the Holy Jen.)

Someone was coming towards him.

Hello there, reader. 'Sup?

No grandma-s were harmed in the making of this chapter (sorry, disclaimers have a way of getting inside my head).

But where's the fear when more chapters to come are there?
(sorry again)

Anyway, let me know how this story's going.

(not that it'll stop if you don't, but still.)

Until next time, then.