One AMONG MANY

Flash Fiction

At the corner of the ceiling in his chamber, there hung a dilemma.

By the time he discovered it, fat Mr. Victor was already tubby to fix it.

He had a whole globe stuffed in his paunch, so much so that the button holes along his covered shirt placket barely managed particularly to hold on to those four buttons grappling vertical buttonholes running through his torso. Their unsuccessful effort unwillingly allowed his protruding core peep.  There was slim chance of him streamlining his trunk.

The laptop in front of him blinked on each tab pressed and changes in URLs. A cup of piping hot black coffee was inviting. He paid little heed to the bitterness of it. In another few minutes the coffee mug turned ice-cold to the air-conditioning. He didn’t bother.

He kept scrolling through the screen and simultaneously read through his favourite business magazines imagining himself in one of the pages someday, apart from dully signing the monthly audits.

The monotony persisted apart from that what kept his mind and eye oscillating from ceiling to desk and back to the ceiling.

His eyes glued to that what swung along the faux plafond, could barely notice me standing on the right to where his chamber’s entry door was.

“You’re lost Victor!” astounded over my voice, he rolled his chair a little away from his desk. Took his eyes off the confined space. Taking support of the armrest, he stood erect. While lifting himself with heave, he might have bent a bit forward but to me his motion was microscopic.

“I was waiting for you.” His laugh lines diminished faster than he blinked.

“Really? I presume you have some other business up there.” I took note of a permissible cobweb.

“That’s bothering you, eh? Since when?” I chuckled. He definitely wasn’t arachnophobic. Not when I last saw him.

“Your coffee’s cold. May I order two latte?” He turned reluctant to my urge.

“Can you kill the spider and clean the web?” it sounded like a plea.

“You are speaking to me Victor. I don’t kill, neither do I clean a kill.” I couldn’t be any more blatant to his insane demand.

He grew anxious; “You don’t kill a mosquito sucking the life out of you?”

“No, I just shoo them away.”

“What piece on earth are you?” Potbellied Victor grew tensed.

“They want food Victor. They suck to live. Like you. Like me. They eat and eat and eat until they die one day. They die anyway Victor.  Why kill?”

In few moths the web grew from ignorable to abominable. Overlooking his tummy, paunchy Victor vacated his webbed thought over a cuppa, until a vacuum sucked it all.

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_{Copyrights Reserved Swati Basu Das}