The Pirated Papers

By Inksters' Guild

'The Pirated Papers' is a captivating compendium that promises to enthrall and inspire, offering a diverse array of stories that will linger in your mind forever. This unique anthology invites you to explore a rich tapestry of narratives spanning various genres.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vedanth K
• Release date: Aug 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223944225

Book preview

Dear Lune

D ear Lune, I wish for you to be happy. The prose, ‘Dear Lune,’ is a letter written by Lune’s dog, Dollar, as he writes of sorry and love to Lune from the heavens. It is a song of purity of love and death. The story travels from the misery of life and its lyrics to the bond that Lune and her dog share. It is a letter to you to ask you to hold onto love and hope.

[-PAVANI SINGH]

DEAR LUNE,

Do you remember the blue dress you were gifted on your twelfth birthday? Do you remember how you wore it to school the next day, carrying a basket of candies for your friends? Do you know what a memory is; did you grow up to learn you do not? I remember the first time you did not cry when you were screamed at. How you twisted your face in the ugliest scowl of ignorance when you could clearly watch your ribs turn hollow and find your heart hidden in the deepest corners of your body. I remember how you were pushed into the feet of confrontation and you flustered. You broke in ways you found growing into a void to be on the side of time. It was to be ice unfazed by the sun. Did you grow up to learn happiness is not when sadness is not around? Did you learn your heart died in bones that swallow pain like water? I remember the first time you let your hair down at a party despite Mumma asking you not to. How you felt beautiful and anew and could not realize that you grasped your hands into the smallest rings to collect your consciousness. You looked better with your hair tied up, said your friend. Was she your friend or were you the daughter of loneliness chained to the wells of despair? Because I remember how it hurt your head to have put up your hair in the tightest bun. Do you know what you are; did you grow to learn you were blind? Lune, the soul is the age of history and it is ahead and behind the lives it has in its hands. I wish your life was granted a childhood and the pink lamps you saw on the TV when you were eight. I wish most of what is a family was a part of your life. I wish you had not grown to be friends with morbidity and violence to lead you to an abandoned home where your soul used to be. "

Oh, you came today. I did not notice, your friend said, as she turned around her chair to fix her hair. You nodded and passed a gentle smile before you went back to copying down the math equations from the board. Your hair is lovely, you told her while you tapped her shoulder in front of you. She did not turn and you did not learn you are not seen. The class ended and you carried your lunch box to the ground to eat in a corner of solitude. It was a tiny space at the end of the corridors that separated the ground from the classes. You would sit down on the concrete, cool from the shade of trees above, and unpack your lunch while you would watch how the grass is a beautiful charity of the universe. Are you eating without us? What have you brought? you turned around to find your classmates huddled together, peering at your lunch. I ate it, already. It was just sandwiches, you answered. And you did not even ask us if we would like to have it, Anika would never share her lunch. She would ask you to braid her hair in friendship and speak of you in utmost disgust when you would not be around. I was hungry and you don’t sit with me for lunch. Right, now we need to come to sit with you ‘ourselves’ for your food. Never mind, and they walked away to the grounds. I remember how you would crush your fists into the tiniest balls and concentrate your loneliness in it. Your anger seemed to always evaporate into the air like steam from the tea you would make for your mother. You should have been angry. But you were never taught you held a place anywhere, so you would find yourself always on the edges of a party when you could easily walk to the centre. How was your day? Mumma would ask as she would pick you up from school. It was good. Science was difficult, but I will come around it, you would say. Every day it would be a different subject or teacher you would find yourself uneasy with when you would tell Mumma about your day. It would never be a classmate or a friend. You would come home to have lunch and creep into the only room of your house to rest. Mother and younger brother would be sprawled on the bed, asleep, and you would climb to the edge of the mattress in the darkness of the room. I remember how you used to cry in all of those afternoons, Lune. How you would cry in silence so clear mother would never suspect you were there. Or maybe she knew. Maybe she knew but never woke up to check. Maybe she knew but did not bother for energy to tend to you. Mothers are bound by a curse of the gods; they carry the weight that their children fail to put down. But mothers are careful and loving. How could the weight on our mother’s shoulders be burdening enough that she could never ask you why you would have glassy eyes every evening. Or why you would not eat every other day. Or why you are losing hair. Or why your arms are covered with white lines like mountains on a cloud. It would turn five and I would sit across you and wait till you would get up. I remember you would always get up within a minute and pat me on my head on your way to the living room. I would skip to the corner of the sofa and grab my leash in my mouth. You would bend down and buckle me loose while kissing me and confessing your love. We would walk out the door towards the garden that was not ours. You would check for anyone coming up and once you would find us alone, you would unbuckle me and sit down on the grass. I would run to the bushes and hedges and sniff every fresh patch. I would find you sitting and run into you as you would trip and laugh with me. It was in these moments I did not wish to go home. I wished to stay with you in the dirt and the sky as the sun would set and you would ask me how my day was. I would always speak with my eyes and you would always understand, Lune. I would wish to ask you why you would not smile in gentility anymore but I never could. I loved you, Lune. I still do. I wish you knew I spoke of you when I spoke of love. I cannot go to school tomorrow, you said to Papa, late at night. Why? It’s not the weekend, his face would always bring its eyebrows together and curve its lips before it would speak of its disappointment. I am tired, So? Everybody goes to their work. You are no special. If you wished so much to put my money to waste, let me know and I will withdraw you from school." he would storm out of the room and shut the door hard behind him. You would flinch at the bang and pull your sheets to your chin. Fathers, like yours, adore control. They would carry control locked in their ribs with the key lost in the love they did not find in their childhood. So, they would despise a break to their comfort; an adjustment to their familiarity with a day. But you cannot retain control of souls forever. Your fear that fathers relish is the only hand they can hold of yours. I wonder if you knew you were free. I wonder if you knew you could have not gone to school the next day.

IT WAS JANUARY AND you were about to end seventh grade. I remember you and your brother peeking down the cardboard box I was in. You were smiling in sincerity I did not know of and in a heart, I could not measure the purity of. You picked me up in your arms and brought me to the field opposite your house. The sunlight was warm and I must have fallen asleep in your brother’s lap. I did not have a name and I was merely a month old. My white paws had not yet known the difference between dirt and tiles and you were my first ground. Your mother walked into the kitchen as she returned from work and found me drinking milk from a bowl you no longer used. A dog! she screamed. I was not comfortable with my eyes till then and would see in a blur. So my ears perched as I turned around to see her standing at the door of the kitchen before I began to walk towards her. No! Where did you get it from? she said. She was shocked, yes, but she also did not appear to want to throw me out of the house. Mumma, you like him? you said. Lune, why did you bring him home? She was an octave calmer. He is so adorable and I would love to have him! Does your father agree to it? She was worried in her voice. She bent down to me and ran her fingers over my back. She was gentle, the way she is today, but it was the first of a mother’s touch on my body. I soon found her fingers through my soul. Yes! your brother chimed in.

YOU RETURNED FROM SCHOOL with shoulders heavy as if they were mimicking your head. You opened the vault to your apartment’s electric switches and retrieved the key to your house, hidden below some wires. You turned around the doorknob and saw me standing around your room, curtains overlapping my body as if I walked only halfway through them. Hi, baby, you would say. You would enter slowly as