Age of Vice

by Deepti Kapoor

“Madam,” he replies. “Don’t tell us about our culture. We’re not zoo animals for your pleasure, not the smiling native to accessorize your enlightenment. The simplicity and honesty you think you know is simply your eyes deceiving your brain. You see and hear nothing.

A year passes in this rhythm, wanting for nothing, no time to think.

Loyalty was not the reason he had agreed to go to jail. It was fear too.

Listening to the CDs she carried with her from home. Björk.

She wants to say: I hope you die. Die miserably of cancer. Catch Ebola and bleed out of your eyes. Get blown to pieces in a terrorist attack. Or just die alone. She wrote him several emails she never sent.

No one ever gets it back. Life just runs away from you. It never comes back, however hard you try, however much you want it to. This is the lesson you should know. You have to adapt or die.

He’s a dog digging a phantom hole. A needle gouging the skin to find a vein.