Indian Belly by Michael Castle (top 100 novels of all time TXT) 📕

with all our gear and went to the doors with Hannah. Angry alcohol fingers grabbed my arm and started speaking to me. I hacked a cough which didn’t seem to do anything except add a sore throat to the growing list of my ailments which now also included a sore wrist from alcohol smelling fingers. At least I knew where that little problem was coming from. I looked at the fingers unsteadily and explained to them between hacking coughs that they had my arm. This didn’t seem to do much and the fingers stayed were they were.
I tried a different tact. “Dude you have to speak English for me to understand what you want.”
“Mika, he is speaking English.”
By now the whole train was crowded around and yelling at the body the fingers on my wrist were connected to. He got a little closer and I knew then that I hadn’t imagined the alcohol smell and it was from the breath of the body of the fingers still connected to my wrist. I couldn’t understand what was going on but somehow I managed to release his hold on me and Hannah and I walked off the train.
I tried to think clearly but it wasn’t really happening so Hannah took the lead, although she wasn’t in a much better state than me. There were a few things that I could understand however, and one was the crowds of people coming up to me saying they had called the police and they had taken the man away. I tried to remember something about a man but the only thing clear was that a little earlier some fingers smelling like alcohol had been grabbing my wrist: nothing about a man came to mind.
People must have felt sorry for the sweating white couple as Hannah somehow managed to get us to the front of the rickshaw line.
Upon arrival at the hotel, I noted with faint surprise that it was swaying from side to side. I smiled happily. A swaying hotel, how fabulous.
The next thing I remember, it was morning.

Sickness (Day 1 – Year 26)
I woke up in a pool of sweat with a million angry fire monkeys burning my chest and throat and something or someone bounding up and down on me. I tried to fight off the fire monkeys whilst disentangling myself from the creature but all this did was worsen the situation. I fought for a breath which eventually came and attempted to scream out some freedom slogans.
I finally unraveled the situation to learn that Hannah was better, obvious by the fact that she was bounding around the room screaming out to the world that very fact. Myself, on the hand, was a completely different matter.
I rasped out a croak and a cough which I was convinced brought up some blood, but I was too scared to check the tissue in case I was right. Hannah heard that and fled from the room in search of breakfast. Food was the last thing on my mind and the thought of it just made me cough and sweat some more. I looked down at the clammy bed we had been sharing and almost felt some pity for Hannah. However all the pity I could muster at that point was well and truly reserved for me.
Somehow we had managed to be staying in a really clean and comfortable hotel, as opposed to a hostel. We even had about 100 channels of TV to choose from. I tried to make myself comfortable but that only produced more sweat and made the fire monkeys even angrier. So thus began a 12 hour TV fest. I didn’t even eat, the monkeys made sure of that.
I have been away from Australia for nearly 3 years and right about then I started missing home for the first time. Hot showers, English speaking people, a smog free environment, my mother, a ham and salad sandwich, clean clothes, clean streets, and the list went on and on. Instead all I got were Bollywood movies with the occasional 1980’s English movie thrown in.
At lunch time Hannah peered into the room.
“Hello,” I rasped, bored out my brains and feeling sicker than in my whole life.
Hannah and I both have an attention span of about 3 minutes. If we have to sit in one place for longer than that we get itchy feet and start to go crazy. The fact that we both suffer from the same affliction means that our friendship usually works quite well.
“Just checking to see if you are alright.”
“No I am not alright. I mean about 20 seconds before you came in, and I don’t care what any doctor says, my heart stopped beating for a minute.”
“Mika do you want something to eat?”
“I can’t eat! The fire monkeys are causing my heart to stop beating! Oh my god, I can’t even feel my heart at the moment.” I replied as I limply raised my hand to my non-beating heart for emphasis but all that did was cause a fresh bout of coughing and pain.
“Do you want anything?”
“Antibiotics. I don’t know what they do but I am pretty sure I have lots of biotics in my body at the moment and I don’t want them there. They make my heart stop beating.”
“Mika you need a doctor – you don’t even know what sickness you have.”
“Doctors, shmoktors. What do they know more than me? Not much and all they would say is that I am full of heart stopping biotics.”
She looked quite dubious but left anyway.
A little while later she returned. Staying within the safety of the hallway she threw in some antibiotics.
“Here, the man at the counter said these should make you feel better. They are called antibiotics.”
The only thing I could do was reply with indignant bouts of raking coughing.
The next 26 years were spent in that clammy bed and me not leaving our room. To calm the boredom I decided to go mad. It wasn’t so much a decision, as something that just kind of crept up on me in the dark. I smiled at the madness and gave it a grin.
I have always had a little secret respect for madness and being cooped up in this room wanting to die was as good a place as ever to go crazy. I mean, I could identify a lot with that crazy lady in Kerelar. I bet she had had these heart-stopping biotics. Biotics rhymed with frolics and frolics was a flying ham. I hadn’t eaten a flying ham sandwich before. I put a mental note down to purchase a frolicking ham the next time I became hungry. Delicious I was sure. Sure of what was wrong with me, those dastardly monkeys. Didn’t I love monkeys? Obviously fire monkeys are like fire ants, I mean everyone loves ants. I crept around the room trying to catch the frolicking ants with Hannah’s sh-norckle. I cackled to myself, revelling in the ant’s genius.
Every time Hannah entered the room, I did my best impersonation of a person without a secret. I was so proud of my secret that I let him hide under my bed, bringing him out only when I was alone. I fed him scraps of toast and praised him for his quickness and sneaking prowess.
The fire ants on the other hand became the scourge of the land. Land or lamb I couldn’t be sure, but I knew if I wanted to scourge something it would be lambs. Mmmm lamb chops. I soon suspected Mary had something do with lambs and she was mad. All girls were mad, just like Hannah was. Speaking of which, I vaguely noticed that Hannah had joined the madness craze but hers was all wrong. I mean I should know. I considered myself quite the expert at this madness thing by now. I made a diagnostic test of why her madness was all wrong. I tallied it up and showed the ants. They giggled to themselves and I quickly caught them with the sh-norckle before realising it just wasn’t cricket so I let them free again.
What Hannah was experiencing was the dark side of madness. The ‘go crazy at Mika for being sick and stuck in this town which contained absolutely nothing to do’ anger type madness. The secret and I chuckled at how crazy she was.
Sometimes the flying pig would bring on thoughts of my untimely demise, so I tried the whole positive thinking deal and tried to picture myself as an old man with grey hair and little kids running around the place and me rocking on the rocking chair yelling at the punk kids to get off my lawn. I would be telling them in no uncertain terms that when we were young we were not so punkish and didn’t have the luxury of these new fang-dangled hover boards and flying cars and gave our elders respect. I soon gave that up when all it produced was another bout of coughing, fever and sweating.
One morning the zoo, that had become my room, left me all alone so upon standing up and realising I didn’t feel all that dizzy, I proclaimed to Hannah that I thought I was finally getting better. As soon as I said the words ‘I think I am getting better’ the dizziness started again but by then Hannah had already packed both our bags and was grabbing the keys to leave. I didn’t really have much choice.
As we walked outside and hailed a rickshaw, I looked around and said, “Man there seriously is nothing in this place, it’s so dull.” The look she gave me could have melted stone. I decided it prudent not to press the matter, for the moment anyway. Imprint

Publication Date: 11-24-2009

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