I have a question: Why do I always end up being the plaything for the gods? I don’t wanna be whiny, but life sucks lately. Oh, you don’t believe that? Be my guest.
It all started, like, a month ago. Four weeks changed my life. Literally.
Chris, my eldest brother, was popping corn while Sandor and I and I searched for a good TV show. It was a bright, sunny morning, and Dad and Mom were fixing up a hot barbeque. Sandor and I were in charge of bringing the TV out into the backyard. Chris, who loved popping corn, was popping corn. I, completely bored, was getting ready to watch some good movies. Dad was bringing the foldable table out back, and was looking like he could use a helping hand with it. I didn’t really want to help him… I hurriedly tried to look busy, and it totally worked out. Dad ignored us! Mom was stirring the macaroni while muttering something about ‘decorum’. Oh, right. That was because our neighbours, the Duffels, were coming to our place for lunch. They were a family of three girls- Hannah, Sara and Janet. There was the bell! The Duffels had arrived!
We had a really good lunch. Mrs. Duffel was exactly the right type of person for Mom, and Mr. Duffel was exactly the photocopy of Dad. They appreciated our food, told jokes and were really cool. At one point, when our parents started to talk boring stuff like Hannah’s education, we went to the sandpit to talk and build castles. Janet and I, who were the youngest at twelve, got a corner to ourselves. Few minutes into sandcastle-building, Janet took me out of earshot of the older two, unnoticed, and said, ‘We have really less time now, that Evil is back. Come to my house with me.’ I was unnerved by her sudden mood transition from sunny and adorable to serious and unnerving. ‘Uh, okay…’ I tried to wriggle out of her iron grip. ‘I’ll come at… um, does seven o clock work for you?’
‘Come with me now.’
I was going from a little unnerved to positively freaked out. ‘Okay.’
‘You know, Jake, where I come from - the place where I was born, they don’t call me Janet, and they know me as Luck, daughter of Vengeance and Revenge, rather than Janet, daughter of Mary and Neil Duffel. Got any clues to where I come from?’
‘No, not really.’ I replied quickly, and wondered what happened to her. ‘And I’m not sure I want to know.’ She was suddenly talking very much like a grown-up instead of like a twelve-year-old, and I soon knew why. She chuckled. ‘How are you supposed to save the world when you don’t even know who Luck is, kid? Get ready to witness a goddess.’ She then began to glow like the sun had suddenly decided to move into her. Eventually, she got too bright to look at, and I had to turn away from her. In that split second, the glow died down. I turned to spot a woman, decked out in splashes of green and gold and blue, but these were not the green and gold and blue you’d know. These were sharper and deeper than any colour I’d seen, and they seemed to radiate warmth. And her face was beautiful; it was like she was the definition of beauty.
‘Welcome, Jake,’ she said, ‘to the world of the Gods.’
I lit the smoke bombs on fire, hugged my bag and laid on the grass with my eyes shut tightly. I pretend I was hurt and lay motionless on the ground.
After some time 2 helicopters hovered above me, they took me to the hospital and made sure I rested. Coincidentally, and by my luck, it was the same hospital grandma was at.
I checked my alarm clock. It was 3:16am when I snuck out of bed. It was supposed to be a 24/7 hospital but there weren’t usually that many people since it was a small remote town. Luckily for me I was able to get out without being spotted. I tip toed my way to grandma’s room silent as a mouse, I was very careful as there was only one vial of medicine. If the doctors got their hands on it they wouldn’t use it to cure people, they would simply run experiments, track down where the ingredients are found and make the flora go extinct. That’s what they always do and have done. And besides, my grandma was the only one with the disease.
I stood beside her bed as she lay there snoring, suddenly out of the dark I heard a hiss. I turned on the lights, it was just a cat. I calmed down and walked up to grandma. I opened her mouth and poured in the green liquid. She woke up with a jolt, looked around and as soon as she saw me squeezed me so tight that I couldn’t even breathe, but I was so happy. After such a long time, she could finally see her granddaughter. After a few days the two of us were discharged from the hospital.
I thought about all the things that had happened in the past few weeks. It was an otherworldly experience. It made me realise how much we actually know about so many things that humans never could’ve fathomed to exist from insects with emotions to flowers that looked as if they were from another planet. And most of them I didn’t have the patience to write for you to read.
Granny and I ended up adopting the cat back at the hospital and named him Romeow, now Clawdia had a friend! I never met the girl at the valley who was kind enough to save me but every now and then I feel like I see her by the corner of my eye but every time I would turn to look nothing would be there. Ever since I crossed Death Valley, it felt as if I was in a land of wonders.
It took some time to explain everything to Granny but she was very intrigued by my journey. As we made our way down the hospital stairs I hugged her tight, after so many years finally I could feel her fuzzy sweater, her warm arms wrapped around me. I felt comfort and safeness. But after years of feeling sad and lonely I had my grandma back again. I felt happy. I was happy.
-x-
I woke up in a hospital bed. 2 people, apparently my parents, hugged me tightly while doctors surrounded me. It was just a dream. I had been in a coma for the past 8 months.
Imagine being in the shoes of Mr. Thomas Bach right now. Definitely unenviable. Last year he had to make the tough call to push the Olympic Games to 2021.
So, what will his decision be this year?
As the president of the International Olympics Committee (IOC), Mr. Bach’s word is final. The burden of the decision whether to put off the games for the second year in a row, or not - is indeed a huge task. (The games were originally supposed to be held last year but were rescheduled to 23 July to 8 August of this year, 2021.) And keeping in mind the fact that the Winter Olympics are slated for 2022 at Beijing, Mr. Bach and his committee remain steadfast that the tournaments will take place as planned.
The host country, Japan, is divided in its opinion whether to go ahead or not. As they are tiding through the 4th wave of COVID-19, the safety of its citizens and the visiting athletes has become the number one concern. Current polls in Japan show that over 70% of the population do not want the Olympics to go ahead but Mr. Bach and the IOC have decided that games will proceed.
As far as the athletes and sports persons are concerned, they have carried on with their training, despite the uncertainty. As part of the safety protocol, the competing athletes will be fully vaccinated and will naturally take all precautionary measures to stay safe.
Japan's biggest sports star, tennis champion Ms. Naomi Osaka was one of the few athletes to voice their cautious hesitation about the games taking place. "Of course I want the Olympics to happen, but I think there's so much important stuff going on, especially the past year.” The 23 year old tennis player said. “For me, I feel like if it's putting people at risk... then it definitely should be a discussion, which I think it is as of right now. At the end of the day, I'm just an athlete, and there is a whole pandemic going on."
Michael Ryan, the executive director of the World Health Organisation (WHO) pointed out that “The issues regarding the Olympics are multi dimensional.”
Therefore, whatever the decision is, we wish the athletes their finest hour, for all the blood, sweat and tears they’ve shed to get them up to this stage of their career.
If by any chance I had a time machine
I’d go first to 21st July 1969
To watch, in the space race, America win.
I’d watch live- Armstrong takin’ pics of the moonshine,
And the pleasure is very much mine- to hear ‘im say his magic line.
I’d visit the situation 66 million years ago
To watch the dinosaurs, pass on and go.
I’d visit my mum when she was young,
Take notes ‘bout her to write a poem about
She’ll be very well behaved, no doubt.
I’d visit Billy Shaky and tell him
That ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ was confusing and bad
To make you go mad.
I’d go to when Hitler and Mussolini were eighteen,
To tell them if they made the wrong choices
How the world will have been.
I’d visit history’s greatest empire
To learn firsthand whether or not historians were liars.
I’d visit Bruce Lee
And convince him to autograph my tee.
Finally, I’d visit Wuhan in China
Sneak into the meat shop which brought the first Covid case
To permanently erase Covid’s name and face..
Every time I draw with water on the table someone has to tell me that if I do it, it’ll bring bad luck to the family because it’s Hindu belief. Every time someone says that I wonder about all the famous and rich artists who used water colours.
Technically speaking, burping is just farting with your mouth. My life makes so much more sense now that I have been blessed with this holy knowledge of the gods. Ok that backfired my friends are questioning my sanity.
Sparkling water is pointless. I mean, why can’t you just drink water, why did you feel the need to soda-fy it, why did you feel the need to combine completely normal h2o with the atmosphere’s farts to make it taste horrible- But it looks cool I’ll give you that.
Technically all the kittens in a litter are twins in a way. Wait is it twins or triplets- Quadruplets- it depends on the number right?
Apparently if you look something up on google without any internet you won’t get any answers. Well well well- I searched “Is my internet working?” and I got the right answer. Take that.
If you want to take your cat or dog on vacation with you it has to be vaccinated with a plethora of vaccines. Imagine if they did that with humans. Anti vaccinists wouldn’t be allowed to fly.
We use our brains a lot. The scientist who did research on brains used their brains to do that research, therefore the brain is the most important organ according to itself. Mind boggling.
The word short is longer that the word long and the word shorter is longer than the word short. My puny brain is finding that hard to comprehend.
So apparently humans share 50 percent of their dna with bananas. So does human flesh taste like bananas or do bananas taste like human flesh-
If everyone blinked at the same time it would be a moment to go down in history but no one would know since everyone had their eyes closed.
Can we talk about cereal for a moment. Soggy cereal is so much more superior than crunchy in my opinion. I used to add my milk to the cereal and leave it for 30 minutes just so that it would get soggy- don't knock unless you try it's awesome.
One fine day I was having cereal for dinner and I looked at the back of the box and what I saw shocked me. Instructions for cereal. And they put the milk before the cereal. Monsters. Anyway, that became a meme shortly after I informed all of my friends about it lol
I... I don’t really remember what happened next. Not much at least. It’s a hazy memory.
So this is what I remember.
Just about when the mini-star was about to hit us, we were sucked into… this thing. Imagine like a circle in the air above you in which if you look above, it looks like a tunnel, and then you get sucked into it. But then when that happens and you’re inside the “tunnel”, it isn’t a tunnel anymore. You land up on some other random place.
Yep. That’s exactly what happened to us.
We ended up in some weird type of room, which was huge, maybe like 200 feet wide and long, and maybe 50 feet tall. The walls were made of some peach-coloured substance which didn’t look like concrete or wood, but like opaque jelly, and there were no windows. The ceiling was made of a similar-looking substance, but it was white. “Blech,” said Leo. “Whoever designed the walls had terrible taste, and the wallpaper too.”
He was right. The wallpaper had weird darker-peach spots on it in random places of the wall. We both shuddered.
But neither of us said the same for everything else. Except for the weird jelly-walls, the room looked like a really amazing lounge. There were white couches, fancy lighting, multiple TVs here and there (Yes, there are some things that still exist in 2879.) and potted plants which looked really different from all the ones I’ve seen. My AIPSHB wasn’t working for some reason. I must’ve been far from Earth.
What is AIPSHB, you ask? Well, its full form is Artificial Intelligence Problem Solver for Human Beings. Does that tell you enough about it? No?
AIPSHB works on EC (Earth Core) waves transmitted from the core (It can reach all the way up to Mars!). Ask It any question or any help with something, and boom, it is done!
Why do I keep talking about anything but the story? Where was I? Ah, got it.
We landed on a rug that looked like a target, with a red dot in the middle and red circles near the edge and near the middle. Right next to us we found a small coffee table with a piece of paper taped to it. It read, “Sorry for the inconvenience. We wait for you behind the door to your left.”
“Seriously, man. I dunno if I wanna give the people on the door a ‘thank you for saving our lives!’ or ‘Couldn’t you have given us a little warning?!’” said Leo.
But on our path to the door, we changed our decision about how the room was.
There was a pit of spikes and only a small rod of some substance through which Leo and I had to walk through, an area where axes and knives came flying randomly, and an area where there was some sort of swinging lava-wrecking-ball.
Thank goodness we made it safely and unscathed.
As we opened the green door, we stepped into a cavern, which again was huge. We saw three almost-human-looking people who were thrice the size of us, sitting on what seemed to be thrones.
“Hello,” said the one to our left. “You have been summoned here.”
“Wh... Why? Who… who are you people?” I whispered.
“I’m Arbeal. And this is Reylia and Amethius.”
…to be continued
Moukthika : Our Artist!!!! Her art skills are next level - Even buzzfeed agrees that she’s artsy and she cooks really well.
Bhargavi: She’s our editor and personal kpop spammer; expert at burning toast. She’s also everyone’s (self proclaimed) favourite unnie.
Shubhaangi : Kpop spammer #2!! She’s the photographer, and sides with Bhargavi on bad (they disagree) puns.
Vedika :The one most known for her positivity, she has a adorable lab named Lily. She also contributed to the beautiful photography along with Shubhaangi.
Aravind: Fellow youtube animator addict, he's known to be talkative and lighten the mood anywhere he goes! He contributes both articles and stories
Paddy: known by the name ‘Evil.’, She’s our evil, chaotic teammate. she’s the inventor of a language we’re proud to use. She talks equally as often as Favorite Unnie.
Sriram RC: A voracious reader with his interest in a variety of genres, his fingers can do magic with both pen and brush. He loves cooking and eats cricket for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Anhiti : The youngest here, she contributed a poem and made the website for the particle. Famous for convincing us to save the reefs – budding artist and author. (Don’t tell her, but she’s basically kpop spammer #3.)
