Short Fiction: Taimoor Masroor Qasim

Carpe Diem

His keys jingled as he put them in the ignition, the engine roared to life. He pressed down on the gas as the tyres screeched against the asphalt. He drove away; the engine growling between the gear shifts.
 
A clichéd start, maybe! But isn’t life too redundant itself for anyone to call out clichés anymore?
 
He stood there buttoning his shirt and looked at his girl sleep like an angel. He loved her and that had made his decision relatively easy and straightforward. He kissed her on her neck making her purr quietly in her sleep. “So easy and yet so difficult,” he said to himself as he tightened the screw. He looked at her beautiful face one last time, his lips parted and there was a whisper of regret and apology, “I am sorry, but this is for our own good.” He squeezed his fingers, blood splattered all over the bed soaking the sheets as the bullet from the silenced gun ripped her head open. She lay there dead, thick dark blood oozing from her temple; not feeling a thing in her transition from sleep to death.
 
Possession, it can do all sort of wrong things to us. Sometimes the thing just cannot be ours, still we will go to every possible length in attempting to own it. Obsession and possession; words and thoughts that bring vice and which plague us. That is how it goes, the search for ultimate pleasure, the desire to preserve a sentiment, the wish to feel an emotion, the longing to live a moment and the hope to retain a thought. We yearn for our memories in their complete purity. However, desires are mere fantasies and the perfect withers away with time.
 
So he killed his ultimate obsession and made her his possession. He stopped time and saved his perfect moment. Her memory, her body, her soul – they all became his and turned into constants for eternity. She became a picture; frozen in a frame but vivid as the present. She was his supreme pleasure and now no one else would take her. In death, he owned her because now no one else could approach her. She was his, today and forever. Carpe Diem, he seized the day.

—

“Who am I?” he asked himself as he uncapped the bottle of whiskey. His car cruised on the interstate as he tried to run away from himself. His past, a shadow of complication and confusion stuck to him like slime, sins which God himself could not absolve. Still he tried, still he struggled for a moral appeasement his soul craved.
 
“An actor, a pretender or just a jester in the king’s court.”
 
He vaguely recalled a time when in a moment of sanity he had tried to pen his thoughts; his last feeble attempt at finding reason.  He realized then that the thoughts that churned in his head could in no way be justified as something a sound mind could conjure. It was a haze of events and memories against a black screen where all of his sins shouted obscurities at him, his many faces appeared and disappeared and reminded him of his corruption. He had created them and then used them for his indulgence, he had shrouded in their shadows in an attempt to keep the dirt off his soul.
 
He never understood the psychological dilemma of comic book heroes and their alter egos. Ironically, fate cornered him into the same fix. So many roles, so many faces; he lost himself to his self-created mortals. Virtues of vice and the essence of violence; they killed and plundered as they rose and prospered. Then there came a day when they owned their creator; fantasy became reality!
 
He drove on. Warm blood still dripped from the gun; though memory was a distant reality. A storm brew in his head and his multiple personalities battled to reign. Lost in this haze of many, his confidant was already reduced from everything to nothing. Carpe Diem; indeed not.
 
“Times change, people change! But fuck, this is just unreal,” he told himself as he struggled against the war within. His lips met the mouth of the bottle as he searched for pacification in alcohol. 

—

I am his alter ego. Yes, it is me he struggles against. Every drop of alcohol doing rounds in his veins is there because I exist. He is torn within and in his desperate attempt to keep his monsters at bay he summons my existence. It is ironic how the one thing you are trying to run away from smacks into you, head on exactly when you turn around to see if you have ran enough. I sit on a pedestal, in his mind I am a God. He thought he was evil, he believed he was the devil personified in a human and that is exactly why he had the guilt. Me and him – we are poles apart. I don’t need shadows or aliases or faces to hide my vices. I don’t fear the corruption of my soul, I embrace it with open arms. He is tortured because he is unholy and I transcend beyond these man-made virtues. There is no one who dictates me, no rules which bind me, no scriptures which define me. That is why I am a God while he always shivered at what he had become, that is why he needed a veil while I write on my own slate.  I am the holy and my sins are celestial. I have vengeance, wrath and loath for no apparent reason and still I have respect.
 
However, even we gods have our weaknesses and she was mine. She belonged to me and worshipped me. She was my only disciple and given her devoutness, I did not need more. I vividly recall the night she submitted herself to me. That black low cut dress, that perfect skin as it glowed in the moonlight, her seductive eyes and those glistening lips. I remember those words of submission and how they took away all reason from me; “Embrace me my dark Lord, thy servant needs thee!”

She satisfied my darkest desires that night and my unholiest of cravings every other night after that. She made me sin in ways which even I could not have devised. Even with her complete obedience and my complete authority – she made me make marks on my slate – she had control.
 
It would have been perfect but he fell in love with her. She knew the face and was as available to him as she was to me, for her there existed only one person. He saw her as a refuge, someone who would save him from damnation. He had never had someone who would not judge him, who would have the patience to deal with his torn self, someone who on the face of it all would be so faithful it would seem like devotion. He believed the savior had come but he knew she was not his. If the demons in his head were not enough, she gave him a monster which was far more real than the ones lurking in the shadows of his imagination. For even when he could not see me he could feel my presence through her. In the world of his insecurities and paranoia, he felt the reality of an existence which shared his love and he obviously could not stand that. He wanted her as a possession; something he could call his own, someone who was sacred and a divine which could redeem him off his vice.
 
Possession, it can do all sort of wrong things to us. He had to make her his; perpetual and eternal – for him she was holy and he couldn’t part with her ever. He had to take her life, otherwise it would have fluttered to someone else. Even us gods have our weaknesses and mine got to the hands of a weakling. He pulled the trigger and took her away forever. I am divine because I am immoral but I am still a mortal, I cannot give life; in fact have always thrived at taking it. She has transcended beyond my reach and his memory is all there is left for me to cast a mist on. I am helpless even in my godliness because now she is gone. He made her his even though he does not recall. Carpe Diem – he seized the day – today and forever.

————————————————————————————

Taimoor Masroor Qasim is a 23-year-old Telecommunications Engineer, who is currently restitching his jeans-and-tees attire to suit and tie while he pursues his MBA in Marketing from the Institute of Business Administration, Karachi. He is a metalhead to the bone and a gadget freak who, in his free time, likes to profess his eternal love for his laptop.