Its On!

Pete is on the run, hiding, like a wounded animal. Its amazing, Pete thought. He got so far, virtually unscathed. He was mistrusting his own instincts all this while, the survival instinct. Even as he doesn't trust his left hand from the right one, Pete doesn't have a moment to pause, a moment to recapitulate. What he left, what he wanted to take with him. He was meticulously led into a dastardly trap, outmanouvered, out thought, until he started thinking himself. When fate rid him of all his mentors, on whom Pete relied and fell back, seeking a haven for his harrowing thoughts. It was cruel, Pete thought. How bad could things be? How out of luck can I be? How can this end up this way? How can I let this happen? It was then when Pete was left to himself, when he was alone, wounded and dangerous. It was then when a transformation overtook his mien. The metamorphosis triggered by an avalanche of foreboding situations, when there was not enough room of thought for any mindgames. Where it did not matter how it is going to happen. The tryst for the destination far outweighed the perils of the journey. Pete had his path clear. He did not think how he will make it. His emotional self permeated realms of such oblivion. His mien was now that of a firefly. To make it break it. The former he cant afford, and the latter is the only thing he was made for, until he was living a fool's paradise. Pete has the goods, all that separates him and his destiny is an insight, an ilking of himself. A self awareness, a concurrence of himself with himself. Where body meets the mind, and the most contagious of all fervors are concocted.

Pete, was like a bellwether, stranded on the cutting edge of an unknown territory without a compass. Pete was brought back to the present, as he just took a turn into a dingy alley and peeps around the corner, and sees them pass. Nefarious crusaders overwhelmed by their invidious beliefs, they are hunting. Pete was the hunted, only until now. When he knows how to turn the tables, when everything around simmers down to a cartesian logic, a simple question, routing only two choices, a yes or a no. Pete finds it all simple and worked out now. Its better to burn out than fade away...

With a discerning clarity of thought, this time Pete makes his move. A move so deadly in its entirety that it leaves no room for survival for the prey. A one shot prophecy. Pete looks on the other end of the alley and finds a trailer approaching. At this time of the night, when the city is grasped in chains of slumber and yet some arise to start their businesses, businesses of savages, the trailer was at a considerable speed, a speed where a target wont survive, once hit, even obliquely, there was finality of languishing, a definitive end was sure. With a confidence that estranged Pete for so long, he stood in the middle of the road, and saw the crusaders flying away, still in their fierce pursuit of their prey, but only this time the equations had differed, where the roles were mockingly interchanged, where they were the hunted. Pete whistled at them, as he was overtaken by a surreal sanity, so sure about himself, his actions. And they swiveled their vehicles, their hearse. When their eyes met, this was the first time Pete had a face-off with them. He was unfettered, at the disgust that fumigated the air around them. Pete did not bother to see their faces, to study his could-be captors. They had to end. Probably, he thought, its no point to ruminate over what is lost. For Pete they were already dead. Already slaughtered, their pertused remains spread on the street, immolated by his patience, eradicated by his tolerance. Their eyes met. And as if leaving a spoor to play around with kids in a park, Pete turned and started running. Just as he had thought, he heard them roaring behind him, shrieking their venomous intents towards him. Pete kept on running, without breathing, he did not need to. Because he was out of his self, an individual stretched beyond sanity's premises. They were catching up fast. As they nimbly made their way towards him. Pete wanted them to be close enough, close enough to their deaths. And then Pete could see what blood bath would ensue in the next few moments. He reached the crossing, on his left was the abiding trailer approaching, which would not even know what it just obliterated. Pete momentarily stopped to turn around, to get a last look of those pitiful creatures, the last time he would see them alive, not chasing him, but in the pursuit of death. Death became Pete.

Pete crossed the cross road, and watched it all fall into place. Those lunatics hurdling their ways towards him, and the trailer from the left, unflappable. And they met.

The moment froze and passed. No more a sound than a burst of a water balloon. No more liquid than the balloon could have. And the chasers were liquidated. Annhilated beyond recognition. Perhaps truth has its own ways of expressing itself, in a voice so forceful that it absorbs all other squeaks in its domain. An event so dramatic, that mere words, however felicitous are an understatement. Perhaps, truth is stranger than fiction.

Pete looked on and the progeny of that noise lay mashed on the cross road. A place which was of a strategic importance to him. A cross road where he left his ghosts behind, his skeletons, where he discards his closet. And moves on, towards a new sunrise. Where he waits, for special people, where the conventional meet. Where he can blend with the same pride with the environment as the people that matter to him. But only this time, Pete would be able enough to oversee ordeals on his own. The more stronger and succinctly intellectual who can be the paterfamilias, who has found his metier.

Pete turns around, shedding the detestable vista that just inhabited his mind. And walked away into the urbane calm of the night. With only his footsteps filling up the atmosphere, a sound of a firm, determined perambulation, possessing a direction. And he walks and walks, till he finds the people on either side of the road he came searching for, waiting for his arrival. And they see the apotheosis of Pete.

*****
Pete opens his eyes, dreary eyed, with the moisture diffusing the view. Slowly, the world around him came into focus. And he saw that everything around him has changed. Or is it his own mind set, his self analysis?
He realized the change that was evident, his spirit was unencumbered, and he was keen, less hung up and jumbled up in his thoughts. For once did an epochal phase came where Pete is what he want to be. Where he is the alpha and the omega. He rubs his eyes, beholden for the battle with his inner demons which just ended.

Sometimes, life gives you what you want, and gives it in a big way. It is our duty to treasure that and emerge as a stronger individual out of all the tumults. Perhaps, there is a hero in all of us. Its just a matter of individuality to perceive its incumbent reign and react conforming to the moment.

Live Strong.