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COMPENDIUM OF SUPERNATURAL ENTITIES FOUND IN THE GOVERNMENT GIRLS HIGHER SECONDARY SCHOOL
Dark Fantasy Horror
BY KUZHALI MANICKAVEL

Blurb

COMPENDIUM OF SUPERNATURAL ENTITIES FOUND IN THE GOVERNMENT GIRLS HIGHER SECONDARY SCHOOL
Dark Fantasy Horror
BY KUZHALI MANICKAVEL

Editor’s Note: Be aware, this excerpt may be too descriptive for some sensitive readers.

Excerpt

There were various explanations as to why this particular town was the way it was. Some believed it was the centre of all the magnetic force in the world; that’s what made it so heady, intense, and unforgiving. Others said it was the sheer number of pilgrims coming to pray at the big temple that gave the town its power. So many people, praying so hard in the same place—it was bound to have some effect. Still others said it was the weight of being so old, of being continuously inhabited for so long. Millions of people eating, drinking, loving, dying all in this one town created a great tangle of energies. The more practical explanation was that there were places like this all over the world; places where the people were singular and the weather extreme, places that were unforgettable even though there was nothing memorable about them. This town was a place you either loved or hated. There was never a middle ground.

The town attracted con men, gangsters, smugglers, the silently pious, saints on bicycles, refugees, holy women, and scientists. Families that had been here for generations slowly decayed and died. Young men and women were encouraged to leave if they could, to make a life in a city, or in some other small town. But those who were born and raised here rarely left. Mysterious luxury cars sped through the roads in the middle of the night, while numerous small, hot theatres played English soft porn movies. The native vegetables were bitter gourd, spinach, lady’s fingers, snake gourd, and millets. You could buy biriyani, brain fry, and country liquor under bridges, and you could get lost in the tiny bus stand. It was not strange to see dead bodies lying for hours on the railway tracks or at bus stops, waiting to be picked up. Small, skinny children with slicked black hair went to schools that accepted public donations of sugar, rice, and cloth. The coconut water was salty, the vegetables small and withered, and the milk was watery. This was a place you drove through with the windows up. It was easy to get swindled here, even if you had lived here all your life.

This was a town where monkeys carried away abandoned puppies and birds flew straight into homes. Thunderclouds circled the skies but never brought any rain. This was a town where penny frogs abounded all year round. They were supposed to only come out during the monsoons, but here, Thamarai found them all the time, smeared into the road or baked by the scorching sun into tiny hard corpses. You could not help stepping on the live ones or riding over them with your cycle. Thamarai used to catch them and cup them in her hands, looking at their dark eyes and tiny feet. Once she had picked one up to show off at school and the girls had backed away from her in utter disgust. Thamarai stopped picking up frogs after that.

She had also seen small turtles emerge during the monsoons, even though turtles were not supposed to live in this region at all. Near her house, a dust devil would snap up and swirl every day, in the exact same place, during the summer. Fireflies would appear in the same tree every night. There was the woman at the shop who was friendly and chatty, but whom apparently no one else had ever seen. Thamarai soon became used to all of it. Birds flew, the sun set, and people lived and died. If something happened, it happened. There was no other way to look at it.

***

Two years later, Thamarai was still living in the same town. She had become more like the other girls now; she had lost weight, and now stooped when she walked. She had done badly in her 9^th exams and slightly better in her 10^th. Strange happenings continued to haunt her, the most notable being a disembodied voice she kept hearing in the bathroom in the early mornings. She had also found the carcass of something in the backyard, which looked exactly like a tiny dragon. As always, she tried to take these things in stride. She would not talk to the voice in the bathroom, but she did keep the tiny dragon carcass.

One morning, during the first week of 11^th standard, Thamarai cycled to maths tuition, savouring the crisp air. She could smell woodsmoke, incense, and the acridness of burning plastic. Gravel crunched and popped under her tires. The world looked so sharp and gorgeous that she could feel it slice through her every time she moved. Something hurt, but that same something was also filling her with an anticipation of painfully bright possibilities. She had seen it in the small, dirty window above the sink, in the dapples of sunlight sliding over and under the dark green leaves of a mango tree, and in the unripe mangoes that hid in its shadows. She had scalded her tongue on her morning cup of Horlicks and still, everything shimmered and winked.

Maybe someone was going to die today. Or something terrible was going to happen to her. Or maybe she was going to get her period. Unbearably beautiful mornings sometimes happened when she was going to get her period.

About Author Kuzhali Manickavel…

Links to Kuzhali ‘s websites, blogs, books, #ad, etc.:

Amazon: https://link.amazon/B091XmfPY

Website: www.kuzhalimanickavel.com