Handcuffed

The shrillness of the pertaining atmosphere and the high notes of the birds were a clear demonstration of an after-happening. The way trees swinged and performed a simple harmonic motion emphasised that the sun is also a star. Sun rays exhibited a different pattern. Much more than that, the moonlight impacted differently. After the crucial and hectic eclipses back to back the previous seasons, it all demonstrated the restoration of the old normal. From bag-carrying students to bag-selling men, everyone was on a pretence mode to normalcy. But at the end of everything, everything was undefined since all of it was above all, A Pretence!

People said that the apocalypse had gone off to camp but that was only a partial truth. The three triangles of unity had united. The lunar eclipses were no more a pressure. No more dying of camels. Passers by heard Icama say there would be no more shadowing of the place into darkness now that Sacaro, Birata and him had united and moreover, the three triangles had united. The town of Shimpel had been facing seven hectic and destructive lunar eclipses since the previous years. Eclipses longer than the longest, darker than the darkest and terrible than the most terrible. Cent camels in minimum, died every time the shadowing occured. On an estimation, two times cent children fell ill a day before the eclipse occurred. The Green Revolution was turned down a week before the event. In simplified words, a lunar eclipse meant 'destruction' for the people. But now the people said the apocalypse had ended and yes, that was true but as mentioned earlier, partly.

The three mystic triangles of Shimpel belonging to Icama, Sacaro and Birata respectively were isolated and the moment this happened, the time period of 'destruction' set on. Those triangles stood for unity when addressed as one. With these three triangles, the town of Shimpel too was divided into three sections. It was believed that the three isolated in search of the mightiest which in turn, also isolated the three sections of people. An Icama led party wasn't supposed to stay in any contact with the other two and the same was applicable to the other two as well. The symbol of unity turned into the symbol of envy right after the splits. The 'Centre of Unity' (the location where the triangles were combinely kept with their sharp vertices pecking the other two) lay depressed in loneliness. The three owners of the three three-sided mysteries were never seen back in Shimpel after the drift leaving the miserable town even more miserable and the helpless people even more helpless. No house was cheerful ever since and more precisely, no house was a home anymore.

But the apocalypse had finally happened. Nobody got the acquaintance of this fact until someday, somebody ran down the streets shouting- "The triangles are back at the Centre of Unity. The three united!" Two days later, Sacaro, Icama and Birata hugged each other in front of the entire Shimpel. The people of Shimpel got united too. The last lunar eclipse occured after the union and that was not destructive at all.Different types of people were engaged in their own different tasks. Meanwhile, the three mysterious guys were on in their own lives.

The environment seemed numb while I was passing by the windmills. I was walking while I saw Birata sitting on the grasses near one of the technology. He beckoned a few aves while locking the key of certainty of nobody being around him. Within a few minutes, rumours of a solar eclipse started surfacing. There wasn't any problematic issue in that because it wasn't a lunar one and the revelation had already happened. Everybody was pretending to be not bothering nobody. 

One hour later, when I came back to the windmills, Birata couldn't be caught in my sight. I was becoming more and more certain of the uncertainty of the apocalypse. I thought to look for the other two but there were no where to be seen. Sacaro had always been the centre of fascination for many. The way he walked gave a feel of magic. But, no! Magic was miracle. 

 The amount of dreadfulness the night before the eclipse contained was comparable but the exhibition was variable. Many people felt touches of pyretic disorders the night before the eclipse. No camels were found finding a route to the unknown world but certainly, the home-zoned animals were. Every species was convincing the members of its species that no destruction can occur again. Aves raised their notes and tensed the entire population. Everybody was left with just one question- Now that the triangles had united, can it happen again? The roaring yet silent night was an indication of an upcoming tragedy. The atheists united with the devotees and prayed for the restoration of peace and not happening of the to-happen-event. Shimpel wanted to place a big question mark before the three mystics but the three were out of sight. 

The next morning was a dark night. Well about the three, people got notified something. Icama was out of the eclipsed zone, Sacaro was soundly asleep on pills and Birata was a part of the scene exclusively since he was nowhere to be found. There was no answer to the event which made the question unanswerable- Why didn't the unity of triangles help? The notification of course didn't help. The wrong wasn't right and the right had to be wrong to prove the existence of the current scenario. Nobody had a free will to keep breathing on forever but certainly had for death. The ratio of survival to death was 1:2 in all the situations and that was purely practical. Keeping the ratio well assorted in mind, I stepped out to get an answer. 

The day was void and undefined. The lunar eclipse never made a night darker than the day with this solar eclipse. All the doors in the town were shut. You couldn't knock, not because you literally couldn't but because you wouldn't be answered. The dying animals were left dying with nobody grieving around for their death. The numbness of the town was true paralysis. I was a dot in the large plane of a dark paper. Truth- this was all that I desired. What brought us this suffering if not the isolation of the triangles, was the only question wandering about in the field of my brain. With every step I took, the atmosphere became more intense and horrible. People hope for a new day after a dreadly night but nobody ever wonders what if a day never happened. There was nothing that we could wait for, that day. 

Putting the depth of the aura aside, and keeping the depth of the question I had in my mind, I kept taking steps until I knocked the entry of Sacaro. Knock Knock. Nobody answered. Knock knock two. Nobody answered. Knock Knock three. Nobody answered. I tried to enforce my entry via the door but the door despite being wooden deserved the rank of steel. I stepped towards the windows and coming upto my expectations, they didn't allow me an entry too. Nothing crossed my mind then so I crossed my hands towards a pebble and enforced its entry through the window. The pebble travelled with a good acceleration despite the opposing air resistance trying its best. When everything gave a green light, I broke the glass and jumped in. 

The mystic Sacaro was there. Yes. Lying asleep unaware of everything. I shook him but he didn't respond. I knew what to do next. There were some pills lying near a glass. He might have taken them. He was old but while sleeping, his little left youthfulness was being portrayed. I pulled out his drawers but they were empty. I was taken aback but I didn't act that way. I walked in the other rooms. Luckily, the house was small but I had this thing in my heart that the exploration expedition wouldn't be completed there even if someone spent their lifetime in that. No denial that it was obvious why he was mystic. Three bedrooms. One kitchen. One bathroom. No guest room. No other room. Apart from the bedroom Sacaro lay asleep, there were two more left. 

One of the left bedrooms had nothing except an uncovered bed. I took a leisure walk there intentionally. My heart pounded as I was on Sacaro's house tour. As I had completed my room two tour, I saw a picture on the inner end of the door. The picture included the three triangle owners. The most intriguing thing was that my parents belonged to the Sacaro party so that implied I too was a part of that but despite this fact, here I was spying on my own leader.The picture was strange. Oh no, not the picture but the men. No not the men, but the man! I discovered this gradually that the person who was supposed to be Icama wasn't the Icama I knew. As far as the town boards held picture of Icama, he was similar to the man but I could bet it wasn't him. After the separation, nobody saw Icama until on the union day when he looked so different perhaps because of ageing. The second most intriguing thing- Difference due to ageing was absurd because Icama didn't look old but young and different. His number of years lived on the planet seemed to be reduced to a lower number than the number it would have been before the splits. I went to the other rooms (including the kitchen and the bathroom) and finished on a note that there wasn't anything in the house. No food. No drink. No clothes. No thing. It was difficult to comprehend that it was seriously a home. It was just a house with 'nothing'. 

As I was about to jump out of the window, somebody pulled me by my collar. I instantly picked a broken glass piece and turned back with the piece on the man's head. The man took a step back. Ah, the man, he was my leader- Sacaro. How did he get up? He shouted, "You ugly creature, how dare you enter my residence?" I moved further towards him with confidence because I knew it was the key. If I got afraid, that would be the end of it. I took him to the innermost room with the glass piece still in my hand and roared at him like a lion. The droplets of sweat sweeping his face clearly spoke of his nervousness and the end of some conspiracy. Threatening him, I asked him, "Where is Icama?" He refused to utter a single word. He just kept looking in my eyes. I asked him a simpler question, "Why were you on pills?" He gazed at me and said that he was unaware of any pill. Yesterday night when he had his milk, he started feeling dizzy and slept. He woke up just now. I looked at him with my ferocious eyes. I asked him another question, "Where are the other two? Why is the destruction happening again? What about the union of the three triangles? Where is the real Icama?" He started sobbing and perspiring even more. He was giving me an increase in the number of evidences with every breath he took for confirmation of their hands in the post-apocalypse event. 

He muttered a few words with dense air, "I don't know where the others are. I am innocent." I grabbed his neck and forced him on the floor and screamed, "You LIAR! Spit the truth out..!" He was arranging his words when we heard a soft knock on the door. I asked him to open the door. I hid behind the curtains to watch the scene. As the door opened, a man in hoody entered and without any sound, I saw the head of Sacaro fly and fall some centimetres apart from me. I was shocked and scared. The ground seemed to slip from under my feet. I had no idea of the happening and the hooded person. I heard his foot steps come near me. I tried to breathe noiselessly. The atmosphere seemed to leave our planet. The atmospheric gases seemed to bid a farewell. Oxygen was trying hard to unfriend me but I kept pleading it to not break our relationship. The man picked up Sacaro's head, kept it in a bag and stepped out. I heard the door shut. This was perhaps the last chance for Shimpel to know the truth. I had to risk my life. I had to chase the man. I had to uncover the covered truth. I lurked from the window and could make out very feably that the man was following some grassy route inspite of the normal one. One question was hitting my brain and that was- If somebody had given pills to Sacaro, how come the door and window be locked from inside? 

I ran in the direction the man had gone. I followed the route and soon reached the end of the grassy lane. There was nobody to be found. Missing this chance was missing the last attempt to accessing the truth. Sacaro had been devoured without the acquaintance of any inhabitant of this planet except the devourer and the spy. It concluded a very basic idea that everybody could be unaware of. Icama actually wasn't any more a resider of Shimpel, in fact, of the entire planet. He too had been devoured perhaps by the same man who devoured Sacaro because I was quite very sure that the Icama who came after the splits wasn't the one who was in the photograph. 

The darkness that the eclipse imparted over the town would have been more than on any other part of the eclipsed area. It was difficult to walk around alone in such a disastrous condition and in addition to it, behind a disastrous man. I was feeling distraught. I rubbed both my palms against each other so that they could convince each other that everything was fine. I was shivering with fear and chill. I was drowned in the ocean of my thoughts when I heard some creepy noise. I turned around to enquire about that. There I was! The hooded man was digging the ground to bury the truth. He seemed to be the controller of the darkness in his dark hood and his dark actions. His sword was kept under a tree which was right behind him. I hadn't a moment for any further thinking. My mind was flooded with various interrogations and I had to do what I had to because that was my motto. I creeped through the spiny grasses and stood behind the tree. I placed my hand cautiously over the blood-soaked sword and grabbed it up. I could feel the weight of the sword. It was possibly the weight of the lives it had taken. No second wasted. The sword was parallel to the hooded man's neck. He stood there still frozen with his entire body producing sounds due to vibrations. Very soon, my face was giving his face a parallel company. I saw the eyes. I saw the face. I saw the devil. Birata! 

"Speak the truth," that's all I said to him. He frowned at me and looked at me with his evil, life-threatening, treacherous eyes but I beamed back at him. I knew the entire pretence only ends when someone stands up with confidence. He did not show any distinct movement and did not spit a single word but his eyes told of all his pretentiousness. He was a deceiver, A cheater! I could kill him and end the destruction caused by the eclipse but the information I had was incomplete. I didn't want the people of Shimpel to sleep and wake up with handcuffs of falsehood. Nature did not want the union of the three triangles, it wanted the union of the inhabitants. Even though the triangles had united, the Centre of Unity was incomplete because of such murderers holding the fake purity of the triangles. 

I managed to bring Birata in front of the entire town. He stood there and spattered out the truth. He had killed Icama to claim his powerful triangle but unfortunately or fortunately, Icama's younger brother and Birata got acquainted. They threatened him to disclose all his murder conspiracy to the people. Thus, taking advantage of the fact that Icama's younger brother resembled him so much, he gave Icama's triangle to him and divided the ownership of his triangle three-fourth to Sacaro. So they played the role of unity in front of the public and kept the triangles at the centre for social confirmation. He had planned then and there itself to drag the other two out of their lives and own all the three triangles alone. He had killed Icama's younger brother and then approached Sacaro. He mixed excess doses of sleep pills in Sacaro's milk since he wanted to spear blood out of Sacaro with his own sword. He constructed an underground tunnel which he used to lock the doors and windows of Sacaro's house. In fact, Sacaro didn't reside there permanently as it was actually Icama's house. He pretended to live there to prove his union with the others. This was the reason that despite the unity of the triangles, the Centre of Unity was dull and the destruction started in a new way. 

Pretence is merely a cover of the reality which gets to be uncovered sooner or later. Confined by the four walls of falsehood and under-confidence, living souls are succumbed to death. Birata was killed and the new revelation occurred which was with no holds barred, a true one!