This house is squalid. Decrepit. You ought to know this because of the large entryway that was never decorated. You ought to know this because when you make the rounds through that empty entryway through to the drawing room, the storage room, the kitchen, the lounge, and back through the entryway, no one sees you. No one is awake. You ought to know because of that thing in the storage room. You ought to notice all this, but it's all you've ever known, so for you, it's just home.
And so, make the rounds on your little tricycle. Beginning in the wide, L shaped lounge whose sofa cushions have all indented to the shape of your arching back, take that tricycle and run its three wheels to the entryway. Observe the way the sun peaks through either side of the door. That front door with its enchanting mahogany grooves, whose furrows and troughs you have intimately studied, which remains closed. Let the sun graze your tiny leg as you pass by and hold back a shudder before entering the drawing room. Another hopelessly empty room. Grey and with white lights. There is the munji at the corner that presses into the porch where you sit for your qiraʼat lessons with the wise, beard wearing and well-meaning Qari Saab. As you pass you might attempt to recite the doosra kalma but find yourself getting stuck after Wahdahoo Laa Shareeka Lahoo. You just can't seem to get it down. You are so young, but you have begun to associate your worth with your intellect, or better yet: with your ability to recall. Before you can dig through your memory, you have already cycled into the storage room and find yourself face to face with the thing.
A pile of trash.
A vacuum of sorts that was there as long as you can remember back—which isn't very far back—and will stay with you for many years to come. A towering, amorphous piece of furniture of the same splintering mahogany as the entrance. But that is only the facade of the thing itself. Behind this coalesce of wardrobe-cum-vanity-cum-desk lies the belly of an immaterial beast. One you glance into occasionally. Before turning away. Today you choose otherwise. Climb off the trike and climb into the side of the facade and see the thing itself. Piles, piles piles, forgotten gifts, destroyed objects, sentimental graveyard. Rotting pieces of old toys and scratched up DVDs and unwound cassettes. Sneakers without soles and t-shirts with holes through the chest. Pillows without fluff, appliances missing a central processor. Books with the front page torn out scattered amongst stones once strung together on a necklace. There's Mama's old TV, it's big as you are and it's big and it's gray and the screen don't work no more. Next to it lies the stash of cards your sister taught you to play taash on, but no matter where you look within the mess, you can't find any aces. Nature decays, you have heard from an older, wiser beard wearing well-wisher, but plastic rots, crunching in on itself and gathers into a terrible conglomeration, so think and think as you rest on top this endless pit and as you consider your place among the heap, you may find yourself feeling light in your chest. Like no matter how hard you breath in, you can't fill your lungs. You don't know what lungs are, but you know that the part in your center that you normally don't feel or think about is suddenly screaming. This is a panic attack, young angel and you are not dying, you must know that, and you must also know that it will not be your last. Breathe, breathe, breathe, even as you cannot bring in a full breath. Breathe what little you can and remember where you are once again. And if you cannot, worry not. For here I am!
The mass begins to shake under you, a violent tremor from the furthest end. A glass table slips under a pile of DVDs and from it, you see the tip of my hand—long and boney as it is—grab onto a broken printer and crawl my body out.
Look at me, a tiny little creature. I am quick witted and bowlegged to the max! Such so, that my knees jut out from my hips in any direction but straight and where you are used to thighs reaching up towards a torso, my body travels up from foot to calf, THEN inclines down to my hips, then up again to my arch bridge of a back. If I could stand up straight I might be twice your size, but when I am like this, we are almost one and the same, and isn't that a charming thing!?
You press your vision deeply into the folds on my face. The crinkles around my eyes, my long, pointy hat, and my beard which almost touches the floor: your sharp senses immediately take note. "Rumplestiltskin!" you cry with delight and a touch to my surprise.
"Aye, Rumplestiltskin am I, but does my sight not bring terror to thine eye?" You shake your head with a joyous force that lights up my whole being. A boy so young as yourself has not those terrible prejudices that come with age. "So my name you know, name your wish, and I shall make it so!" You reel back and look every which way humming hmmms and huhs. Many boys have asked many things of me. One wished he could fly. One wished to live inside a magic treehouse with his sister. One asked for all the video games in the world. But you, standing before me, struggle to come up with an answer. "Perhaps it's a bigger house you want? Or for your mama to spend more time with you? What say you to a candy dispenser which never runs out, or an action figure… that can be your friend too?"
"No, no, no, no" you shake your head and turn a frown, "none of that will do." You groan a great groan and crash your legs onto the thing, sitting with a dejected hand on your face. It's now that you begin to look around you and remember where you are that I see all whimsy drop from your face.
"So that's it then… Little boy, you need only say 'SURE' and this pile, this mass, this thing will BE. NO. MORE!" I dance between an old picture book and sets of shattered dishes. So great is it to see a smile on a child's face.
"SURE," you say, bouncing up at last. Dancing alongside me. "SURE! SURE! SURE!"
"Say no more kid, this is it!" I snap my fingers and pop! I go entirely out of sight, like I was never there. Then the old picture book, pop! The dishes, pop! The CD cases and the cassette tapes, the rotting furniture and the shattered vanities, the ripped-up electronics and the malfunctioning devices. Pop! Pop! Pop! One after the other, that terrible mass, that big old thing pop! pop! pops! away, away, away in front of your very eyes as you dance, mimicking my little jig with joy and gay.
Pop! goes the final pieces of trash and pop! goes the eldritch facade, and you launch into the air, cheering "Whoopee!" like the happiest little boy in all of Lahore. And just as your feet touch the ground pop! you see the drawing room behind you fade away just as I had. Pop! goes the kitchen in front of you. Pop! goes the entrance to your mama's room. There she is inside. On that bed where she spends most of her time. You rush towards her, running through a white void with your hand out. "Mama! Mama!" you yell and she pokes her head up in her signature groggy style before she too, goes pop!
Pop! Pop! Pop! the whole house vanishes before you. And you are all alone…
(DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fiction. Any names or characters, businesses or places, events or incidents, are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.)
Musa Tarar is a student, a writer, a computer scientist, or somewhere in between. He is based in New York, for now.