It has been a hectic week. As usual, I have left my university essay for the last week, after wasting a month in the hope that the essay would just disappear. I've now learned that procrastination is not something that can be banished after 12 years of school and four years of university — it just clings onto you like a soaking wet t-shirt. I now have three days to write a 20-page essay that I have not yet started. Therefore, instead of spilling out my thoughts on society, I wrote out the beginning of a short story that I have been working on. It's titled Outcast.

Outcast

I couldn't do it. The darkness penetrated my headlights as the rain whipped the windscreen, threatening to shatter my only shield: Hope eroding into nothingness. Again and again.  Vertigo. I envisaged the barrage of rain merging with my anguish, feeding it as my fingers trembled over the steel-cold trigger. I couldn't do it.

"TURN RIGHT!" my Mercedes screamed at me.

Below, a torrent raged on either side of the bridge. I looked into the review mirror; my drug-varnished eyes were swollen from the incessant crying. Pause. A blankness consumed all thought as I spun the steering wheel to the right, driving bonnet first into the river.

I sat calmly as water rushed into the car and gradually asphyxiated me. Nothing.

I held the metal tube to my head and pulled the trigger. Nothing.

I felt the bullet embed itself snugly in my cerebrum while I watched everything turn red. Nothing.

I waited for a while, then swam out, dried myself and walked back to the shed; ticking off "be empathetic" on my mental to-do list as I walked.

It was the usual Monday morning:

"What's on TV?" I asked ritually, knowing already that there was nothing that I would like. I blinked at the screen: reality show…soapie…reality show…reality show….soapie…movie…Hmmm…I lodged myself into the couch; it was going to be a long day.

"Why do you keep asking me that?" Jack snapped, six point five seconds too late. It was his morning tantrum, a vice that, as much as he tried, he could not rectify. I didn't mind it much, but, to him, it seemed to be the Great Wall of China between him and his ultimate goal of godhead. He blamed it on his 16-hour memory — medically, it did not exist but was something that his parents had told him as a kid and that he had continued to believe religiously. Of course I never corrected him. I found it entertaining watching him remembering to forget. 

If Jack had to describe his life he would compare it to that ancient game of snakes and ladders:  every day he progressed up the board and every morning he landed on a snake and was sent back home. Jack was not the embodiment of righteousness, but he tried, and his sins were forgiven away due to the innate good of his actions. Except in the mornings, when he remembered that he didn't remember and cursed away all traces of his chant-induced tranquil demeanour.

"WHERE ARE MY F***ING SOCKS?"

Of course, it was never a surprise when they went missing; Weasel tended to be quite explicit when he stole things. He didn't know how to steal. Gerald had attempted teaching it to him, but Weasel was an absolute klutz — an intelligent idiot whose only hope of survival was Jack's socks.  He was the type of person that one could never stay angry with. He had the constant look of a puppy chewing on inflated water boots and an inherent drive to please people. It made me want to kick him and chase him out into the cold just to watch him whimper. I was waiting for the right day. Monday was never the right day.

"F***ING HELL, WHERE IS WEASEL?!"

I returned to the TV screen, wondering whether I should remind him of his quest for spiritual fulfillment before he went too far. I hated the responsibility of making such decisions. In truth I didn't actually care about what people did or how they did it; the concept of good had become subjective, and not even I had the power to entrench it in a single-sentence definition.

Hardly anyone listened to that voice of reason at the back of their heads any more. They all needed direct responses: "signs." It was such an inconvenience. Even when I did provide them with hints, they brushed it aside as mere coincidences. People had forgotten how to freefallingly believe; they had to see and feel in scientific jargon before doing anything. My existence had equated to that of the dinosaurs who had aimlessly roamed themselves into extinction.

I heard Jack stampede down the stairs, his clenched fists punching the railings as his morning tirade bottled itself in his throat, waiting to explode. I decided to intervene before he entered the room: "Probably stoned in the middle of nowhere. Would you like a cup of coffee?" It was my voice of masked reason.

Tharuna Devchand