The sun rushes up in hot smokes of red and green, gargling in my throat’s a new fire of thirst, tongue’s thuggish, bitter as a pheasant’s heart. Mouth agape, I climb in the forest, turning in circles, from waterless agony is no escape, to it is no end. I think of Zafar whom I poisoned, strange dreams I gave him, plus pain, yet even while dying he forgave, if I meet his ghost it may not be so kind, spirit of Zafar I’ll say, I too chose this death. The ache in my guts has a familiar edge, burnt in sharp blues and oranges, I know this beast that stalks within, it’s my old enemy hunger, gradually its shape clears, thirsty I’m plus so hungry I could eat anything, I tear grass, chew bark, berries, dig up roots plus mushy things and gnaw them all earthy. I’ve ripped the petals off flowers and munched them.
Starving hunter creeps on all fours across the forest floor, dry twigs avoid, make no sound, I have spotted food, a lizard sunning on a rock, its little legs pump its fat body up and down, it has plump cheeks, a fine and meaty tail, I find a stone, fling, thud, lizard’s off rock flying, I’ve only caught it in the ribs, it’s lying panting its mouth open, a dent in its side, mine now, but the lizard’s skittered away in damaged panic, me on it like Jara on a rabbit, it’s wriggling under my hand. How to kill it? I can feel its heart jump, lizard eye’s glaring, just bite its head off bloody, you were not made for roots, think like a tiger, let red lust close your eyes, unhinge your jaw prepare to kill.
“Don’t eat me,” cries the lizard, “I’ll tell you something most important.”
“Sorry, I am too hungry to spare your life.”
“I won’t taste good. If you think datura’s bad wait till you taste my venoms, boy you will wish you’d never been born.”
“Already I wish that.”
“Nothing it’s compared to the wishing you’ll do if you eat me,” says the creature with a sad look in its eye, like it’s lost hope of saving itself.
“Go then,” I say, releasing it. “I am sorry I hurt you.”
“A broken rib may mend,” says the lizard, “but your nature you can never change. You are human, if you were an animal you would have eaten me.”
Night comes, no food nor water have I found, moon’s thinner as if it too is starving, it’s a night of still air in which a chouette is calling, hoo hoo, I rest my cheek against the hairy bark of a tree and hear its slow thoughts, climb, hand over hand, into the branches and sit there, Animal alone in his kingdom. Grief comes to me, all my rage and fear empty in dry coughing sobs. I call to my fellow creatures, “Brothers and sisters, the lizard’s wrong, I am one of you, come to live with you. Show yourselves.” None come, but there’s a rustling, it’s the lizard whose life I spared, she says, “Hey Animal, soon you’ll be a shrivelled old sack, I will creep into your dry carcase and lay my eggs around your heart.”
The voice takes you where it wants, not where you want to go. It tells you there is no deceiving, what you see you shall see, you have chosen. The voice tells me things I couldn’t know, shows me stuff I don’t want to see. If I could open a window and run I would but no escape there’s, the window opens inward, to the visions and uncapturable beauty. The trees are tusked in Siva, I vomit rainbows, when I dung I make the earth. The voice inside me says, to enter a temple you must bring only yourself, this is why, Animal it’s right that you should starve.
“Where shall I go, where shall I look?”
The voice inside me says, whichever way you turn, this is the way.
A ball of fire is rising between my eyes, whose twin’s spitting flame in my gut, it’s the heat of coming death, voices in my head are chattering, arguing, beyond is that other voice, which sounds deep inside, yet seems to come from outside and everywhere. I am climbing through a forest which grows greener the higher I go. Of water is no sign yet I sense it all around, I can hear the trees suckling through greedy tubes plus gurglings in the guts of unseen creatures. Why do they avoid me? “Come out,” I cry. “Come out and tell me, am I a man?”
“WHAT IS A MAN?” The voice roars right in my ear like a thunderclap, it flattens me. Torn in pieces I’m, parts of me break off and float away. My misty thoughts go spinning and become the moon. The glare in my eye’s my eye turning into the sun, my breath’s a hot wind, riding it is a tiny god drunk with his own power whose body is covered with sores, from my middle parts come gusts of air, out of my head slides the universe.
“Who are you?” I’ve asked, who’s lying head pressed to the earth hearing a million things, stamping of ants, worms chewing grit, millipede legs whirring like drums in a parade, my stomach heaves, up comes nothing.
Now if I open my eyes there are trees and dry grasses and thirsty plants and sun, but if I close my eyes creatures of all shapes and colours are floating and drifting. The dream animals come near, one by one they approach, they don’t look friendly, but even before my open eyes the world is changing, never till now have I seen trees clothed in feathers, why is grass growing from the backs of my hands? Under my four feet as I walk the earth comes into being. I do not know which way to go, do not need to know, for by turning my head from side to side the seven directions come into existence and whichever way I turn it is the way and I walk into it.
“Fuck you then!” I shout, “I’ll live alone!”
Now all of this happens in the first hour of the third day, I mean the first hour of daylight, while I’m yelling like this the sun is trying to rise. After this I’ve lost every trace of time, voices and creatures are gone, all I remember is being alone, naked, looking for water in that burning jungle. Weak I’m, hardly can I drag myself forward. “Stop moving and you’ll die,” drawls a new voice in my head, like it doesn’t give a fuck. Hard it’s to keep moving, one moment the world’s on fire, the next I’ve begun shivering, frozen in the blaze of sun.
“Not the world, it’s you who’re burning,” this voice informs me. Then, as the world spins in a wreck of colours and shapes, they’ve all joined in, all my voices, old, familiar and new, in a chorus full of hate.
your torment never can be eased
for your soul it’s that’s diseased
tu n’est pas animal mais bête
your crimes we never shall forget
and all the friends that you betrayed
will come to curse your sorry shade
A man and a woman dressed in Khaufpuri fashion appear among the trees, they approach me, smile kindly and say, “Poor child, you have had a horrible life. Curse the day that Kampani left us dead in the road drowned in our own blood, we are your parents, we have come to take you home.”
I find Nisha sitting on a rock weeping and she says, “Animal, I have been looking for you all over, it’s you I love after all not Zafar dead and gone, you shall have your desire for it’s mine too, so do whatever you want, go ahead Animal, fuck me, stick your big cock in me.”
Elli comes to me and says, “Animal climb up in one of these trees and I will undress so you can see my cunt and watch me touch myself and when you come down I’ll straighten your back and make you into a human.”
Farouq appears before me bringing a suit and tie, says he, “I’m sorry for all the bad things I did mate next year I’ll lie down flat on the hot coals so you can walk over my body and save your four paws from burning.”