“And this time you will tell us the truth, the absolute truth, nothing but the truth.” He paused and added emphatically, “No stories.”
I stared listlessly at his nose. It looked like a paper boat which we as children used to make with our hands and float it down a tub of water and delight at its steady mild bounce until in over-excitement one of us pushed the tub or poked at its side rim and the paper boat would overturn and quite some water would fill up its sideways-turned bottom. A dripping soggy plaything in our hands, we would run to some older member of the family to seek redress for a law of physics gone wrong for us, and then finally squeezing out water from the sticky wet paper, throw the spoilt boat away.
I now wondered if the paper boat on his face contained water in it that could be squeezed out and then thrown away. I tilted my head to one side lower than its usual position and tried to look into his nostrils to spot a flowing trail of water made to swing by the push of my little cousin at the rim of the red plastic tub. I began imagining how he would look without the boat at the centre of his face.
“Out with the truth. Now!” A metallic voice broke into my mental drawing class of a face without a nose. “We are not interested in make-believe stories.”
I cleared my throat. “Make-believe stories are the only form of reality I know. I speak the truth that they contain.”
They looked at each other upon hearing this. One of them made a gnawing sound with his teeth and seemed ready to pounce on me. A second one widened his eyes as large as he could. The other two moved their tongues elaborately inside their mouths, giving rise to odd shapes first in one cheek and then in the other, above their upper lips and then below their lower lips.
The room was a little dark for my eyesight. I waited for them to utter their next rehearsed sentence. I felt a little drowsy too. Something seemed to be touching my heels. I fidgeted and thought of bending down to see what it was.
“Do not move!”
I immediately stopped but said, “I think there is something under my chair…”
“What!” The four of them leapt up. “He is dangerous! He is equipped with deadly killer weapons! Even as a captive he is a threat to the lives of others!” As they pushed one another in their bid to escape from the interrogation chamber I last heard one of them call out to someone, “Dr Simon! What are you still waiting for? How many more evidences do you need to pronounce a judgement on his mental state?”
I can see a road ahead of me, a road shaded by giant trees on either side forming arches over it along the centre. I walk along from below the arches. After some time the road ends and so do the line of trees. I walk till the end of the road, pause there for a while, wait for the road to extend before my eyes and once when I can see my footsteps before me on the road created anew every day, I begin walking again.
These are my footsteps that remind me that I have been on that road before.
I match today’s steps with those of yesterday. I put my feet exactly at the angle and in the direction in which I had done so yesterday. It feels good to re-walk on a road walked before, yet because it is a forgotten journey, hence I do it with renewed interest every day. My memory plays games with me. I see a large stone by the side and think if I saw it yesterday. But because I know that I must have seen it yesterday, so I tell myself from before I come to that spot that there is a big stone which I do not remember seeing but I know I must have seen it.
On the road I run into a spider’s web every day. I know it must be at the same spot because it is around the same low branch of an old tree where every day my head brushes against a couple of wild black mushrooms looking mysterious and homely at the same time that I see it. It looks gorgeous. Exceptionally spread out and intricate it reflects all the seven colours of the sun on different parts of it. Its silky thread unfolds in a series of designs, widening and enlarging as it goes away from the centre. The tiny squares towards the centre blind me as I focus on them. The lines get blurred. I have to rub my eyes to keep my sight pointed on some of the miniscule squares. On most days I can see the spider among them. It sits and waits, patiently, without the slightest movement. Its web ready, all it has to do now is to bide its time and expect the inevitable. An unsuspecting fly, a short line of stray termites, a migrant family of millipedes, one or the other will swarm in, not realising that the first time it encounters the thread much distant from the centre where the unseen host is at rest, is the last time it experiences freedom and life. That it is not a loose thread innocently left hanging from a branch by some other insect which has deserted the area and moved on is what the prey understands at the same time that it understands that it has become a prey. Its brief future as a prey had been writ large before it, visible to the spider and to any onlooker, and a collective memory for millions of such now-dead insects caught as preys the only time that they were so, yet the insect that is caught now does not know what it must have known as inherited memory.
I admire the spider’s work of art with childlike curiosity. As I stand before it and watch it with devoted curiosity I can feel some of its threads unfasten themselves from the web there and enter my heart and pull at the strings inside. I can hear the violin playing as some of the threads from the spider’s web tie themselves up with the loose strings inside my heart and create a symphony. I stand and tap my foot as the music rises in volume. I see the entire web unhinge itself from the branch of the tree and swoop down on my head, all its threads sticking to my head and face like a raw egg split open with the decisive hit of an experienced chef. As the white and the yolk vie with one another to crawl out on a sizzling pan atop a stove, so also all the threads, the fresh ones wet with saliva and the older ones dry and cold, jostle to find their preferred place to rest on my hair, around my earlobes, over my eyebrows. I struggle to untangle myself which only makes it worse.
“Is it a fact that the girl had approached you looking for help?”
“She had approached me in order to let me know her difficulties.”
“Did you help her?”
“She hadn’t asked for any help.”
“That’s a wrong attitude! When a student shares her troubles with her professor it is evident that she is looking for help.”
“It wasn’t evident to me from her manner.”
“There are many among us who had never found her behaviour to be wanting. In fact she is impeccable in her sense of courtesy.”
I drew invisible lines on the floor with the toe of my shoes and said nothing.
This afternoon the web is looking particularly attractive. The golden rays of the sun have got caught in it. From one thread to another the light is passing through and spreading its golden hue. The entire web is glittering and its creator, the proud owner of the work of art, is sitting inside it, nested comfortably. I raise my finger and gently touch the outermost end of one of the sides of the web. My finger gives rise to a brief and almost-imperceptible wave. I step closer to it and try to see if there is any small insect trapped inside it. My eyes catch none. The spider sits alone, waiting.
I nudge at one of the mushrooms. Its soft rubbery texture absorbs my push, appears to be dented but as soon as I take my fingers off, it goes back to its usual look and the stable surface of the umbrella top is restored. I look in front of me. The road today is taking longer than usual to unfold. I keep waiting for it.
At last it does. Like a cascade let loose the road opens up in front of me. I am about to continue my walk when I notice that my footprints are missing. I wonder how to proceed if I cannot match my steps today with those of yesterday. I stand hesitant, wondering what to do. It is then that footsteps start coming towards me from the opposite side from the end of the road just flung open before me.
I see two of the four men approaching. They stop when they reach the place where I am.
With a voice that sounds like sour cheese one of them says, “So, Professor, do you admit that you functioned with malevolent intent whenever you interacted with the student in question?”
“I am a good actor. I don’t show my intent to others.”
They exchange glances and then the second of them says, “On several occasions you attempted to demoralise her, denigrate her. Do you admit to your unethical conduct?”
“Quite the contrary. She had called me a bad story-teller.”
“Why did you tell her a story in the first place? You are supposed to be teaching her the academic discipline, not telling her stories. Your appointment does not call upon you to tell stories. By telling her stories you confused her, made her lose focus, wasted her time, and ultimately when she had to submit her assignment she was left with no option but to take resort to questionable means which, by the way, were subject to enquiry by an independent disciplinary body of the university, and not meant to be labelled by you as ‘dissertation not fit for evaluation. Grossly sub-standard and almost entirely plagiarised from multiple sources.’ Who gave you this authority to pronounce a value judgement?” His eyes bulge out in condemnation of my conduct.
“I am an evaluator. Without a value position there can be no judgement, gentlemen!”
They raise their eyebrows and look hard at me. “Since you think you are not a bad story-teller, so kindly venture to share your reputed story with us. The famous one that you told her.” His provocative tone bounces on the newly-opened road beneath his feet. I stare at the stones and gravels down there.
They nudge one another and say, “Come on! Begin! We are waiting to be enlightened by your story.”
“But I didn’t tell her a story. I told her the truth.”
“Since you are being tried now, so stop pretending that you can judge yourself. Let us do that judging. Begin!” His roar thumps down on the road and lies bruised there from the fall.
“Okay, so I told her that one day I’ll show her a captor who is more helpless than the captives. He lies trapped forever so that he can trap his prey. One day he wishes to change his life. On a day when the breeze is especially maddening and the first blossoms of spring have started appearing the unhappy captor decides to free himself. So he walks out of his web and posts himself just outside it hoping to convince a passer-by to take up his erstwhile role of the captor. He begs every living creature seen around to become the captor so that he can feign ignorance and enter the web and get caught and experience what it is to be trapped by someone else. Now as he…”
“That’s enough! Is this how you teach your courses?”
“Well, yes…”
“No wonder she was forced to plagiarise! Alex, make a note of that point. It will be useful for us.”
At this, feeling enraged by their idiocy I shout out, “Where are my footprints on that road there behind you?”
They stop all work and look at me as earthworms which pause when they sense the vibration of the ground adjacent to them.
“He’s completely insane! Call Dr Simon!”
I want to hit them. Moving closer to the branch of the tree I rip off one of the mushrooms and holding it like a sword attempt to drive it into their bellies.
An unceasing stream of insects and flies start crawling out of the hole left open by the mushroom that I have grabbed. As a martial man marches towards me with a handcuff in his hand I catch a glimpse of the long line moving dangerously close to the web.
Shrutidhora P Mohor (born 1979) is an author from India writing literary fiction.
She has been listed in several international writing competitions like Bristol Short Story Prize 2022, the 20th Bath Flash Fiction Award, the George Floyd Short Story Competition 2022, the 16th Strands International Flash Fiction Competition, the Retreat West monthly micro competition April, September, and October 2022, the Retreat West quarterly themed competition March 2022.
Her writings have been published by oranges journal July 2022, Fiery Scribe Review Magazine April and August 2022, National Flash Fiction Day Flash Flood June 2022, Ayaskala February 2022, Friday Flash Fiction September 2022, Courageous Creatives anthology September 2022, Spiritus Mundi Review September-October 2022, Contemporary Jo October 2022, Erato Magazine November 2022, Worm Moon Archive November 2022, Flash Fiction Magazine November 2022, Vestal Review issue 61 December 2022; (nominated for this flash fiction piece to Best Micro fictions 2023), The Violet Hour Magazine (forthcoming in December 2022), The Lovers Literary Journal (forthcoming), Bullshit Lit (forthcoming, September 2023).