Thursday, March 12, 2009

Rear Window

The crescent moon hides more than it reveals. Above the glistening arc lies a veil of secrecy. The arc stretched one corner of his eye to the other as he peered at it through the telescope. As promised, the last of the month had brought with it clear skies. It was balancing the books, making up for the obfuscations that cloud covers brought, often hiding the source of lightning as it struck from up above.

A chance encounter had got him invited to this party. His offer of help to shift a sofa two flights up in a building across him had landed him a bottle of beer in his hand and five introductions as he sifted through the kitschy music blaring out of a refurbished CD player. It was a world away from his plush penthouse just across the road, and he wondered again why he was there. It wasn’t his scene, it wasn’t, he guiltily thought, in his class. But the novelty of it all had been too much to resist, as was the faux-urbane charm of the couple he was helping. Why, they were also into astronomy, those geeks.

Bored with the luminescence of the moon, he drifted across the sky identifying the few constellations he could name. Just then, a drunk reveler stumbled into him pushing his elbow and shaking the telescope. He spent some time wiping the spilt beer of his coat and decided to assess the displacement of the fine-tuned instrument. His eyes met a strange sight at the other end of that lens. A building that looked familiar. His own. A terrace that he recognized. His own. Two figures clad in black climbing down the pipes from that terrace with contents of a broken safe. His own. A sickening feeling overwhelmed him as the CIO of a Fortune 500 company stared at his company secrets going down the drain, literally. Beware of strangers bearing gifts of free beer!

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Where do u get these ideas from?:)

Parth said...

@Anonymous: That's a really tough question to answer :)

Pallavi said...

Parth- I also had the same question..:)..I also have a suggestion if you would consider..this orange text is a little hard to read...

Parth said...

@Pallavi: Thanks for the feedback. Color Altered. I just like a different feel to fiction/poetry I write. I guess poetries are easier to read since they are smaller and the large amounts of text in fiction make it harder. Hope this works better.

Sneha said...

Interesting! :-)
Welcome back to blog-land, Parth! Good to hear from you.

Parth said...

@Sneha: Thanks. Is this a weird short story? Everyone thinks the write-up is interesting :)

Sneha said...

In no way would I call it weird. It's just... interesting!

Anonymous said...

Loved this! The first paragraph is replete with subtle hints - took me a second reading to appreciate it completely. This is like a cryptic crossword clue that taunts you until you read the answer, and when you read the cryptic again, it all fits so well.

Parth said...

@Sneha: Ok :)

@Niranjan: Thanks, especially for reading through the attempt so carefully. Glad you liked it.

Ankit said...

I cannot help but commenting this. Your last line reminded of Yes Minister. Although not entirely apt, I liked the fact that it rushed in so efficiently,

Timeo danaos et dona ferentes

:)
Nice post!

Parth said...

@Ankit: You a 'Yes Minister' fan too? On hindsight, the line would have 'read' better if it were a paragraph by itself. Oh well. At least I got someone to quote Virgil on my blog this way :)

neel said...

O Henry meetes Greene ha? fantabulous i say!! :)

Parth said...

@Neel: Its a masaledar mix of O'Henry and Greene :)

frissko said...

I liked it. But do you think it'd have been better if you had stopped with the second 'His own'. (without the CIO and Fortune 500 and the warning, which i think the reader should be able to figure out on his own)?

Parth said...

@Frissko: Point noted.