Although this is no movie. Take1 .
"Climb up asshole, do you want the wife and the kiddie to die?" the mogul shouts through the loudspeaker. His voice is as husky as it used to be on the sets of the movies he had directed. Eons ago. This is no movie.
"31 seconds left" mogul warned.
"This is it, you have bored me long enough." Mogul takes an aim and shoots, and we have a body falling 200 metres onto the helipad of the oil rig. Bloody and cracked. In five minutes it has covered the complete 'H.' Even for a fat fuck, this is a lot of blood. Wife is shouting. The kid is crying. That harpoon sticking out of the head is not a pretty sight. Certainly not if you are on the sea. They puke. From his crane cabin altar, the mogul pushes a button. The net hanging at the farthest end of the crane's arm drops. No trembling fish in this net. Just the plane old wife and kid. Now fish food.
Flash back three days. This mogul is retiring. In his long carrier, he has directed tonnes of movies. He practically shits money every morning. His favourite possession : Comet; a twin engine 2350 Horse power yacht, colossal 71m in length, 7 VIP rooms, custom designed for the mogul. On board; 7 men, the consistent crew of his movies, from producer down to the third assistant , with their respective wives and kids. All happy, all toasting. Enjoyed a couple of days with the a lot of booze and sunlight, fucked like rabbits. Drugged on the third day; the wives and the kids (let's call them useless baggage) find themselves in the fishnets, meticulously packed by the mogul, and hanging from seven different hooks on the crane, ready to be sacrificed. His former colleagues are incarcerated in 7 different rooms. From his altar 20 metres nearer to heaven, the mogul has the controls practically every single heartbeat of his prisoners. For him, it's just another day of vacation.
The ship is anchored to a deserted and probably a used up oil rig. Its platform is a huge square. Our villain, the mogul is throned in one corner of this square, safe behind the plexiglas of his cabin, on the corner opposite to this cabin, a lies a tower, the tallest one you will ever see. Let's call in goliath for the lack of imagination. It's base is large, 35ft*35ft, and it tapers to the point where it almost kisses the sky. It stands 809 m high. How the workers got it done, is anyone's guess. But considering its shoddy pinnacle, it seems that towards the end they were shit scared. This tower is pretty complex at the bottom, a mishmash of the metal, to support its own weight, but reduces to a 1ft*1ft square ladder towards the top. Each rung a foot apart.
The mogul releases a prisoner at a time, all the instructions are pasted in the prisoner's room, so he doesn't have to explain them again. The prisoner has to make it to the top of the mother of all ladders. Once he reaches there, he has to stand or squat on the end of the diving board hooked just at the apex, no hand touching any part of the ladder. If he manages the feat, he gets to win the baggage and a shit load of money, basically all the wealth the mogul has raked in during his life. His prisoners have all the time to climb the ladder, as long as they don't glue their asses to a rung longer than ten seconds. After each quarter of the ladder is covered, they get to rest at the rung for 15 minutes. The prisoners get a canteen, that contains some food, a litre of water and some chalk powder for sweaty hands. Any rule broken, baggage goes down and the man gets harpooned, not in any specific order. The mogul expected this ordeal to amuse him for the entire day, but two hours have passed, and he is already short by 4 people. That fourth one was the fat fuck who died back in the beginning (remember anyone?)
The fifth one is our hero. Let's see if he can save the day and claim his queen.
Although this is no movie. Take 2.
He steps out of the cage, canteen attached to his shoulder and chalk to his waist. Talking to mogul out of it is futile, the first one tried that and died. The others learnt the lesson quickly and thoroughly. He is in no rush, the slower he does it, longer he gets to live. So he saunters towards the mother of all ladders. This one was a child beater, wife hater sociopath, who cared about his wife and kid, almost as much as the pope cared about the fashion police. But he did love himself, and will go to lengths to save his skin. He takes his first step on the rung. He lost one shoe to the last night's revelry, and the coolness of rungs had immediate physical effect on him, raising his hackles and shrinking his balls. He takes a deep breath, mentally counting to five , exhaled and counted to 4, taking a quick next step before the mogul could poke him with the wrong end of the harpoon.
This slow, deliberate pace helps him go beyond first hundred metres. The process is simple. He would look down, bring his left foot up (the one that still has the shoe on) to the next rung, match his right foot onto the same rung, bring his hand up to the next rung, match his hands. He can't count solely on his hands to support him if he fucks up a step, so this process stays as long as he can bear to look down. After hundred and fifty odd metres, a glance down is enough to unnerve him. The giant crane that holds the baggage seems like a Lego toy. The huge blot of blood that had covered the 'H' of the helipad and still expanding now looks no larger than a phlegm laced spit-shot.
Even the people who boast that they are not afraid of heights, are afraid of heights. It's just that they haven't encountered anything high enough to unnerve them. The effects of height strike our hero in waves, causing no more than a bit of tremors in the legs initially. By 200 metres, our hero has found his threshold. Waves have now turned into tsunamis. His hands grip the bar so tightly that he can hear his blood pulsing in his palms. Each limb trembleas independently, creating an overall effect that threatens the sanity of the hero. His heart is beating really fast, soaking up the water in his body, his dry sponge of a tongue searching the roof of the mouth to see if any moisture is left.
Luckily, his legs rest have found the red rung, the one which indicates that he has just covered his first quarter, and can rest for 15 minutes. A rest at this point is welcome, but his shaky legs will not abide. Deep breaths are offering no help. He is so unsure of his legs that he embraces the stilts of the ladder as tightly as his hands permit, and sticks out his head between the steps like a prisoner too eager to be gullotined. His Adam's apple is pressing hard against the step, and this cough building up in his throat is taking his mind off the trembling legs. Consciously, hugging the ladder, he brings his leg up a rung, slithering around it, to hook his leg onto the lower rung, repeats it with the second leg. He can close his eyes now.
Although this is no movie. Take 2.
Three minutes after he has secured himself onto the ladder, he manages to open his eyes. He doesn't look down, just straignt ahead, afraid that his limbs will freeze up again. The vastness of the sea stretches miles into the horizon mocks him to come forward for an embrace. He has been pressing his neck too hard into the rung, so he eases up a bit. A roar from down below: 10 minutes left. This might be a good time to recollect all the lost wits. First the water, not in big gulps, but in small sips, just enough to wet his parched throat and get him going for the next couple. Then he rummages through his canteen, finds five tubes, each filled with an awful coloured paste that promised to fill his body with 900 calories. For our weight conscious hero, that's a lot of calories. Worrying about it is as useless as bathing before execution.
Despite the extreme plasticity of the paste, he tries to chew it and sips some water, until the tube is devoid of any remnants, throws it hard towards the horizon, and waits for the mogul to warn him about his time getting short. He is itching to get done with it.
With thirty second warning piercing loudly into his ears, he hoists himself up. Once you are up a certain distance, fear of height becomes constant, call it the law of marginal utility, a fall from 300m will batter your body in same way as a fall from 500m will. With this thought calming his mind, he looks straight up (looking down is a luxury he can no longer afford), feeling the rungs with his feet rather than looking for them. His ascent is quicker now, no longer dominated by the 9 second snail law as it was earlier. He is trying to cover as much ground as he can in this second wind. With the initial trepidation fading, this climb is fuelled by a single motivation, just to see how far up can he make it without dying. Although this is no movie, this is the perfect moment to play 'Set guitars to kill' in the background.
His next 300m came without any glitch. By this time, his forearms have pumped so much that he can actually see his veins throbbing under the skin. His left leg, the one that had to do most of the work because of the damned shoe, is screaming obscenities to its owner to slow down. But most of all, his palms are sweating so lavishly that even the coolness of the rungs do not seem to calm them. And the sweat he leaves behind is becomig a curse for his legs. He was convinced that twice his feet had almost slipped after propelling his body upwards. He had managed to avert those falls, but any more risks will be fatal.
When you push your body faster than your lungs, lactic acid floods your muscles.Normally when this happens, it is a sign to slow down and breathe; the oxygen will purge this lactic acid and save your muscles. Happy ending for muscles. They might be even better off after this exertion. Bring into this picture, less than a drop of adrenaline, and your body turns into berserk mode. It's like running downhill, you have to will yourself to stop. This is when spasms occur. Our hero has been climbing like a machine since his second wind, his 5 second a rung rule down the drain. So when he slows down to rectify his sweaty situation, his calves stretch like they have never stretched in his life. Perfect recipe for a spasm. He impulsively assuages his left calf with his left hand; and realizes his sheer stupidity a moment later. None of his limbs is strong enough to handle his weight all alone.
Time to hook himself to the ladder for the second time. Same routine. Without looking towards his calf, he kneads it vigorously. The pain subsides for a second, but seems to lurk in shadows, poised to strike back when he takes his hand off the calf. If he stops, muscles in his calf begin to knot, this knot stretching his achilles' tendon and his hamstring. With his right hand he rummages for the water bottle. Then some chalk for the sweaty palms. Thank the mogul for his thoughtfulness. Thank him again for this ordeal. All the time he wonders if he is still eligible for the 15 minutes rest that he let forego on his last milestone. After ten seconds, he realizes he is. Thank the mogul for his generosity. Thank him again for this ordeal. Although this is no movie, this is would have been the perfect moment to play 'Act nice and Gentle.'
He eats two tubes of those shit coloured paste this time. His left hand still kneads the calf, but the vigor in this massage is long gone. The arm seems to yell on the leg for getting itself into the trouble. The limbs scream on him to stop this madness. He wants to yell on the mogul, but knows it will do nothing more than parch his throat further.
When the resting period expires, he hauls himself up laboriously. He has thrown his only shoe down, no more exertion for the ailing limb. This time he is climbing with a gait that his body can handle. He doesn't think any harpoon can reach this height without compromising the accuracy. But a shot in the head is much better than a shot in the butt. Atleast he will be dead before he hits the ground.
Wind has been playing tricks on the ladder since long, but it's only now that he's able to register them. Even on the most uneventful days, the wind at this height hovers around 40-50Km an hour. That's almost the speed with which you drive in the city. Despite an expansive base and tapered shape, the ladder sways like a bitch's ass. Each new step makes it more and more palpable. Although our hero has dimensional sense of a blind monkey, even he can bet his life that the ladder's sway had graduated to inches. Each time a gust of wind came, his heart seemed to sink to his stomach. Moving up is more of mind game than physical effort.
This is no movie, but this scene could have won an oscar. An everyman, wind ruffling up his hair, his rolled up sleeves displaying viciously pumped up veins; his bare feet curving on rungs to better grip the ladder. This everyman takes on an adversity that he couldn't even have fathomed a day ago.
Although this is no movie. Take3.
The hero is closing the gap between himself and the top. This close to the top, he should be happy. Bur rather than elation, his mind haunts him about the new predicament. Standing (or more likely squatting) on the world's scariest diving board. Even more frightening was the fact that he still wasn't able to make out the shape of the board. Not being able to see it from the bottom was one thing. But being this close to the end and still not able to see it.
Then it hits him like a K.O. punch...whatever material mogul used for the board, it's transparent. If he hasn't pissed in his pants yet, it's not because he has a sound bladder control, it's just because the body can't afford to waste something it is already short of. Pushing a thought away is a phrase, he is not going to throw around in coming days (If he gets a chance to do so).
Although this is no movie, this would have been the best time to play 'Hope leaves' in the background.
At 730 metres, the hero takes his third hiatus. Same old routine. Except now he dares to steal a glance downwards. And chuckles. It was like looking through some powerful microscope. You can make out the shape, but you are still not sure what you are looking at. He shouts a loud 'fuck you' towards the mogul. Not that he can hear it. Fuck him twice if he can. The height and the mogul are not so scary now. As Holmes had said "Leave out the impossible and you get the truth, no matter how improbable." The truth is that only thing that scares him now is a fall from this height; which he has managed to avert this long.
Although this is no movie.......Final take.
The scene opens with the hero just a couple of metres from the top rung. The springboard has evolved into a shape, but that's that. Standing on it would be no different from standing on thin air. Just for a good measure, let's include a scene where the hero missteps, his whole weight resting on his two pathetic arms. No chance he can manage a pull up at this juncture. With desperate agility, he brings his left hand down one rung and with same grace he brings down the right hand too, managing to place his legs on a rung. A grunt might have escaped his throat, but the wind makes it impossible to be sure. Close call. He stands on the rung, unmindful of the 10 second warning. No harpoon shot, not even as a warning. Still that doesn't mean that none will come if he freezes up here. After all he hadn't come this up only to freeze an arm's length away from the top.
With the diving board filling his entire sight, he dashes towards the board with a vigour that defies a pulled up calf and several near death experiences. In a monent, he is standing on the top rung of the ladder, holding the stilts that have curved on to support the diving board. Now that he can make out its shape, this board, roughly 7 feet long and 3 feet wide reminds our hero of a casket. The one that would have fit him perfectly.
Onto the scarier end of this board, an envelope is nailed. He sits astride on this board, letting his accomplishment sink in. Right now, he is the happiest man alive. His ass seems to float in air. If he looks through the board for long, nausea seems to set in. To be on the top of the world and still not being able to look upon your subjects. What a tragedy. All that sense of urgency has dissipated. He takes his own sweet time to finish the remaining shit-tubes of food. Throws them down. Then the water. Throws the water bottle too. Only chalk is left, it was something he had not tasted since he was a kid; yet a taste he hadn't forgotten. He eats it too. Down goes the chalk bag. He hopes that some baby dolphin chokes on it. He can see miles and miles away from his vantage point, yet he can't see any island or ship blotting the ocean's surface. Just pure vastness.
He moves his ass a bit forward on the board, and with the legs still dangling astride, lays down on his back. His backbone makes a cracking sound in gratitude. The sun is nearer to the horizon than overhead, and it doesn't blind his eyes. The ground is far down below. The sky is much much farther; and our hero is suspended in limbo. From the ground; a horn blares, warning our hero that in another 10 seconds, the baggage will be dropped. Our hero closes his eyes. Feed them to sharks for all he cares. A plop strikes his ears a few seconds later. Baggage has been offloaded. At the height, our hero lies, sound takes two and a half seconds to reach. So the news has already staled before reaching him. The mogul must be infuriated. He warns about some impending shots, but our hero is sure that no harppon can touch him at this height. He grins in his nap.
From the ground he hears a shot. A moment later the board is shaking. More shots and more shaking. He still doesn't care. But for some reason, his right leg itches, as if it is bitten by a hornet. Despite his mind's balking, he opens his eyes, sits up and take cognizance of the situation. The diving board, that used to be transparent was pockmarked by some bullets, that were stuck into the far end of the board. The thickness of the board prevented them to pierce through. Fucker was taking sniper shots at him, most of which were way off the mark. But one seemed to have scratched his right leg. A blood rivulet had made its way down his leg and droplets were falling down. The way he was sitting had exposed his legs to the mogul, sooner or later a bullet will hit his leg head on, and then he can forget about climbing down this ladder. He does what strikes him most logical, waves his hands wildly like a mad man, signalling to the mogul that he will move forward, if only the mogul stops shooting. Message received. He hears no more shots. Using his hands to grab the sides of the board, he drags his body forward, his dangling legs ready to compensate for any untoward motion. The trigger happy mogul fires another shot. The horn blares again, 'Hunker! you asshole' it blares. There goes his final advantage. He brings one leg up, and then the next,while still pinching the board tightly, Now that there is nothing to support him, the wind striking him from sides seems to have redoubled its effort to dislodge him. Still, he surges ahead, as he had since the begining. As he reaches to the end of the board, he waits for the wind to abate. When it does, he quickly snatches the nailed envelope, uses his mouth to tear out the envelope, his teeth grab the note inside, while he discards the envelope. A gust of wind strikes again. Instinctively his hand grabs the board again. The note is flapping against his face, slapping his forehead and chin. This time wind doesn't subside for full 10 minutes. His jaw, that still holds the letter, aches badly. So does his knees. At last the wind stops. With shaky hands, he grabs the letter, unfolds it.
If you are not dead yet, then you are not trying hard enough. Let me help.
Even as he is reading the last word, making out what it means, the diving board snaps. Our hero will never know it, but the board was not fixed to the ladder, but hinged to it. Some weird mechanism lets the mogul control it, just like he controls everything in this story.
Most of the people can't predict the time of their death. Atleast our hero was lucky in this respect. He had full eleven seconds to let the knowledge sink in. His life didn't flash before him. Nor did any cheesy moments and memories. There were no thoughts except one, "If only he held on to the board a little tighter." There was only one mystery for the mogul to anticipate now. Will the hero hit the ground or the water first. Much to his delight, the hero struck the edge of the rig head first. All the bones powdered by the impact. His body tumbled about his head and drops in the ocean. Like his extra baggage, more food for the fish to choke on.
In the sky, like a penis tumescing, the diving board is hinging back up....
Although this is no movie, it would have been a perfect moment to play 'Immortal' in the background
"Climb up asshole, do you want the wife and the kiddie to die?" the mogul shouts through the loudspeaker. His voice is as husky as it used to be on the sets of the movies he had directed. Eons ago. This is no movie.
"31 seconds left" mogul warned.
"This is it, you have bored me long enough." Mogul takes an aim and shoots, and we have a body falling 200 metres onto the helipad of the oil rig. Bloody and cracked. In five minutes it has covered the complete 'H.' Even for a fat fuck, this is a lot of blood. Wife is shouting. The kid is crying. That harpoon sticking out of the head is not a pretty sight. Certainly not if you are on the sea. They puke. From his crane cabin altar, the mogul pushes a button. The net hanging at the farthest end of the crane's arm drops. No trembling fish in this net. Just the plane old wife and kid. Now fish food.
Flash back three days. This mogul is retiring. In his long carrier, he has directed tonnes of movies. He practically shits money every morning. His favourite possession : Comet; a twin engine 2350 Horse power yacht, colossal 71m in length, 7 VIP rooms, custom designed for the mogul. On board; 7 men, the consistent crew of his movies, from producer down to the third assistant , with their respective wives and kids. All happy, all toasting. Enjoyed a couple of days with the a lot of booze and sunlight, fucked like rabbits. Drugged on the third day; the wives and the kids (let's call them useless baggage) find themselves in the fishnets, meticulously packed by the mogul, and hanging from seven different hooks on the crane, ready to be sacrificed. His former colleagues are incarcerated in 7 different rooms. From his altar 20 metres nearer to heaven, the mogul has the controls practically every single heartbeat of his prisoners. For him, it's just another day of vacation.
The ship is anchored to a deserted and probably a used up oil rig. Its platform is a huge square. Our villain, the mogul is throned in one corner of this square, safe behind the plexiglas of his cabin, on the corner opposite to this cabin, a lies a tower, the tallest one you will ever see. Let's call in goliath for the lack of imagination. It's base is large, 35ft*35ft, and it tapers to the point where it almost kisses the sky. It stands 809 m high. How the workers got it done, is anyone's guess. But considering its shoddy pinnacle, it seems that towards the end they were shit scared. This tower is pretty complex at the bottom, a mishmash of the metal, to support its own weight, but reduces to a 1ft*1ft square ladder towards the top. Each rung a foot apart.
The mogul releases a prisoner at a time, all the instructions are pasted in the prisoner's room, so he doesn't have to explain them again. The prisoner has to make it to the top of the mother of all ladders. Once he reaches there, he has to stand or squat on the end of the diving board hooked just at the apex, no hand touching any part of the ladder. If he manages the feat, he gets to win the baggage and a shit load of money, basically all the wealth the mogul has raked in during his life. His prisoners have all the time to climb the ladder, as long as they don't glue their asses to a rung longer than ten seconds. After each quarter of the ladder is covered, they get to rest at the rung for 15 minutes. The prisoners get a canteen, that contains some food, a litre of water and some chalk powder for sweaty hands. Any rule broken, baggage goes down and the man gets harpooned, not in any specific order. The mogul expected this ordeal to amuse him for the entire day, but two hours have passed, and he is already short by 4 people. That fourth one was the fat fuck who died back in the beginning (remember anyone?)
The fifth one is our hero. Let's see if he can save the day and claim his queen.
Although this is no movie. Take 2.
He steps out of the cage, canteen attached to his shoulder and chalk to his waist. Talking to mogul out of it is futile, the first one tried that and died. The others learnt the lesson quickly and thoroughly. He is in no rush, the slower he does it, longer he gets to live. So he saunters towards the mother of all ladders. This one was a child beater, wife hater sociopath, who cared about his wife and kid, almost as much as the pope cared about the fashion police. But he did love himself, and will go to lengths to save his skin. He takes his first step on the rung. He lost one shoe to the last night's revelry, and the coolness of rungs had immediate physical effect on him, raising his hackles and shrinking his balls. He takes a deep breath, mentally counting to five , exhaled and counted to 4, taking a quick next step before the mogul could poke him with the wrong end of the harpoon.
This slow, deliberate pace helps him go beyond first hundred metres. The process is simple. He would look down, bring his left foot up (the one that still has the shoe on) to the next rung, match his right foot onto the same rung, bring his hand up to the next rung, match his hands. He can't count solely on his hands to support him if he fucks up a step, so this process stays as long as he can bear to look down. After hundred and fifty odd metres, a glance down is enough to unnerve him. The giant crane that holds the baggage seems like a Lego toy. The huge blot of blood that had covered the 'H' of the helipad and still expanding now looks no larger than a phlegm laced spit-shot.
Even the people who boast that they are not afraid of heights, are afraid of heights. It's just that they haven't encountered anything high enough to unnerve them. The effects of height strike our hero in waves, causing no more than a bit of tremors in the legs initially. By 200 metres, our hero has found his threshold. Waves have now turned into tsunamis. His hands grip the bar so tightly that he can hear his blood pulsing in his palms. Each limb trembleas independently, creating an overall effect that threatens the sanity of the hero. His heart is beating really fast, soaking up the water in his body, his dry sponge of a tongue searching the roof of the mouth to see if any moisture is left.
Luckily, his legs rest have found the red rung, the one which indicates that he has just covered his first quarter, and can rest for 15 minutes. A rest at this point is welcome, but his shaky legs will not abide. Deep breaths are offering no help. He is so unsure of his legs that he embraces the stilts of the ladder as tightly as his hands permit, and sticks out his head between the steps like a prisoner too eager to be gullotined. His Adam's apple is pressing hard against the step, and this cough building up in his throat is taking his mind off the trembling legs. Consciously, hugging the ladder, he brings his leg up a rung, slithering around it, to hook his leg onto the lower rung, repeats it with the second leg. He can close his eyes now.
Although this is no movie. Take 2.
Three minutes after he has secured himself onto the ladder, he manages to open his eyes. He doesn't look down, just straignt ahead, afraid that his limbs will freeze up again. The vastness of the sea stretches miles into the horizon mocks him to come forward for an embrace. He has been pressing his neck too hard into the rung, so he eases up a bit. A roar from down below: 10 minutes left. This might be a good time to recollect all the lost wits. First the water, not in big gulps, but in small sips, just enough to wet his parched throat and get him going for the next couple. Then he rummages through his canteen, finds five tubes, each filled with an awful coloured paste that promised to fill his body with 900 calories. For our weight conscious hero, that's a lot of calories. Worrying about it is as useless as bathing before execution.
Despite the extreme plasticity of the paste, he tries to chew it and sips some water, until the tube is devoid of any remnants, throws it hard towards the horizon, and waits for the mogul to warn him about his time getting short. He is itching to get done with it.
With thirty second warning piercing loudly into his ears, he hoists himself up. Once you are up a certain distance, fear of height becomes constant, call it the law of marginal utility, a fall from 300m will batter your body in same way as a fall from 500m will. With this thought calming his mind, he looks straight up (looking down is a luxury he can no longer afford), feeling the rungs with his feet rather than looking for them. His ascent is quicker now, no longer dominated by the 9 second snail law as it was earlier. He is trying to cover as much ground as he can in this second wind. With the initial trepidation fading, this climb is fuelled by a single motivation, just to see how far up can he make it without dying. Although this is no movie, this is the perfect moment to play 'Set guitars to kill' in the background.
His next 300m came without any glitch. By this time, his forearms have pumped so much that he can actually see his veins throbbing under the skin. His left leg, the one that had to do most of the work because of the damned shoe, is screaming obscenities to its owner to slow down. But most of all, his palms are sweating so lavishly that even the coolness of the rungs do not seem to calm them. And the sweat he leaves behind is becomig a curse for his legs. He was convinced that twice his feet had almost slipped after propelling his body upwards. He had managed to avert those falls, but any more risks will be fatal.
When you push your body faster than your lungs, lactic acid floods your muscles.Normally when this happens, it is a sign to slow down and breathe; the oxygen will purge this lactic acid and save your muscles. Happy ending for muscles. They might be even better off after this exertion. Bring into this picture, less than a drop of adrenaline, and your body turns into berserk mode. It's like running downhill, you have to will yourself to stop. This is when spasms occur. Our hero has been climbing like a machine since his second wind, his 5 second a rung rule down the drain. So when he slows down to rectify his sweaty situation, his calves stretch like they have never stretched in his life. Perfect recipe for a spasm. He impulsively assuages his left calf with his left hand; and realizes his sheer stupidity a moment later. None of his limbs is strong enough to handle his weight all alone.
Time to hook himself to the ladder for the second time. Same routine. Without looking towards his calf, he kneads it vigorously. The pain subsides for a second, but seems to lurk in shadows, poised to strike back when he takes his hand off the calf. If he stops, muscles in his calf begin to knot, this knot stretching his achilles' tendon and his hamstring. With his right hand he rummages for the water bottle. Then some chalk for the sweaty palms. Thank the mogul for his thoughtfulness. Thank him again for this ordeal. All the time he wonders if he is still eligible for the 15 minutes rest that he let forego on his last milestone. After ten seconds, he realizes he is. Thank the mogul for his generosity. Thank him again for this ordeal. Although this is no movie, this is would have been the perfect moment to play 'Act nice and Gentle.'
He eats two tubes of those shit coloured paste this time. His left hand still kneads the calf, but the vigor in this massage is long gone. The arm seems to yell on the leg for getting itself into the trouble. The limbs scream on him to stop this madness. He wants to yell on the mogul, but knows it will do nothing more than parch his throat further.
When the resting period expires, he hauls himself up laboriously. He has thrown his only shoe down, no more exertion for the ailing limb. This time he is climbing with a gait that his body can handle. He doesn't think any harpoon can reach this height without compromising the accuracy. But a shot in the head is much better than a shot in the butt. Atleast he will be dead before he hits the ground.
Wind has been playing tricks on the ladder since long, but it's only now that he's able to register them. Even on the most uneventful days, the wind at this height hovers around 40-50Km an hour. That's almost the speed with which you drive in the city. Despite an expansive base and tapered shape, the ladder sways like a bitch's ass. Each new step makes it more and more palpable. Although our hero has dimensional sense of a blind monkey, even he can bet his life that the ladder's sway had graduated to inches. Each time a gust of wind came, his heart seemed to sink to his stomach. Moving up is more of mind game than physical effort.
This is no movie, but this scene could have won an oscar. An everyman, wind ruffling up his hair, his rolled up sleeves displaying viciously pumped up veins; his bare feet curving on rungs to better grip the ladder. This everyman takes on an adversity that he couldn't even have fathomed a day ago.
Although this is no movie. Take3.
The hero is closing the gap between himself and the top. This close to the top, he should be happy. Bur rather than elation, his mind haunts him about the new predicament. Standing (or more likely squatting) on the world's scariest diving board. Even more frightening was the fact that he still wasn't able to make out the shape of the board. Not being able to see it from the bottom was one thing. But being this close to the end and still not able to see it.
Then it hits him like a K.O. punch...whatever material mogul used for the board, it's transparent. If he hasn't pissed in his pants yet, it's not because he has a sound bladder control, it's just because the body can't afford to waste something it is already short of. Pushing a thought away is a phrase, he is not going to throw around in coming days (If he gets a chance to do so).
Although this is no movie, this would have been the best time to play 'Hope leaves' in the background.
At 730 metres, the hero takes his third hiatus. Same old routine. Except now he dares to steal a glance downwards. And chuckles. It was like looking through some powerful microscope. You can make out the shape, but you are still not sure what you are looking at. He shouts a loud 'fuck you' towards the mogul. Not that he can hear it. Fuck him twice if he can. The height and the mogul are not so scary now. As Holmes had said "Leave out the impossible and you get the truth, no matter how improbable." The truth is that only thing that scares him now is a fall from this height; which he has managed to avert this long.
Although this is no movie.......Final take.
The scene opens with the hero just a couple of metres from the top rung. The springboard has evolved into a shape, but that's that. Standing on it would be no different from standing on thin air. Just for a good measure, let's include a scene where the hero missteps, his whole weight resting on his two pathetic arms. No chance he can manage a pull up at this juncture. With desperate agility, he brings his left hand down one rung and with same grace he brings down the right hand too, managing to place his legs on a rung. A grunt might have escaped his throat, but the wind makes it impossible to be sure. Close call. He stands on the rung, unmindful of the 10 second warning. No harpoon shot, not even as a warning. Still that doesn't mean that none will come if he freezes up here. After all he hadn't come this up only to freeze an arm's length away from the top.
With the diving board filling his entire sight, he dashes towards the board with a vigour that defies a pulled up calf and several near death experiences. In a monent, he is standing on the top rung of the ladder, holding the stilts that have curved on to support the diving board. Now that he can make out its shape, this board, roughly 7 feet long and 3 feet wide reminds our hero of a casket. The one that would have fit him perfectly.
Onto the scarier end of this board, an envelope is nailed. He sits astride on this board, letting his accomplishment sink in. Right now, he is the happiest man alive. His ass seems to float in air. If he looks through the board for long, nausea seems to set in. To be on the top of the world and still not being able to look upon your subjects. What a tragedy. All that sense of urgency has dissipated. He takes his own sweet time to finish the remaining shit-tubes of food. Throws them down. Then the water. Throws the water bottle too. Only chalk is left, it was something he had not tasted since he was a kid; yet a taste he hadn't forgotten. He eats it too. Down goes the chalk bag. He hopes that some baby dolphin chokes on it. He can see miles and miles away from his vantage point, yet he can't see any island or ship blotting the ocean's surface. Just pure vastness.
He moves his ass a bit forward on the board, and with the legs still dangling astride, lays down on his back. His backbone makes a cracking sound in gratitude. The sun is nearer to the horizon than overhead, and it doesn't blind his eyes. The ground is far down below. The sky is much much farther; and our hero is suspended in limbo. From the ground; a horn blares, warning our hero that in another 10 seconds, the baggage will be dropped. Our hero closes his eyes. Feed them to sharks for all he cares. A plop strikes his ears a few seconds later. Baggage has been offloaded. At the height, our hero lies, sound takes two and a half seconds to reach. So the news has already staled before reaching him. The mogul must be infuriated. He warns about some impending shots, but our hero is sure that no harppon can touch him at this height. He grins in his nap.
From the ground he hears a shot. A moment later the board is shaking. More shots and more shaking. He still doesn't care. But for some reason, his right leg itches, as if it is bitten by a hornet. Despite his mind's balking, he opens his eyes, sits up and take cognizance of the situation. The diving board, that used to be transparent was pockmarked by some bullets, that were stuck into the far end of the board. The thickness of the board prevented them to pierce through. Fucker was taking sniper shots at him, most of which were way off the mark. But one seemed to have scratched his right leg. A blood rivulet had made its way down his leg and droplets were falling down. The way he was sitting had exposed his legs to the mogul, sooner or later a bullet will hit his leg head on, and then he can forget about climbing down this ladder. He does what strikes him most logical, waves his hands wildly like a mad man, signalling to the mogul that he will move forward, if only the mogul stops shooting. Message received. He hears no more shots. Using his hands to grab the sides of the board, he drags his body forward, his dangling legs ready to compensate for any untoward motion. The trigger happy mogul fires another shot. The horn blares again, 'Hunker! you asshole' it blares. There goes his final advantage. He brings one leg up, and then the next,while still pinching the board tightly, Now that there is nothing to support him, the wind striking him from sides seems to have redoubled its effort to dislodge him. Still, he surges ahead, as he had since the begining. As he reaches to the end of the board, he waits for the wind to abate. When it does, he quickly snatches the nailed envelope, uses his mouth to tear out the envelope, his teeth grab the note inside, while he discards the envelope. A gust of wind strikes again. Instinctively his hand grabs the board again. The note is flapping against his face, slapping his forehead and chin. This time wind doesn't subside for full 10 minutes. His jaw, that still holds the letter, aches badly. So does his knees. At last the wind stops. With shaky hands, he grabs the letter, unfolds it.
If you are not dead yet, then you are not trying hard enough. Let me help.
Even as he is reading the last word, making out what it means, the diving board snaps. Our hero will never know it, but the board was not fixed to the ladder, but hinged to it. Some weird mechanism lets the mogul control it, just like he controls everything in this story.
Most of the people can't predict the time of their death. Atleast our hero was lucky in this respect. He had full eleven seconds to let the knowledge sink in. His life didn't flash before him. Nor did any cheesy moments and memories. There were no thoughts except one, "If only he held on to the board a little tighter." There was only one mystery for the mogul to anticipate now. Will the hero hit the ground or the water first. Much to his delight, the hero struck the edge of the rig head first. All the bones powdered by the impact. His body tumbled about his head and drops in the ocean. Like his extra baggage, more food for the fish to choke on.
In the sky, like a penis tumescing, the diving board is hinging back up....
Although this is no movie, it would have been a perfect moment to play 'Immortal' in the background
1 comment:
nice story dude ! just simplify it a little and its a perfect short story...
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