Invertebrate

It was the same mosquito that woke him up again. He knew that. His instinct never betrayed him. The droning had always the same pitch, and it has always been at the right ear since he had this habit of folding his left hand and covering his eyes while sleeping. It must be eight at least he thought, lazily trying to stretch.

 

   He opened his eyes and that usual cream colored ceiling greeted him with its fine finish and yet bleakness. I got my eye sight and that damned mosquito proved my hearing ability, he decided gloomily. Scanning his air-conditioned bedroom as far as possible with his eyes, he could perceive no change in the decor of the room. The same painting he purchased to show off his artistic side, hung on the wall at an obscure angle, as advised by one of his knowledgeable friends. He always thought it looked like a cross between entrails of a dog and an disemboweled fowl. His Turkish curtains shut tightly against letting the natural light in were like sketched-on window panes-so unmoving and unreal. 

    No, this is not a dream, he concluded. Why he could smell aloo parathas being buttered from his kitchen. He never had appetite though voraciously consuming whatever put before him. My belly needs some serious denial, resolving again for the umpteenth time. He felt he still was fitter than that Gupta, his competitor for the next promotion. That SOB has miles to cross before he can get into my league, he smiled to himself. Gupta will get a surprise of his life when his promotion comes through. He thought of the assurance given by the mother in law of his boss after dinner last night.

That outrageously expensive gift he was delicately 'advised' to give still rankled him. Status has its costs, he was thinking bitterly. At the dinner his boss' mom in law was gorging on the delicacies like a dinosaur which was told that it would be its last meal before volcanoes and floods would make it and its clan extinct from the planet, all the while lecturing about the latest yogic fad she came across through her learned friends. His efforts to nod enthusiastically and to throw in the occasional guffaws at her inane jokes were easy for him.

 

   Somewhere the clock struck nine and he remembered with a start that he would have to reach office today on time. Work never excited him. Yet today's meeting would decide who was more close to his boss, certainly, he cannot be denied that proximity after that dinner and THAT gift. Of course, the prospect of this promotion has made him so obedient to his boss, his boss' relatives and friends. And all those sacrifices he made would bear fruit today and he cannot certainly afford to be late to the office on this day.

   Slowly he lifted his feet, or rather tried to since he failed to move an inch. Not knowing what happened to him, he tried to lift his head and was immediately awarded a magnificent view of his toes...stubby, dirty and unhealthily fat, yet his toes! He thought he would never see them with his ever-growing paunch. Then trying to make sense of this unusual state of things he tried to locate his belly and horrified to see a flat mass of flesh wobbling right from his neck to groin, shaking loosely threatening to just flow out of the bed onto the floor. It was a surrealistic view of himself from outside. What the hell has happened to me, he could not contain himself anymore. He shouted at his wife, his address to her, as usual, starting with an expletive and always ended with even a better one. Though used to such high decibel soundbites, she sensed some alarm and fear in that voice and rushed into the room and started to retch immediately.

    A few years back, on his death bed, his father called him from the adjoining room where he was counting mentally the assets he was about to own. Looking at him sadly, he said, " You got the best of education, and a highly paid job..respectable one. I could not teach you to control your greed, and one day you would be afraid to face the world. You are scared of yourself. Spineless, that is what you are. And one day you would know what that leads to"

    Her scream only matched his, when he understood what happened to him.