GUPPY - A Story

The skins were neatly stacked against the wall, color coded, metal hangers that held their heads impeccably stern, dipped in satin. Colors, light, medium and dark and the myriad hues and murk that blended onto themselves within a throbbing mandala of possibilities.
Every so often, a body would walk in, a bag full of unfulfilled desires and longings in tow. It would never make eye contact, rather, drift politely into the aisles scouring for a perfect fit, hiding behind a facade of half guilt, half thrill and a hint of beguiling coquetry. 

Deep within the confines of this elusive store, the changing rooms stood grim and dingy, dominated by a blind old woman with a face of an unborn child whose eyelids nictitated in an unrelenting stammer of doubts. There were no mirrors on the walls, simply sockets that looked back at you, approving or disapproving or indifferent. You could try out only a handful of skins at a time. Time being an irreverent bother.

Last night was one of those nights, I felt the pangs of needing a makeover desperately. Drudgery and stagnancy had been taking their tolls, settling complacent deep inside the grooves of my breasts and predictable creases. I had had enough. I grabbed my incongruous stash of dried dreams and rushed to shop. The shriveled lady of the house smiled at me cynical, but I wasn’t going to make eye contact, was I?

Instincts are a great thing, coupled with a great sense of smell, they never let me down. I allowed my wise gut and nose guide me into a haunting, obscure and unkempt maze within the store. I thought I spotted my mother over a bend, her head buried deep between one of the zigzagging aisles. She paused.

The tightly-stuffed racks were filled with animal, fish and bird wear of all imaginings, a familiar disarray in sync with my internal madness. Some were lying on top of each other, a latitudinal and longitudinal filing system; some had slipped off their pretty metal hooks of attachment and spread out naked on the floor waiting to be noticed of their self-deprived vanity. I think I might have stepped over a few as they winced in wants of sensation.
I rapidly sifted through these hanging shapes, one by one, parting air, time and space within the slits of their tangible existence. And there it was.. sandwiched between a smoky scavenger and a burning flamingo, an inconspicuous guppy caught the immediacy of my interest. Excited, I grabbed all three and started walking briskly towards the trial room.
Where is that damn woman? I looked around impatient, time being an irrelevant bother. The puny old lady was nowhere in sight and the changing rooms had been pad-locked with incredibly introverted human repressions. I felt an incredible urge to nudge and taunt those locks as they danced and thundered through the drumming of my breath, bellowing back at me with empty notations of morality and judgment. Of course, by now, the three skins I held had started to bicker with one another debating the fate of the chosen one, adding to my impetuousness. Impatience.

To escape the cacophony of the squabbling threesome that was rapidly escalating into savagery, I broke into a run. Perhaps I wasn't ready, perhaps my emptiness needed a different fill. I was also oozing something slowly, perhaps my guilt, in a molten wax like substance, a nose bleed. A viscous, dark shadow shape shifting between a giant guppy and that blind old lady, in a bizarre mad rage of chaos and abduction, was in hot pursuit. The corners of my eyes were darkening. My scleras were darkening. Then my own past passes me by as if it was a more formidable fugitive in motion, as mother watched.

Suddenly, I find myself hanging from the ceiling, upside down. Just like that. No wax. No drips. And watch myself being skinned, a spot waiting for me in those aisles. 

"There is a hole in my window, a gaping hole in this wind-owes nothing to me, 

my self left me, with my wantings, by me.

They charge for bags these days, I carry this obscurity deep, tucked within my bosoms, 

nobody knows, I don't pay the price

nature vs nurture, flight vs fight

(sometimes the chased, sometimes the chaser)

If every line is a circle, we eventually meet (my match, my maker, match-maker)

I sat on my blue chair today. I figured out how it reclined after an year of straight talk.

I laughed. It was a button I pushed. 

Now my being laughs too. 

Silly. That hole in my mind. 

There is also a whole in my half."