~~ Better Late Than Never… ~~

They say, “It’s better late than never”…. However, “Some things are better left unsaid”... I think.

That hour between 9:00 am and 10:00 am. That hour of agonizing consciousness. Wishing for the morphine, is no good... they won't let her go that easily. She's a fighter…! They say.

“I won't go without a fight,” comes as a weak whispered promise.
She says it aloud within herself as much to prove to herself that she is still alive, as it is to show that she's still brave... still courageous... still “of this earth”.

This was the hour, this hour... 9:00 am to 10:00 am I won't die until he phones. I won't die until the damned phone rings. I won't die until I hear his wretched voice on the phone.

David had emailed him first. “Hi Dad, Vera has about one month they say. Here's her phone number. She said please call. It's cool.
Love,
Dave.

Vera was David’s mom. He had never called her “mom” all these days

It was a mistake to call right then. Maybe not a mistake. Maybe just fateful. Maybe a cosmic street pole. Maybe he was driving too fast down the highway of life and...Well you never know when you change a lane or miss a turn…

Whether Jackie had turned into a hard cold bitch, or whether her reaction was reserved purely for the sound of his voice he could not know. That conversation was short and bitter. Vera was asleep. Jackie was not going to wake her.

It's extraordinary how much bile can be excreted in just one minute and 32 seconds, for that's exactly how long the telephone call lasted.

Danny should never have tried to engage Jackie in friendly conversation. He should never have assumed that after 12 years, Vera would have let the truth be known. After all, in the end, in the final analysis it was only down to Danny and Vera. And David, because David had been the one Vera used. It was messy, bitter, disgusting, dirty, cold, calculating and ruthless.

David knew the truth, Danny knew the truth, and Vera knew the truth. Vera though, had perpetuated the falsehood. Even embellished it, refined it, spat-and-polished it until it glowed with the awful brightness of truth. Through the years, as expected, the falsehood blossomed into a stinking weed, deeply rooted in a rich soil formed with a careful mix of truth, half truth, downright lies, and popular fiction.

Why he had ever imagined Jackie would even be civil to him, given their history, was laughable. After all, Danny had been no knight shining armor any more than Vera had been Snow White. Over a 25-year marriage Jackie had been just another one night stand. One of less than 10, and more than six. The actual numbers weren't important. Vera had at least matched those figures. Danny hadn't counted.

Whatever... “Tell her I love her... always have... always will. Tell her when she wakes up Jackie.”

“I don't even think you enter her thoughts, do you? You're fucked up and you are a fuck up... you should have thought of that at the time ...”

For a full two seconds Danny thought he could explain. “One day the truth...” then he knew that there was no point. Anyway, why did it bother him so much that he wanted all of them to know? Every last one of those ex-friends, and ex acquaintances who had followed the money and exempted themselves of any need to know the truth... and even if they did, they wouldn't care. “Oh just shut up Jackie!”
One minute and 32 seconds. He hit the end button, and threw the handset on the bed.

It was 3:17 pm, just three minutes later. He fired off a sad and sorry email to his boy.

Waking at 8:00 am, Danny at least cast away the demons of the night. Visitations that began at the moment Dear Morpheus penetrated, and dispersed like the cowards they were, as soon as the shroud of sleep departed. In their place an empty, nauseating hole in his stomach - depression, where dread had so recently gnawed.

9:00 am. Danny's hand hovered over the talk button. 9:10 am. 9:18 am.9:29 am. 9.31 am... in the final half hour he stroked the talk button too often to count the time between. Prowling, trying to find things to do. Things he could do with one hand and not have to set down the handset.

David emailed. “Dad. I spoke to Jackie. Mum wants you to call. It's cool. Love, Dave.”

That was the second time David had said LOVE, Dave. Not something he was brought up with. Normally he would write...'catch you later'. That had been his standard since... since as long as Danny could remember.

For all these years he had thought he had forgiven her and moved on. Now, all Danny knew for certain was that he loved her to......Death? How horrible it is to realize that one can only forgive in the rational mind? Damn it!

No, he had never forgiven her in his heart and soul. How could I do that! Rationalize? Pretend?
Even as that thought slammed his synapses, a second one followed. Angel and Devil discussing humanity! But which one was which? The Devil wears a Kind Demeanor. Because what she did was unjust! She was ruthless and she wanted it to end. You can't forgive injustice until the injustice is undone! Can you? CAN YOU?

Danny had thought he could.

Was refusing to call again, her punishment, before the cancer and the morphine chewed away her body and mind? If so it felt more like self flagellation. Just who was being punished here anyway... if punishment was what it was.

Vera battled her way through the Morphine, stretching. She had recently developed a little trick, one that was getting harder to perform, because the tiny hole of consciousness had begun to close so quickly now. She no longer denied the agony of the parasite inside her. Instead she embraced the pain, held on to it like a long, long, rope. One she could climb. Hooking her right foot around it just the way she had been taught back in those long ago athletic days. Holding herself steady with both feet when her arms got tired.

All that way ago she could shin up a rope like a monkey. Like a monkey on one of those ages ago plastic toys she got as a child, for Christmas. Now she embraced the pain. Went into it. Became it.
And she climbed, and she climbed and she climbed. An ironic thought spun through her still drugged mind and she thought an ironic grin. Damn you Almighty! You make it so hard to get to heaven! Ever heard of a ladder?

At exactly 9:00 am Vera's eyes flickered open. She was drained, wrung out and wrecked. But I'm here! Ring phone ring! She would be too weak to hold the handset. Jackie would have to do it for her. Then she would have to find a voice somewhere. How exhausting it's going to be just to talk now! Help me Almighty. Please let the phone ring. Tell that bastard to get on the phone. Please...pretty pretty please...
I only need to say two words!

Danny flipped open the clam shell of his notebook and hit the start button, opening up his Dragon Naturally Speaking, he watched the little happy red dragon load his user files. He used the microphone to write when he needed it to be raw and lacerating. While he waited for the files to load he wondered how many novelists like him used voice dictation these days. How could Dean Koontz and Stephen King turn out work so prodigiously without it? Or maybe they could. The spoken word, so different from the stuff that drips from the fingertips. How different is the perception process, and can the reader...ahh the Constant Reader, tell? Answer me.

Over years Danny had mastered what came best from the lip and what came best from the fingers, and so he mixed a little of this with a little of that, and then edited with cut, copy and paste. Shifting sentences and paragraphs and single words up, down, and all around. The final cut being blended as a painter would work on a canvas.

“Open Text Document” He ordered. “Click New Story. Click Open.” And then the work in progress appeared on the screen. For ten minutes Danny neither spoke nor typed. He edited. Slowly, meticulously, from the beginning to the part sentence at which he had stopped last night. Another little artifice he had made for himself. Always end the day’s work with a sentence only part written. After all, it might not be the same sentence he had intended last night or the night before, or whenever he had last worked that piece. That part sentence might even change the whole work.... or not.

“What happens,” Danny had jotted on his yellow pulp paper pad, “in that last nanosecond of beingness? When the whatever-it-is... soul... decamps, departs...when thought ceases and becomes a part of the everlasting river of pure thought? Is there a God... ha ha! We used to call Him Almighty! Is there an Almighty to join, in disembodied bliss?”
Absently, consulting notes, his finger traced over the Talk button, registering a link to that spot, which spark.

“Select All” He said. “Delete all” Three weeks mind-numbing work evaporated. Lives created, and obliterated with no regard for their existence. If only on paper, they had been lives, and Danny felt no regrets. Having read the notes he knew with crystal clarity what this story had to be.

9.39 am, and Danny had already been writing and talking for three hours. Gut, spleen, raw lacerated skin, and soul ebbing Stream-Of -Consciousness like nothing he had ever written before.

Maybe he would change the fictional names later to something more fitting.... he already knew the characters only too well.

He scrolled back to read. And began to laugh at the expressions he had begun to use. Realizing, that those first paragraphs were not raw, gut-wrenching at all. They were full of humor and larking around, flirting, astonishment.

“On a sun-flooded day in May, diamonds glittering on a calm sea, with the tide so far out that a mere walk to the water’s edge would have exercised an Olympian Jack Brown tucked his little heartache away and decided to get the hell on with life. You win a few and lose a few in this life, but mom... (Good old mom!) had shared her little flat and the sunshine in her life with him long enough to heal at least some of the wounds. The scars would stop itching over time.

“I'm going to get a job mom... security office at a Holiday Camp. Just for the summer you know. See how it works out.”

Phyll was never one to show extraordinary emotion. But she felt it. The poor lad! Still her lad at 21 and would be at 71 if she lived that long. The poor lad. Should never have joined the Navy in the first place! Even being married to an Air force man for 40 years...gone through a war and a few “trouble spots” with him, Phyll had never taken into account that her “little lad” at 15 would have been sent into a “Peacekeeping Mission”. For all the military background, Phyll's brothers and even her cousins and for generations beyond had been Army, Colonels, Brigadiers, even an Air Commodore.....”

Jack came back damaged. Oh, not physically. Not at all physically.

Danny made a few corrections, still smiling at that meeting of the girl with long red hair and an attitude. The fact was far more interesting than any fiction and for moments he became entranced. Lost in an old world of 1971 when a girl he hardly knew... known for only a few days, bought a sleeping-bag and followed... just followed. Until she got dirty feet and complained that sleeping under a hawthorn hedge at night was a bit “not very nice”.

And that had been it. One night booked into a little guest house in Bristol. One night. And 23 years!

Danny wrote about how they had got to know each other 'on the fly'. Making a life as they went along.
“I don't like kids Jack.” He wrote. 'Hell, she had been married at 15 and walked out on a nasty marriage and a three year old son. She said she didn't care, but Jack knew she missed Ian like nothing on earth!'
“I'll do you a deal”. She said. Tina had a habit, she guessed, of falling pregnant almost immediately on penetration! “One child... and you can have him all for your own until he's old enough to communicate like an adult. Then he's mine for the rest...”

Jack said, or rather SAID in a stage whisper as if he had just scored match point at Wimbledon. “YES!” and struck the air with his fist.

True to her word Tina was pregnant in no time flat.

9.59 am. “Oh God Damn you! You bastard! Please Almighty... Please, please please. I can't hold on much more... I'm so tired Almighty. So tired.”

10.01 am David answered. “David? Can I talk to her? Is it Ok?”
“I think it's too late Dad. They say it might be an hour or two. She keeps waking a bit though. I'll put Jackie on.”
Jackie was quick to grab the handset. “I didn't know,” She said quietly. “I'll try... hang on. But if she's sleeping, you know I can't wake her Danny. You know that?”
“Just tell her I love her... Just get that into her head please. Just tell her I love her and that I do, I did, I will. It's me and her Jackie... just forever me and her. OK?”

“It's Danny.” Jackie gently propped Vera's head against the pillow. “Can you? Here you go sweetheart. I'll hold the phone close for you. He's here now. He's listening.”

Vera got to say those two words before she faded into oblivion.

~~ Mission ESCAPE OFFICE ~~

An extract from “Finding Nemo”. Where Marlin says,”Alright, we are excited. First day of school, here we go! We're ready to learn and get some knowledge!” And then again, “Just 5 more minutes, I don't want to go to school.”

Many kids look forward to going to school. They may not always enjoy every single part of the school day. But in general, they like spending time with their friends at school, learning new things and being challenged.

Some other kids just dread going to school though, always looking forward to the weekends when they could spend more time at home. For these kids, going to school may become so stressful that they have temper tantrums over going to school or complain of symptoms such as headaches, stomachaches, or chest pain. For some kids, there is an easily identifiable trigger for school refusal, such as being bullied, death in the family, or move to a new neighborhood. They even try everything to stay home, from sneaking off the school bus to pretending to be sick. Some cried all the way to school and screamed when the teacher took them by the hand and clung on to anything they could grab as the teacher dragged them away into the class. They get creeps after vacations, “School had begun...”

Similar is the case with grownups. Everyone tries to be a skiver sometime or the other in their work life.
Everyone has had days when they just don't feel like going to work. Whether that's because you really have an issue that requires you to stay home, wish you had a different career or celebrating a rainy day or just feel like playing video games or going for shopping all day, it doesn't really matter. You just need the perfect excuse to get you out of the office and back into bed. The most common reasons involve the office schedule infringing on their personal family time; a dislike of small-talk and social events, in general; and a genuine family or personal event scheduled at the same time.

We've all been there: it's a beautiful day and you can't bear the thought of going into work. So you call in with the lame-old excuse about feeling ill even though you know your boss doesn't buy it. Besides, "feeling ill" is at best only a short-term solution that won't win you any fans at the office.

Calling in sick when you aren't really? Running a little late? Did your friend show up with tickets to the game, just when you're supposed to be at work? Damn I wish I can make up a story persuasive enough to convince my boss to grant me a day off.

“I have a relative coming in from Delhi and I need to pick them up at the airport. Or better yet I have to fly home for one of my relative’s funeral.” The last one is good for 3 day up to a week or two, as per my company policy. A Strep throat or conjunctivitis can relieve you from office for a couple of days. Even Migraines and influenza are a great excuse because they come suddenly and they last a long time.
“I've got a flat tire or my car ran out of petrol.” Flat tires can come on quite unexpectedly and are something you have to take care of right away, so they are a great excuse for getting out of work.
“My front door came off the hinges.” If your door came off you can't lock your house and you can't just leave it open for criminals to access your precious, can you?
“I tripped and fell down the stairs.” Stairs are often super sneaky and trip up your feet when you're least expecting it. A tumble down the stairs and some bones that may or may not be broken are valid excuses for missing work.
“My carpool group forgot me.” Like a poor forgotten kid waiting for a school bus that never came, you got left behind this morning. While it might win you some sympathy from your boss for your patheticness, it won't excuse you from getting to work.
“A stray dog bit me.” If it's someone else's dog that's being mean, then you'll need to spend your day getting medical care, getting vaccinated and not coming into work.
“I sprained my back lifting something heavy.” Stuff is always going around being so darn heavy all the time, especially when you have to move it from one place to another. Anyone who's ever tried to carry a heavy box up several flights of stairs will sympathize with this plight.
“My pet is sick.” If your boss is an animal lover, play to his or her weaknesses. A sick dog, cat or pony makes the perfect excuse for staying home from work.
“I hit a dog on the way to work and had to drive the dog to the Vet.” If the Boss is a real dog lover, then it’s a perfectly acceptable reason for not coming in!
“I stayed up too late working and am too tired to come in.” This excuse not only gets you out of work today, but makes you look like a hard worker to boot.

I WISH reasons like “Personal Issues” were plausibly accepted by organization’s policy and you could use these excuses to whine your way out of work. And your manager empathically tells you, “Don't let work get in the way of your personal issues and insecurities. Go ahead, take a day off. Do let me know if I can be of any help. Take good care.”
“I didn't have anything to wear.” A wardrobe crisis can mean anything from literally not having anything to wear to just hating everything in your closet. You'll need the day off to go shopping to remedy the problem.
“I am having a bad hair day.” Who hasn't woken up with horrible hair and wished they could just stay home? Why can't you? Trying to dye your hair and have it come out an unexpected and office inappropriate color is a perfectly valid reason to stay home from work. Jokes at the expense of your wonky hair will only damage your delicate psyche.
“I don’t know why, but I feel fat.” Feel too bloated and gross to fit into your work clothes? Sounds like a good reason to stay home in your sweat pants instead.
“I have got pimples.” If your face looks like you're 13 again, you certainly won't be able to face clients or customers. Tell your boss you'll need a few days for it to clear up, and VOILA, she agrees.

Being a woman, I have often used this excuse: "I have really bad cramps." Now before you dismiss this one, think about it: Who can argue? It's such an embarrassing topic that nobody will ever challenge you. It's one of those things that men honestly have no clue about and women can sympathize with. Or "I have horrible diarrhea or I got food poisoning. “From bad Chinese food to steaks at Kobe’s, getting food poisoning is an unpleasant and unpredictable experience. Again, before you dismiss this one, remember that it's such an embarrassing topic. Nobody doubted my sincerity. Plus, it's simple. I didn't need an elaborate back story because no one wants to hear the details.

I wish I could use this trick, “Hi boss, I don’t feel like seeing your hideous face today. See you tomorrow.”
I am very well aware, that can earn me a lifetime of leaves from my employer. But maybe that’s not what I have in mind. So what I say is, “I am calling to inform you that I slipped in the bathroom. The floor was slippery after shower. It's totally believable that I fell and hurt myself. I have to go to the doctor first thing in the morning and I would come in right after my appointment.” The truth was, I was too lethargic to drag myself out of bed so I just went back to sleep. Because the chronic gravitational pull that keeps me on my bed is for today morning only. Tomorrow I would want to go work and save the world from those demonic files and statements that horrifyingly show up on your desktop. But today is the time to meditate. And meditate I shall. Deep under the multiple layers of my blankets; over that soft feathery throne called bed and explore the heavenly pleasures of unperturbed slumber. Alternatively I can also vegetate in front of that “Idiot-Box” and pick up tricks to diffuse nuclear weapons to save humanity from extinction. But for all that to work I need my fool of a boss to act rationally for once and believe my “not-so-original-but-legitimate” excuses to stay at home. I called back in about another two hours and said, "The doctor is late, stuck in Bangalore traffic. This is ridiculous. I'm really upset over this. I guess I can't come in today. "

Who can argue with these excuses? Some are pretty darn valid and some just plain harebrained. Some are ridiculous, over-the-top excuses and convenient scapegoats. But for sure these reasons are plausibly accepted by my Boss and I could use these excuses to whine my way out of work. And VOILA, she agrees and empathically tells, “Don't let work get in the way of your personal issues and insecurities. Go ahead, take a day off. Do let me know if I can be of any help. Take good care.”

Finally I had been excused my stay at home. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED...!!

These excuses are all free-of-charge but if you decide to borrow one please be kind enough to replace it with a good (or not so good) excuse of your own...

~~ Friendship, Love and Clemency...~~

He spent his idle time helping his mother run their family business. It was small cosmetic shop at Adenta. Adenta is a town in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana. It helped him forget the sour incident that almost sent him to the gallows. A betrayal from a close pal was like thrusting a spiky pointer through the soul. The beast took away the only thing he cherished most. The customers came as usual to buy few hair products and other stuff. His only interest was to make more sales. It gave him some inner flush akin to what Brenda gave him before he lost her to the fast life in London. The customers, mainly the female ones, to him were images in a mirror reflecting the same distorted refractions like the one gone before. He paid very little attention to them. They are erratic and heartbreakers. This notwithstanding there was a fussy customer he could hardly ignore. He was stunned by her looks as he served her. His hands hanged in the air unable to take the money from her.

Stephen was recovering from the shocks of Brenda’s betrayal so he kept a low profile. He was not ready for another twist in his already mangled life. He had met Brenda back on campus and they had a dreamy relation. They were the toast of their friends as they were a striking pair. A cord bound the duo together. Realities of life after school tore the cord into shreds. It was like digging a limitless void as things went haywire. Stephen was unemployed and all his job hunts yielded no dividend. However, fate smiled on them. Brenda got a two-year working abroad visa to the UK. They celebrated the good news with a night out and had a jolly time. The exciting news notwithstanding, there was a little hitch; Brenda had nowhere to lodge in the UK. Stephen phoned his bosom friend in London and pleaded with him to host his angel. The friend readily agreed to help. He saw Brenda off at the airport and waited until the BA flight vanished into the unknown.

Life in London is very different. His friend tried many times to seduce Brenda just as she arrived. When that failed, he frustrated her. He locked her out in the cold winter blizzards to freeze. He hid the grocery and denied her access to basic things in the house. The hassle was too much for Brenda. She lost her nerves and gave in to ease her frustration. Her idea was to have a brief fling with the pest to calm him down. Who knows what Stephen was doing in Ghana? He might be having fun with other ladies as she went through harrowing experience in the chill, she reflected. It was not to be; the brief fling became a routine. The vampire became so loving after he drew the first blood. He indulged her and showered her with delicate gifts. They were kinds of gifts carefully selected from flagships stores on Oxford Street. Stephen could only afford such exquisites gifts in his dreams. Brenda wizened. It was better to bask in a handy wealth than lingers on with a bloke hunting for non-existence job. She agreed to the Londoner’s marriage offer with a huge diamond ring and some huge ancestral inheritance, without blinking her eyes for once.
*************************************************************************************************
A month later Brenda changed vows with Stephen’s best buddy in London, a mailer reached Stephen. It was more of a confession...
It read, “Yes, I betrayed my best friend. I betrayed his trust and his faith in me. I did it knowingly and willingly. Even though I knew it is going to cause him pain and I know for sure that this is going to change my friendship with him. But still I did it anyway...I did it for my own selfish reason...I just wanted Brenda more than my best friend back… It upsets me a lot and makes me feel really miserable that this lust and love is taking my best friend away from me...He had been having these episodes for a while and I did nothing...I refuse to believe that Stephen is head over heels for Brenda and would rather believe in a denial than to face the cold truth.
One day, Stephen no longer could deny it cause I felt that his UK predator is no longer there with him and he had turned into another person...He must have felt so helpless then…He knew that he needed help before he gets any deeper and before he hurts himself or hurts someone else. The only way for him to get help is for him to betray Stephen, coz Brenda was too difficult to let go...
It hurts me the most when I saw him all worried at the airport because he refused to let go of Brenda away from him. This made Stephen uncooperative and he kind of turned violent...With pleading eyes, he had asked her "Why do you have to go? You don't think that I'm good enough for you, right?"
So with that, I betrayed my best friend for my own selfish reason of wanting her back. And till now, I still don't know if what I did was right or wrong...But sometimes in life, there are choices that you have to make but you don't want to...And this is one of the hardest choices, I have to make in my life. So I have to harden my heart and lie point blank in his face so that he will get help he needed…to forget Brenda and forgive me.”
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Imagine you have been friends with someone for 12 long years and have been together throughout the good and bad that life have to offer. Imagine the bubbly and outgoing boy that you thought you had known so well suddenly became a whole different person altogether. A person that you know wasn't him and there is a chance to get back the bubbly amazing fellow that you used to know. So can you understand now why he had to do it? Why he had to betray Stephen?

With tears brimming in his eyes, Stephen folded the letter and told himself , "No, I don't think you are crazy...You are just sick. And I don’t think I can forget you both ever… and since once I had loved Brenda and had trusted you… I forgive you”

The lady who turned Stephen’s head upside down after Brenda’ betrayal was a cute looking lady with a flowing hair and a nice shape to match. Her name was Susan. She was new in the area. The day she went to the shop, she was in a simple straight dress, which fitted her perfectly. She was a sort of a temptress; so irresistible. Stephen’s behavior the day he saw her was embarrassing. He could not control his emotions and flustered himself to on lookers. Susan was embarrassed as well. She dropped the money on a table, and hurriedly left the shop.

Stephen had been on the lookout for the temptress since the episode but she never turned up at the shop for months. He tarried but there was no sign of her. He volunteered to be at the shop more often and his mother was baffled. It was unusual of him. Lamentably, he was engrossed with Susan’s jelly looks he forgot to take her number. When all hope of seeing Susan was lost, she turned up at the shop one afternoon. She had not been well she told Stephen.

Stephen was so excited to see her. He told her he had looked for her everywhere under the sun. She said she was flattered. She visited the shop regularly thereafter. She was bored at home, she explained to him. He invited her to the movies one day and he was relieved when she accepted the invitation. Susan turned up in dazzling dress and he was stupefied at her looks. Joyously he welcomed her with a cuddle. He told her that he was impressed with her looks. At the movies in the film studios at Kanda, Stephen chose a familiar suite. It was a preference for Brenda. Stephen sat so closed to Susan and his thigh rubbed hers. The softness coming from her bare silky thigh was so soulful he lost focus. The film beamed on the screen but his mind was on the appeal from the one sitting next to him. The lights were dim. It created a perfect romantic atmosphere. He saw chunk portion of her thighs radiating forcefully through the dim. It was greasy and rewarding.

The heat was unbearable and he excused her. He went out to the bar and bought some popcorn and drinks. The lovebirds popped the corn and washed it down with the drink. Susan was in the mood and became flirty. She got closer to him and placed her head on his shoulder. Occasionally Stephen fed her with his corn. He offered her his drink as well and she sipped it through the straw. At a point instead of the popcorn, he offered her his lips. She grabbed them with hers and mouthed it with glee. It became obvious they were no longer watching the movie. The movie was a bait to lure the cod from its hideout. They engaged in flowery love games as they ignored Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s movie ‘Mr and Mrs Smith’ beaming on the screen. It became steamy and Stephen held the tip of her dress at the upper part. He looked at her face and said ‘Can I have a look’? She ignored him. He repeated his question. She nodded. He busied himself rubbing her faintness. It was breathtaking. He thought he would never love again nor taste of the bliss derived from cuddling a loved one. Was Susan real or an illusion just like Brenda? He contemplated.

Months ago, he had memorable burst with Brenda in the same room. She clanged to him and wept her heart out. She was sad that they were going to live apart, she said. She promised to remain dedicated and return to him in one piece. It was the last sweet words he heard from the cherished one. He did not hear from Brenda again after she became a prey to his predator friend in London. The home wrecker stopped calling him as well. Any time he tried calling the answering machine bellowed "The number you have dialed is incorrect please check the number and dial again. Please check the number and dial again."

Was Susan real or just a delusion like Brenda? He kept pondering. He was happy but at the same time, he was confused. He was scared. A strange sense of apprehension gripped him from within. He didn’t want to lose Susan at any cost…