Sketches

Starlight

She says, ‘Let’s blow it up!’

Kunal Golani
2 min readApr 20, 2014

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Under the overcast sky, a bridge to the beyond in the distance, just a shadow. A dog howls, and my blood curdles, my neck prickles, she whispers something that sounds like a hiss and a rattle. She says, ‘Let’s blow it up!’

Trekking under the starlight, we don’t need words to tell each other how we feel about blowing up the bridge to forever. ‘Blow.’

‘Blow.’

‘Blow.’ I like the sound of it. My heart hammers inside. To take away something, and to give so much by taking away. They don’t see, they don’t understand.

I look at her. She’s beautiful. She understands. She’s deceitful. She’s my obsession, and we just met. She doesn’t feel the same.

It’s hot and sultry now. I can hear the aircraft coming closer. There isn’t a lot of time. We start running. A grenade here and a flash there to distract them, and we’re at the bridge.

It’s all glory as it mushrooms toward the stars. Pieces of wood fall from the sky. Her face glows in the firelight. It is all dreamlike — Arabian Nights and I’m Sindbad.

Sindbad unleashes his knife and taken over by something rising hotly from deep within and down below, seizes the girl, scratches her neck with the knife-tip and bites into the supple flesh. Sindbad the Beast. Warm blood oozes. It’s still raining bright-hot splinters. The aircraft are now overhead. How did they think they’d stop us from the air anyway?

They fly low, their underbellies smoothly sliding through the hot fumes. I have to close my eyes as the blood gives me rushes. I shudder, I let go, she crumples and crumbles to the ground. I’m floating. I catch them by their tails and fly away as the fire burns out.

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