On Fear
#068907
This is the eighth story in the Elovian Fable series. Click here to read the Elovian Fables from the beginning.

The woman was walking in the narrow alley. She was told by her husband that it is a dangerous place to venture into. But nothing was truly ever dangerous. Not to her. And he knew so. Her arms flailed uncomfortably as she skipped over a pile of something brown that could easily have been human feces. The thin strip crossing from the middle of the street, parallel to its length and neatly dividing it in half, shed an ominous blue light on the walls that seemed to be encroaching on her. She knew what lurked in the street.
She winced as her leg stepped into a bloody cloth that had more dirt on it than blood. Blood, when cooled down, smells horrible. If you put such a bloody cloth in a narrow clean street, the entire street would stink up. And yet, when the entire street is filled with objects such as this cloth, their unique stenches don’t add up to create an unbearable air as one would logically assume. The thin blue strip in the middle of the road, she noticed, would get covered by garbage as she’d go further in the street. From her vantage point the street seemed endless. If she tried to look at it from a normal human eye, the street seemed to end up just in a grey-black mess of vapor. But that was to be expected from the little accomplished human eye. She expanded her vision to see what lay at the end of the street and as she did it, just the way she had done a thousand times before, a genuine smile crept on her face.
They said that the era of Bombay as the superpower was ending. Sure, Fedora had the greatest entertainment hub and Monther had the most technologically sophisticated business towns, however, Bombay was the first of the planets to have developed an efficiently working society. Something that benefited everyone. To save space they stacked the houses upon houses horizontally in the working class areas and the industrial towns. The transportation happened through the hyperfast lifts. Home to work. Work to home. There was a disadvantage, though. The most efficient of the systems simplify the minority of the processes that make up for the majority of the time. However, there is an undercurrent of activity that is not contained by work to home and home to work cycles. The biggest of them is sewage. When you have houses stacked to each other horizontally without an end, the sewage has to travel all the way to the end to be dumped. And here, in the street where she stood so boldly, the blue thin strip was the indicator of the sewage line. At the end of the street, where she could see the sharp block and just before it, the open portion of the sewage where the garbage was being sorted out neatly by a soulless machine, all she could always present was a tragic smile.
This place was perfect for her little secret. As she reached to the middle of the road, she removed her jacket. Underneath the jacket, she was wearing a beige colored top that exposed her shoulders. She took her top off and stretched herself. As soon as she did that, she felt a heavy weight on her shoulder. Her eyes grew wide with fear as she grabbed the hand that was choking her around her neck and bit it powerfully. Her teeth clanked as they collided with metal and a quick current of coldness ran through her. For a moment she struggled and when she was ready to give up, she felt the tight grip of the masculine hand loosening up. She bent down slightly, pulled the hand with all her might and leaned forward. The man winced in pain as he stumbled over her body and fell in front of her with his hand twisted. She quickly put her leg on the neck of the panting man strongly.
“Use your legs.” She said. “If you had covered my legs with your legs, I would have never been able to defeat you.”
“You’ve yet to defeat me.” He said, still in considerable pain.
“I don’t think so.” She said. After a moment she shook her head and let go as she recognized the voice. “Abdil? What the hell are you doing?”
She was aware of her nudity, but since it was Abdil in front of her, she didn’t feel the need of covering it up.
“Venma…” Abdil said, he calmed down as he saw her calmed down, “I really don’t want to harm you. But Jordaen has sent me here to kill you.”
“I thought you stopped killing people.” Venma said.
“I did. But your oaf of a husband doesn’t understand that. He tried to reset me, do you know that? He thinks I am a clone and now I’m on my knees begging forgiveness because he knows my secret.”
“There are so many versions of you, Abdil.” Venma replied looking at him as he stood up. “I used to get confused whether you were a clone or not.”
Abdil stared at her as memories of their relationship flashed momentarily in front of him.
“Why does Jordaen want to kill you?”
“Because he thinks I am a monster.” Venma replied, still half nude. It felt as if she had forgotten that she was not wearing her top. Her eyes did not budge even for a moment from Abdil’s.
“And are you? A monster?”
“Honey, it is the middle of the night, you are standing with me in one of the dirtiest places in the world, and I am naked. Do you want more proof that I am a monster?” Venma replied.
“Well, this is not the answer I was expecting.”
“What were you expecting?”
“I don’t know.” Abdil said, “A defense, maybe?”
“I’m surprised that you thought I’d be defensive. Considering that we’ve spent at least a couple of years together.”
Abdil smirked. “So, what kind of a monster are you? Cyborg?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You’d have known if I was a Cyborg when we fucked. As of now, I’m just a human.”
“Don’t lie to me, Venma. I can’t do this anymore. I need to finish this once and for all. I could have run anywhere. Gone anywhere. The reason why I chose to come here is because I knew that if you were alive for even one more day, Jordaen would kill me. He would find me and pull me out of whatever hole I’d be hiding in and kill me.”
“He doesn’t seem to have the guts to kill me, you really think he’d kill you?”
“You have always pretended to underestimate him. He is more powerful than you suggest, Venma, and I know that you know that. Isn’t that the reason you married him?”
An awkward silence took place between them. Venma closed her eyes and shook her head again as if dismissing everything that just happened. Abdil stood there contemplating whether he had gone too far. He thought of grabbing her head again and twisting it off. It would take mere seconds. He was just not sure how Venma would react. And if she was a monster, which she certainly seemed to be, it may not turn out well for him. Venma went to the wall with her smooth back toward Abdil. Abdil’s gaze followed her movements. Nothing seemed to have happened for a few moments. They both seemed frozen in their positions along with the rest of the planet. Then out of her smooth thin back, two white stubs grew and expanded into two fully functional wings. She turned and faced him.
She moved towards him with a flare in her eyes which enabled her to see the fear in his eyes. That gave her a strange sense of power. The roles had reversed. Now, she was the one who had the upper hand. And yet, when did she not have the upper hand? Abdil took a step back, fully aware that just a few steps and he’d hit the wall which will corner him. If he had to make a move it had to be right now. But what could he do? What does one usually do when faced with a crazed-looking white-winged fairy?
“I have been on this god-forsaken planet for over a hundred years, Ab. So many adscales away from my home on Mayera. I have spent the last hundred years of my life healing this planet, away from my family, away from my daughter. And now, as we speak, this planet is becoming alive. And there is no possible way I can stop it. But I try. Every single second of my existence here, I have tried my best to stop this planet from becoming alive. And now you come along and Freizer comes along and you expect the level of materialism from me that if I tried to explain it to the people back at Mayera no one would even believe me. I am not here for Freizer’s silly political games and I am not here because you cannot defend yourself against Freizer. I am here for this planet, for your species.”
It took Abdil a minute to process this information. When he tried to break it down none of it made any sense. In the last one minute he had seen a woman growing wings and had realized that the woman that he once used to love was from a planet that had defeated humans hundreds of years ago. He had also heard that planets somehow become alive. And this woman was here to save it.
“I don’t know how to react.” He said after a while.
“I know.” Venma said softly. “I’ll tell you how you should react. You should turn your face and go away right now. You should go in hiding because if a single person finds out about this, you will no longer be alive. Go to Marqua or something. I’d be happy to arrange that. You were afraid of being killed by Freizer? Now you need to be afraid of being killed by both of us.”
But Abdil didn’t go. He stayed. He acted as if he was still in shock by the information given to him when his mind was doing iterations of calculations.
“Why do you not want the planet to become alive?” He asked.
“Abdil, I don’t want to discuss this anymore.” Venma replied. A ripple of fear in her voice. “Go away now.”
“Why would you travel all the way from Mayera to Bombay to stop if from being alive? How is it impacting your planet? What does a planet do when it becomes alive?”
“Stop it, Ab!” Venma shouted.
“Venma, I want to help you.” Abdil replied after a moment, “Why would you not let me? Why would you not trust me?”
Venma looked around her as if desperately holding herself from answering his questions. Her eyes roamed around the entire street trying to find an object that she could use to deflect the conversation. No one knew about this. The terrible secret that she had to endure alone for a hundred years. She had seen people carrying on their lives as if they were going to live forever. She had seen accidents and deaths and heartbreaks that people endured thinking they were going to persist. Always. And none of them knew that the land that they were living on may not exist for them. The land that they occupied would hate them. She shivered as she thought of the repercussions. But she never told this to anyone. She had stayed with Abdil for two years and never revealed anything to him. She had never revealed anything to Jordaen. All the people that she had met. But she had also failed. It was also her fault, somewhere along the way, that Bombay was becoming alive. She knew that her family, back on Mayera, was not waiting for her desperately. They had already deemed her a traitor… or worse, a failure. And she desperately wanted someone to hear her side of the story.
“Because we can never stop the planets from becoming alive. The reason I want to try is that most of the times they turn out to be hostile towards the species living on them. And they spread this life through other planets. We have to sacrifice the life of the planet to save our lives. I want to save Mayera. I want to save my daughter, Feone. And I’ve been trying so goddamn hard but I… can’t.” She dropped her voice as she felt emotions swirling inside her. “I cannot do it. I don’t have enough strength in me. We are all destined to die.”
“Why are you here, Venma, if you can never stop the planet from becoming alive?”
“We can still influence it. To stop it from turning hostile. If we build a connection with the planet for a long time and if we succeed, we can control its evolution into its life. Dead things become alive slowly and as a result of a lot of change. We need to harness that change.”
Abdil nodded. Venma relaxed. She retracted her wings. The street seemed to have suddenly grown cold. She looked around to find where she had dropped her jacket and top. Abdil moved towards the faraway mouth of the street. He stopped for a moment and looked back at her.
“Venma, you know I used to kill people, right?”
“Yes.” Venma looked at him. Suddenly aware of her nakedness.
“I used to do that to see people better. To assess them better. To see their reactions in their most naked, most vulnerable form. People have revealed so many different traits to me. Some women fell on their knees and agreed to offer me sexual favors. Some men also did so. Some begged and begged for their lives as if I controlled their lives. And some stood up to me and spat on my face as I was killing them. Some gave up and some fought with such resilience that I was ashamed of my own act. I did all that to understand people better. To write better. To tell good stories…”
He saw the first streak of fear in her eyes when he took the pause. Her eyes grew wide. Wider than he had ever seen them become. She shook her head and said No. No no no NO!
“Imagine seeing an entire planet worth of people at their most vulnerable, Venma.”
Venma felt shivers run through her and forgot about the cold for a moment. Her hairs flew wildly in the sudden heavy wind. She stood head on to him facing the wind. He wings extracted fully and ready to use. Her eyes mixed with fear and determination. Her hands quivering and her legs itching to attack him. He had sensed it before it even came. He held her hand cruelly as she charged. She used her wings to rise up and drag him. He did a flip and his foot landed on her face with precision. She winced as she dropped him and crashed back into the street. Abdil sniggered.
“Good advice about using the legs, Venma. I am going to find out how to control the evolution of Bombay. I know that you’re going to come after me. Killing you would just get both you and Jordaen off my back. But I promise, I’ll do it gently.”
Before she could react, Venma felt a sharp needle in her right hand.
Last words she heard before she closed her eyes were a very soft sweet dreams as footsteps of Abdil echoes across the narrow street and gradually faded out.
I hope you enjoyed reading that. Here is the ninth story in the series:

