The brilliant golden sun rises in the east and falls to the west, and the young street rat Raju wished he could follow its route from his makeshift shelter by the water of the Taj Mahal to the gold-paved roads of America. The west with its equalities and regulations–the west with its education and opportunities. He heard about the west from the American tourists, some white but mostly brown, who wore tantalizingly tiny outfits and spoke with the slightest air of arrogance. With his little sister in his hand he clanged together his bowl of money to collect spare change and disgusted glances–some pitiful, others mirthless. He heard about America from these people, who spoke with lavish praise about the marble monument and then related it to the skyscrapers and flashing lights of New York.
“We don’t have any sort of Taj Mahal,” they’d say with awe, and then their voices would revert back to pride, “But they don’t have New York city here, do they?”
Then they would drop a penny into my bowl and as they walked away I heard them, “We don’t have those creepy beggars either.”
And that’s somewhat exactly what Raju and his little sister had been for the past two years, ever since his mother passed away giving birth to a stillborn third on the corner of an abandoned alley, just two months after her husband’s illness brought him to the same fate. From morning to evening Raju and his sister collected pity-money, sometimes as much as ten rupees, and used it to buy themselves a few rice cakes or other light goods from the numerous street vendors.
But Raju’s sister had grown ill herself, no doubt due to the fumes and the trash and sleeping on the streets millions of people had walked on with filth clinging to their feet. She was only four years old, but her face carried the maturity of someone thrice her age, skeletal thin with huge brown eyes. She might have been a beautiful child, but the sickness pulled her face down even further and gave her a ghostly countenance. When once she had remained quiet, now she cried often. The sickness gave her hunger, and Raju couldn’t collect enough money to feed the both of them whenever they pleased. When once she had been no more than an extra hand to aid her brother to beg, as the tourists took pity on her starving child appearance, now she was more of a burden than a help.
It was getting to be too much for Raju. He pined for the west, he longed to go to America and learn how to read and become a lawyer or a banker or someone powerful. He wished he could be someone waited upon day and night. He saw the tourists at the Taj Mahal with cameras and expensive sneakers and he knew, somehow, that if only he could get to West, he could be like them too.
So, idealistically, he routinely saved one rupee each day in hopes that one day he would have enough for a plane ticket. But with his ailing sister, his savings were drawn into for food, a sweater for her cold limbs, and whatever inexpensive medicines he could get his hands on.
A burden, his sister had become. He hated to admit it, he prayed forgiveness every time the thought crossed his mind. But his sister prevented him from getting his ticket, his way out. A few times, he thought, that the struggle was not worth it.

Now he stood outside the slums where his sister now stayed with a band of beggar children managed by a few thugs. The five thousand rupees in his hand felt heavy, too heavy, and as he turned around slowly and walked away, he pondered the gravity of what he had done. An act of impulse and ignorance–he had no idea as to his next course of action. He had never thought this far ahead, never believed he would actually acquired the money. But now his hand felt empty without the small palm of his sister, and his heart sank. There was no way out. There was only a way to fall deeper into this abysmal rut of poverty and ingratitude.

I tell you it was a fine summer night, that night of the crescent moon in the sweet-smelling month of June. It was a fine summer night, with the moon gleaning as white as a bone, masterfully bent out of shape. I lust after the moon, how beautifully carved it is. How smoothly it wanes, as if the whittler carefully shaves the ivory bit by bit, from the center out. Makes me want to give it a try myself.
My knife is shaped like that beautiful crescent moon, I tell you its a rapier to be proud of. Sometimes I run my needful fingers along that ruthless blade, just to feel how smoothly it makes the cut, how deep. The pain is clarifying, the blood so enticing. I lust for it–the tangy crimson. How wonderfully scarlet it is, like rose hips crushed to paste. Its smell is sweeter than roses–it makes my heart beat. My blade smells of it. I love it.
Call me sinful, call me insane, call me sickening filth rival to the devil himself (though I myself have always pictured the devil to be a woman). It’s of no matter at all to me, I tell you I don’t give a damn. I don’t give a damn for anything but my blade, and how it helps me satisfy the lust which burns without fuel from within the depths of my bloodless heart. How its silver sharpness tickles soft, tender white skin, how it shaves the top of flesh and draws that tantalizing liquid of life. The cut always clean, always deep, smooth and satisfying. Ahhh how sweet the pain feels. Thinking about it fuels the lust–throws a finger to the blade–but alas, no more, no more.
I’m getting ahead of myself–I tell you it was a fine summer night that day when all of my desires were stuffed down my throat to choke me. Who would have known that such a fine night could mean so much damnation for me. That night I could feel every heartbeat, I could taste the beads of sweat my restless body drowned me with. It was no use trying to sit myself down and read a book or scrawl down a few thoughts to subdue the lust like I normally force myself to do. But that day, my blade was rattling in the pocket of my worn black habit, it was just as thirsty as I was. There was no controlling my urges today. It had been too long–it has been too long–so I got up from that god-damned chair of mine, put down that god-damn blunt pencil, grabbed my beloved knife and strolled out the door with conflagration in my chest.
Now there’s a little path behind my cottage not too far away from this here asylum, and it snakes covertly through quite a sinister forest in the night time. It’s a popular hiking trail around the summer time, but the people rarely stray away from their tents after dark. I can always find little bunnies or even a foal if I’m lucky–anything to pacify that eager curved rapier of mine. I told you it was a fine summer night, with just the slightest zephyr to waft the sweat of my anticipation, my desires. That night the crickets chirped to the slamming within my chest, as my eyes darted around to look for something delightfully soft and vulnerable.
Imagine my utmost delight when I found, huddled in a cold little ball in the undergrowth, a shivering and whimpering little creature! At a closer glimpse, it was a boy, not more than five years old, with frightened eyes and flesh so irresistibly smooth. When he heard me coming, he right about wet his pants!
“Mommy?” he asked, with a quaver in his high pitched voice. Hah! To think he thought I was his mother! It made me laugh maniacally, made my fist clench and re-clench upon the weathered grip of my blade. Never does anyone expect such violence from a young maiden like myself. Perhaps that’s why I remained undiscovered for quite some time. Until this day.
“I’m not your mother, you fool,” I laughed, and quickly I snatched the boy in my arms and stroked his soft, ample cheek. Hah–his wide eyes, his incredible fright–I tore off a clump of my thick, waste length chestnut mane and used it to tie the boy to a tree so he may be subdued.
“Mommy! Daddy!” the little boy screamed before I could fill his mouth shut with a pile of dried leaves and dirt. That wretched high pitched voice of his–it cut through the night as sharply as my blade would have cut through his delicate skin. Nonetheless, it was too tempting, it was too much to run away from for fear of being discovered. I had to act quickly–I withdrew my glimmering alter-ego from the depths of my habit, raised it to just above the flesh wrinkled by a face welled up with tears–went in for the incision–ALMOST, almost drew that beautiful life-blood–
“Not so quick missy!”
And my arm was held back, I was tackled to the ground. They took it away–my beloved rapier–my lovely crescent-shaped appendage–they ripped it from me. They threw me in this here cell and called me insane. Alas, but they don’t know the pain and the desire which consumes me. And so here I oxidise slowly, in this damned asylum, they pity me as a waste of a lady. But one day I will escape–I will retrieve my blade and run away from here! I’ll stand under the moon and pine for it, pine for flesh, lust for blood and ohhhh will I find a way to be satisfied. I tell you I will.

Saturday evening brought me to the beach, no matter the season, weather, tide, or wind speed. It was a routine Jacob and I had followed religiously, but now I sat on the coarse sand alone and watched the swollen red sun sink into the horizon. The sea frothed and crashed upon itself, and I remember watching Jacob crash and froth with it while he tested the oceanic might with his surf board.
Which is why when I told them that the ocean had swallowed him one evening in December, they shook their heads sadly and tried to console me without asking questions.
We came in the evening because that was when the sea was its wildest, when the moon peaked through the dusk and bullied its slave. Whoever was still there watched as Jacob battled the strong waves as the daylight faded—they knew him as the Night-Rider. I would laugh tentatively because Jacob used to joke that the waves weren’t the only things he rode at night. more…