STORIZEN CONTRIBUTE

Manic Women of Eron Part 2

Mrs Honborn said in a commanding tone, “Sit down Gini.“

Gini sat down on the faded yellow coloured sofa.

“Now tell me Gini. Do you know anything about your biological parents?”, asked Mr Honborn softly, with an almost inaudible voice.

“No. I asked everyone. No one knew anything about my parents.”

“Very well. You can stay with us you know. We will take care of you.”

Gini swiftly pulled out a gun from her bag and pointed it towards Mr Honborn and within a few seconds, Mr Honborn was lying dead on the mosaic floor. Her famous fingers were a means for murder- a possibility that had horrified the town on her birth.

Then, Gini looked at Mrs Honborn and grinned.

“He killed my father, didn’t he? You were his mistress; he was your socalled lover. So much for love. So much for love.”

“So, Mr Honborn had murdered Gini’s father in order to marry Gini’s mother. So much for sexual jealousy. So much for sexual jealousy.” said Mrs Honborn triumphantly.

CHAPTER 3

It was a long thrilling night on the terrace of Josephine’s apartment, with a cool breeze enchanting the atmosphere. They were bursting crackers and munching popcorn all night,staring at the sky for hours.Josephine and Eizac were celebrating their nation’s conquest of Koptik House. Many countries had tried to break into Koptik House. But it was only Eron which had succeeded in hoarding all the exotic flowers living in Koptik House. Josephine decided to name the flowers Jeevika. Jeevika flowers were their gateway to building artificial intelligence. These flowers could perceive, but could not speak. If you shouted at these flowers, they would turn into a pale grey. If you put them in water, they would turn into a bright red. Jeevika became the nation’s pet and was sought after like the rarest breed of dogs nearing its extinction. Josephine and Eizac were laughing their hearts out on the terrace.The sky was colourful because of fireworks.But they decided that they must begin the war again. They must remove their king Galax.

“Where is my voice?”- these words appeared on the door of Koptik House after a day of the nation’s famous conquest.

“We must tame the flowers.” Josephine said, getting up from the terrace floor. “Yes. Jeevika must go through brainwashing” replied her brother Eizac. “No. Call it conditioning” retorted Josephine.

“Well, use euphemisms if you want, but we both know the gravity of our crimes.”

Josephine shouted,“Crime. How dare you call it crime? We are fighting for our rights! Kings are criminals, not the subjects.”

“Violence is a crime,irrespective of our intentions and end goals.” said Eizac firmly as if he was reading out one of God’s Ten commandments.

“Violence must be the means if we seek justice.”

Josephine said nothing. It was exhausting to talk to Eizac.

Josephine went downstairs slowly.

“We were more ruthless than our king. We stole some Jeevika flowers from a nearby shop and killed those flowers by depriving them of water.We crushed the dried flowers and buried them in the soil of our garden. Two days later,we were arrested. Our father Kolin was rich and we got bail.But this was our plan. We were thieves. We would prove that the king is incapable of maintaining law and order in our nation. We would wreak havoc in our nation.”, announced Josephine in front of the three other rebels.

They were a group of four. Four youngsters who had decided that the Koptik House Revolution will go down into the otherwise dull textbooks of history.

Garima was smoking a cigarette. Harsh was drinking a glass of wine.Josephine was staring at the ceiling and her brother Eizac was glued to his phone. They were classic examples of youth gone astray,oratleast that is what the newspapers said about them.It didn’t matter on which side of the political discourse the media outlet was. Leftwing, right-wing, pro-establishment and anti-establishment,all media houses were against them. And yet,they fought. They fought to get back what was the rightful autonomy of Koptik House. Kotik House does not belong to anyone, Josephine said. Our king does not have the right to seize the flowers of KoptikHouse,Eizac declared.

Next day’s newspaper headline read “Koptik House does not exist “.

They were all astonished.Then where did the Jeevika flowers come from? The headline was followed by a picture of the king with his cunning smile and was not followed by any article or text. Of course,no citizen of the nation had seen Koptik House. Josephine and her gang had not found any photograph of the House. But they believed in the House,because it was their only way to regain their lost autonomy. Indeed, when Koptik House would find back its voice,they would find back their voice,said Josephine.

“The king was killing humans recklessly and we four are killing Jeevika flowers recklessly. The mystery of Jeevika flowers has to be solved”, Eizac said. Josephine did not know love. She knew only freedom. And little by little, she learnt to spare the lives of the Jeevika flowers. For she may not love flowers, but the flowers must be free to live. The king may not love her, but he must let her live freely.

She was absconding.She was fleeing from media. She was were running from the king.And the whole world welcomed her as she and her gang flew to other nations of the world.

“Strangely,ours was the only nation that did not like us. We were flying from country to country. And we realized that no country liked our king. We ran from nation to nation. And we could not stay in any nation for long.”noted Eizac.

“And at the end, we were tired of running. Our faces were white as sheet. How long can we run from our king? They would soon catch us. After all, we were thieves. But the king was a mass murderer. He has no right to rule over the justice system and law enforcement of our country. Suddenly, I was getting scared of how impulsive we four were. But, we must find out the truth. What was Koptik House?” wrote down Josephine in her diary.

“And we realized that the entire world was against us four. Koptik House was fiction. It was an imaginary place created by global and national media. There was a worldwide conspiracy against us four. The whole world wanted to prove that we were criminals. They knew that we would steal the flowers if they created a narrative that there was a treasured location with exotic flowers.

But Jeevika flowers were magical- this was no fiction.But where had these flowers come from?” Josephine wondered aloud.

Josephine woke up from her dream. “I was horrified. I was a criminal in this nightmare. And in real life, I was the opposite. I knew love. I believed in obedience. And I knew that the magical Jeevika flowers were tokens of romantic love in the real world. And I was a wife. I was the wife of the king. The king would order the exotic flowers specially for me. And I could not imagine revolting against my husband.” wrote Josephine in her diary.

CHAPTER 4

“Under the starry sky, we did not know when time passed and how it was daylight again. The grass was wet from yesterday’s rain and we were not scared of catching cold. Josephine, our

mother, beautiful mother called us from behind, with her angelic voice. We both ran to her and kissed both of her cheeks-red rosy cheeks. I touched her hair, her arms and buried my head in her lap.

Next day, our mother was nowhere to be seen. It looks like both mother and father have abandoned us. It has been a few days since my father disappeared. Today, my mother has vanished. The silver lining in this situation was that we were not dependents. We both had high paying corporate jobs and could sustain ourselves financially. But we did not know how to survive emotional and psychological trauma.

Next day, we filed a police complaint. We reported the disappearance of our parents and got the case covered by major media channels. We expected sympathy from journalists.

My parents were investigative journalists and their disappearance was not entirely astonishing.

Next day, the news headlines said that six dead bodies had been found in an isolated hut in a rural region called Falis. We decided we must go and see the bodies ourselves.

The bodies were not of our parents. They were of six children, each child of a different faith. Their families had been traced and they were Sikhs, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Jains and Buddhists. Falis, an otherwise remote region, was known as the quintessential model of inter-faith harmony, of religious peace and brotherhood. The murder of these children was symbolic, a dark message from terrorists who could not bear to see peace among different religious communities.

Eventually, we came to know that our parents knew of the conspiracy against the children from confidential sources and had tried to track down the criminals, taking law into their hands. Two months later, the criminals were caught, arrested and imprisoned for life. After a rigorous questioning session, they revealed that they knew nothing about our parents.

After a year later, my parents came back. I did know exactly how I felt about this- it was a mixture of shock and relief, bewilderment and gratitude. “Where were you both?”, the words spilled out from my mouth.

“We went on an assignment of tracking criminals”, said my beautiful mother, in her angelic voice.

“But did the criminals know that you both were on a mission to catch them?” “No. We were in disguise.”

My father said firmly with a stern expression to me, “Ask no further questions.”

My father was the king of the nation in disguise. His commands were words of law for everyone. I must shut up and ask no further questions.”

Alice closed her diary, after she was done writing. Alice was Josephine’s daughter.

CHAPTER 5

Alice went out to roam in the streets of Falis with no destination in mind. She was wandering tirelessly, until she spotted someone following her. This was nothing strange. She belonged to the most notorious family ever. Of course, there would be stalkers. She was walking straight and suddenly turned around to have a clearer look at the figure following her. It was a woman. And the woman looked at her eyes first, then at her fingers.

Making a swift turn towards the right, Alice dashed into the wall. There she was, the bewitching beauty, smiling at everyone who dared to look into her grey eyes, with her forehead bleeding as a result of a deliberate clash with the wall. And glaring at those, who had the audacity to look at her fingers. Gini’s fingers, her grandmother’s fingers were meant for murder. She had heard it from the folks of Falis. Some men would also say that Gini had murdered the six children belonging to six different faiths.

Falis was a town in Eron, a country with a constitutional monarchy. They had a President, a White House and a King. Alice’s father and Josephine’s husbandLord Galax was the king who ruled over Eron. However, only the wife and daughter knew that Galax was also an investigative journalist. Dressed as the ruler of Eron and ultimate legal authority of the nation, he would conduct raids and sting operations. And then, he would pretend to be anonymous and publish reports under a pseudonym – Henry.

Josephine had just dreamt about herself as a young raging revolutionary. She shared her dream with her daughter Alice. Alice sunk into a medley of thoughts. How different is it, to wage war against media and to wage war against the state? One would be state terrorism and other would be a civil war. And they both have such different implications. Now that her father was both a journalist and a king, revolting against him was a paradox, a dichotomy.

Manjima Misra is the author of two books: 'Indian Feminine Fury' and 'Unapologetically Mad'. She is pursuing M.A. in English Literature at the University of Delhi and is also a distance learning student of English Language Teaching at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. She completed her B.A.(Honours) in English literature from the University of Delhi and has worked as a writer for various digital media platforms such as Feminism in India and Qrius.