Do I even matter?

“You ready?”
I look up, biting my lip distractedly as my eyes meet his, and I look away almost immediately, my breath whooshing out in a faint sigh.
Spending an hour alone with the guy who you’ve been hopelessly in love with since fourth grade is not and never will be—not even remotely—a good idea.
Yet I respond, “Yeah. Where to?”
He shrugs. “I thought we could do the shoot by the Physics hall.”
Too nervous to say anything, we leave the empty classroom following through flights of stairs to the ground floor. I slip off my backpack and pretend not to watch him as he paces the length of the corridor, searching for better camera angles and shadow gradients that only he can see.
Then he turns around. “Could you sit by the windows?”
“Sure.” I try to walk normally, even as my heart jumps at the sound of his footsteps escorting me. I take my position by the window. He observes for a few seconds; his stare open and direct, at me.
“Could you let out your hair?”
I wordlessly undo my braids.

“Cool.”
He exhales and cocks his head to the side, squinting at me in a way that instantly makes me feel unbelievably self-conscious. “Can you sit cross-legged … and maybe look slightly down and to your right?”
I comply, sitting on the floor, cross-legged, glancing down over my right knee.
“Perfect.”
There is snap-click of the shutter, followed by the whir of the Polaroid camera cautiously spitting out its product. I hold still, marvelling at the fact that this boy—the one I’ve been staring at longingly since I was nine years old, the one I’ve had to muster up courage just to talk to—has just taken a picture of me, an everlasting memory of mine. But I also wonder ruefully whether twenty years from now he’ll still have that picture, and if he’ll look back on it and ever realise that it’s the face of a girl who secretly loved him.
“It’s good,” he finally says, and I can tell from the low, relaxed tone of his voice he’s telling the truth. “I’ll probably only need a couple more, and then we’ll be done.”
I swallow. “Okay.”
He asks me to rest my head against the window now, stretch my legs out, and pull my hair over one shoulder —never asking me to look anywhere but down to my right. Every time.
With my back pressed against the warm glass, I speculate if he’ll use one of these portraits in his portfolio. It’s unlikely—I know —I’m the last of a dozen girls he’s photographed today. Perhaps his last choice. But I want it to happen so badly that I cannot fathom it’s not happening.
As the camera clicks and whirs again, my mind wanders back to when he had asked me to model for him. I count back the days in my head; it was the first time we had exchanged so much as a word in months. His request had given me butterflies. I had smiled and affirmed as casually as I could.
This morning again I had come wearing the “comfortable, nondescript” outfit he had asked me to. Just for him! And now, what now? Do I even matter?
“Are we done?” I inquire, hoping he has photographed his final shot of me, so I can grab my backpack and run and never look back. His eyes are fixed on the Polaroids, but he looks at me and says, “Almost. Just one more.”
I know he’ll next say, “Sit down, let your hair fall and look towards down to the right.”
He does, but adds to it, “Keep your face tilted like that, but look up, look at me.”
A sudden hot flush flares up at the back of my neck, and I can feel it infusing into my cheeks, but I pull it down, inwardly kicking myself for reacting.
“Sure.” I turn my face in the usual direction, and then glance up at him.
“Is this okay?”
“Yeah. Just like that.” He pauses, looking at me. I feel my heart thudding hollowly against my ribs, the hot flush rising up into my cheeks again. He lifts the viewfinder to his eye and takes the shot. Click, whir, and the camera deposits a sepia-toned Polaroid into his waiting hand.
His eyes linger on the picture long enough to send skittering sparks of uncertainty across my skin, but he finally nods.
“Perfect,” he says.
I feel a mixture of relief and disappointment settle like a tidal wave. I get onto my feet and do my hair. “So..uhh. I was wondering... Am I free to go?”
He nods. “Yeah. Oh, wait … do you want to see the pictures?”
My body feels oddly weightless as I walk to his side. He gets down on his knees and spreads out a dozen or so Polaroids on the floor, forcing me to kneel next to him. And as I look at them, I feel a strange sensation bubble. My throat goes dry. The pictures are good, better in ways I hadn’t even expected. But my eyes are not visible in any of them.
Then he lays the last one on the floor and my heart almost stops. In the photo I’m sitting, shoulders up, the sun setting over the pine trees behind me, hair curled around my face, my eyes, my conspicuously meaningful eyes, stand out in sharp relief, looking directly into the camera. Even I can make out the tense, anxious yearning in those eyes. But I wonder if he can
I leap to my feet abruptly, smoothing out the front of my dust-smudged sweater with trembling hands, looking anywhere but at him. “Wow, great, I mean they’re all really great. I have to go, but, um, good luck with your, with your portfolio.”
“Yeah,” he exhales. “Thanks for doing this.”
I begin to walk away as quickly as I can without breaking into a run; my breathing is sharp and angry, silently screaming at myself for being stupid, so stupid. Suddenly I stop in the middle of the hallway, even my shoes squeak against the floor. And before I can change my mind, I turn and ask him, “Why did you invite me to do this?”
“I …” he trails off and exhales, and suddenly my insides turn into lead. He holds out the Polaroids in his hand. “I wanted to show emotion.”
I stare at him. A cold, chilling thought slowly creeps over. “So you knew that I...”
He nods, slowly. “Yeah.”
“Since when?”
“Since always.”... “But umm I wasn’t. I was never sure.”
I swallow, “Are you sure now?”
This time he does not look away. “Yeah.”
I feel sick and dizzy and light-headed, and I don’t know if I should cry.
“You knew?” I bite my lips, laugh, smile; the words sound bitter and ironic echoing along the empty hall. “So you just thought, ‘Hey I’ll use all of that, that crazy, pent-up emotion for my photography portfolio,’ didn’t you?”
“No.” His gaze is open and unflinching. “It was the other way around.”
“What, what is that supposed to mean?”
He shakes his head. “I wanted to know for sure.” He smiles gently. “And now I do.”
We stare at each other. I’m breathless. He’s waiting. Then, in a single, instantaneous second, the realisation hits me like a double stroke of lightning, like an entire world is falling in place.
So I do matter to him.
He reaches and kisses me. I wrap my arms around his neck and kiss him back. The Polaroid photos drop from his hands and flutter around my feet. 
- Nirajan Nepal

Mist Fading - test post

He was a writer; wrote mostly short stories, shorter than those that appear in magazines and newspapers, barely more than a few hundred words; thought he couldn't carry a story for long.

If you ask who he likes, the first name he will utter will be Kafka. He'll say that there never existed a better coalesce of everything. He'll argue that Metamorphosis is still the best story. He'll underline for you how Metamorphosis has been “plagiarised” by writers like Steinbeck, and point to Of Mice and Men. You will consider that and you will be dumbfounded for a while, and then you will start to see some connections; but you will not be convinced. You will say that nothing from a story completely belongs to the writer. Then he, feeling the need to defend his hero, will get started and you will have to back down.

Any and all intimations that hint at your unwillingness to talk about Kafka with him will be ignored. He will make a point to talk all the same; even if it is Kafka on the Shore that you inadvertently allude to. You will talk about Shore's surreal edge and the magic it carries with it, and then you will see how the conversation meanders to Kafka, in due course. Sometimes, he is too garish, you will say. And he will do the hatchet job; not for you, on you.

You like Kafka too, but it's rather for stories like Judgement, you will argue. Also for In the Penal Colony. You will praise and say better things about him (things that you will not completely mean) and he will be contended, that grin plastered to his fat lips.
He will agree to let you read some of the stories he wrote after all the coaxing and pledging you will do. There will be a story that will read like nothing you have read in a long, long time. There will be another, about a vermin transforming into a man. You will like it. This story will be so close to authenticity that you will take off your clothes in front of that full mirror once you are home and you will marvel at the discrepancies of your pairs of legs, arms, ears, eyes and even your incipient and just-budding breasts. Much like Metamorphosis, you will say. The last thing you will do is smirk at your crotch. Laugh even.

You will ask for more stories and he will start to give them to you, unforthcoming at first. And slowly, that will change.

You will be inspired.

One June evening, you will be looking out your window, the balmy air brushing against and caressing your face. Then the air will take the form of a malevolent wind suddenly, and the azure sky will turn grim and grey and it will rain. The rain, however, will be blue, the same blue the sky had been a moment earlier. Later, at night, you will realise that your pen has stopped working. However many time you fill it with ink and empty it by turns, it will not work. The next day, you will discover that no pen in the world is working.

Eventually, you will end up reading a news article about how all the world's ink is beginning to dry. The first thing you will do will be laugh at it. You will laugh, and laugh, and laugh; and your laughing will give way to thinking about him.

He, the writer, will be worried sick because all his stories will have started fading away, like the mist fading on any given winter morning; slowly, as the sun pushes itself to the fore. You will want to share in his worry but he will not let you. He will rebuff and holler and yell, and you, fiery and livid, will vow not to see him again.

But then, a few days later you will find yourself tapping at his door. He'll let you in, but you will find him in red. You will see that his face has that same awkward grin. It will not take long before you notice blood spattered all over the room. He'll not have his index, middle and ring fingers in the places they used to take in his right hand (he used his left to write). The air will hold until you realise you aren't breathing, and even after that it will refuse to get inside you. He'll tell you that blood doesn't dry like ink.

You will find a styrofoam cup on the table, the water in it red. He'll explain to you the inconvenience of writing directly with the crimson.

You will wish that the sky tear open and your mother's hand reach out and wake you from this nightmare, but when out of curiosity you will touch the brim of red, you will find it as cold as the winter, as hot as the air that went past your face that day before it rained. All in all, it will be as real as everything else.

Back home and you will still find it difficult to come in terms to believe what you saw.

You will visit him a month later, and this time his grin will have taken more of his face, and he will tell you how his stories have taken more pages too. Then once inside the room, you will notice that he does not have his right hand. You will feel your stomach churn and roll, but you will hold back. He'll keep smiling all the time.

You'll tell him to stop doing those things; he will not understand, and you will not try to make him understand.

He'll give you a story and you will run your fingers along the red letters.

They will be as real, cold and hot as that moment passing you by. A paroxysm will seize you by the throat and you will bolt out of his room and return home where, your head aching, you'll zone out no sooner.

You won't go to him for a few days, weeks, even. But one day, you will want to go. And then you will. You will bring a story home with you because it will be long. Because the story will really be good, you will love it. You will see more stories piled one over another on the left side of his writing desk and you will ask for them. He'll not rebuke now; and with each story, you will love the writer in him more and more.

He will not have his left leg the next time you go to him. You will feel an inexplicable tightness around your neck, wrenching and roiling in your guts.

That day, the sky will be mauve and you will love the sight of the sun debilitating, dying, clambering at the seams of the sky. Then, not unlike on that June evening, the sky will start roaring and rumbling and rain will pour. This time, it will be red, the raindrops.

When you will be reading another story he wrote, the letters will start blending with the off-white of the parchment. Upon your showing, he will get mad at it. You will see helplessness glinting off his eyes and worry pasted to his lips and you will try to commiserate and be empathetic, but you will have to leave him alone nonetheless.

And one day, he will stop writing altogether, because he will not have anything to write, yes, neither to write nor to write with. He will stop. Just like that.