Matthew Kinlin: Five years on since the original publication, what motivated you to return to and expand the book into Midnight Double Feature: Director’s Cut?

Kenneth M. Cale: Sweat Drenched Press, its original publisher, asked me a couple of times to expand Midnight Double Feature, but I turned them down. However, we noticed there was an issue with the print-on-demand version of MDF, and, as we would have to do another proof anyway, I reluctantly said I would try to do something with it. Soon after that, I hit upon a structural idea which really excited me, and this version of MDF grew from there.

In the original, there were two cinemas, a sci-fi one and a horror one, with a double-bill playing in each. In the expanded version, the two new screenings doubling the length of the book. These are not new genres, though. These are the familiars of the original cinemas, and they share stylistic and thematic elements with the original ones. This gives a symmetry to MDF’s overall shape which wasn’t present in the original. It’s palindromic almost. MDF feels like a complete, finished work to me now. I was so glad C22 wanted to put it out after the demise of Sweat Drenched.

MK: You’re known mainly for digital collage and glitch art. Midnight Double Feature: Director’s Cut combines both handmade and digital collage. Can you talk a little about that?

KMC: A lot of the doubles in MDF are intentional, but something that wasn’t really planned was that the book marked an important change in my work, my transition from analogue collage to digital. The book is almost exactly is half and half. “Trapperkeeper” and “Time’s Wound” were the first wholly digital pieces I did. I remember being struck by the possibilities of glitch and digital and really excited by them.  I’ve been exploring those possibilities ever since.

MK: I liked the neon ENTER at the start of each section. It felt perverse and nocturnal, akin to something like the opening credits to Gaspar Noe’s Enter the Void or Club Silencio in Mulholland Drive. We are being ushered into a secret space. What were your intentions here?

KMC: A threshold for the dweller. The turning of a page as the opening of a door. Besides, what poet can resist a liminal space or two?

MK: In The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard writes, “When the image is new, the world is new.” The book opens with the beautiful line, “At night, these images slip through the skylight of the mind.” Can you speak about this impressionistic approach?

KMC: I guess the idea comes from Jess Walter’s novel, The Zero. In Walter’s novel, which is about the aftermath of 9/11, the main protagonist suffers from amnesia. The gaps in his memory echo the great holes in the ground where the Twin Towers used to be, and the events of the novel take place in the vicinity of Ground Zero. With MDF, though, it’s more the imagined trauma around a series of events may or may not have taken place. And as we move from cinema to cinema, we’re mapping out this psychic terrain. And as were in among the shadows and the fragments, an impressionistic approach felt the way to go.

MK: In The Book of Disquiet, Fernando Pessoa writes, “Everything around me is evaporating. My whole life, my memories, my imagination and its contents, my personality – it’s all evaporating. I continuously feel that I was someone else, that I felt something else, that I thought something else. What I’m attending here is a show with another set. And the show I’m attending is myself.” What are we watching in Midnight Double Feature: Director’s Cut?

KMC: The detritus of memory. Guilt or denial ravaging the mind like fire through a forest. The refusal to acknowledge your own actions and culpability. The mind has a way of revealing itself to itself, and if we choose to look away, it will find more engaging ways of bringing things to our attention. Here, that’s through the cinemas. We often watch shows or films as a distraction. But we can only distract ourselves so much for so long.

MK: I kept returning to this short line, “Now is collapsing.” It seems to capture the disruptive elements of your work. You later describe being, “Caught between non-word and non-thought. Between non-thought and non-image. So I linger.” How are you exploring the present?

KMC: The “Now is collapsing” line comes from “Outer Malad”, and that poem was partly inspired by Phillip K Dick’s novel, Martian Time-Slip. The present, or the very fabric reality as we know it, suddenly giving way like a sinkhole is a very PKD concept. Where he would externalize the exploration of that idea, I went internal. With MDF, when I was writing these poems, I felt a growing sense of darkness on the horizon and within us as a society, and I think these poems are exposing that darkness to the light in that hope of exorcising it.  Sadly, our daily lives have only accelerated further since these poems were written and that darkness has deepened. The information overload keeps in a constant state of flux, a low-grade feverishness too. I wonder what effect all that has on our psyches. How does this horror and chaos and misinformation we experience as we scroll through image after image on our devices impact us? We all know we could do more to stop these terrible forces who have wormed their way into power – how does our subconscious cope with our own complicity in their actions? These are interesting questions, and ones without easy answers. “Between non-thought and non-image” could be us continuing to hide; but it could also be the last sanctuary we have from the reach of these dark forces.

MK: Laura Palmer in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me looks at the ceiling and replies to Donna Hayward, “Why are you so interested in who I’m going to see at night? Night-time is my time.” What is your relationship to night?

KMC: An ambivalent one. I’ve always been attracted to cityscapes at night. I spent about five years living in Asia, and one of my favourite things was exploring cities like Seoul and Osaka when the sun went down. I loved the neon and night air, and I think that’s had a huge impact on my collage aesthetic. On the other hand, I’ve suffered from periodic bouts of insomnia for as long as I can remember, so I’ve spent many nights lying in bed unable to shut off the thought-tap. It’s probably why I’m such a fan of Beckett. I see a lot of Beckett and insomnia in MDF.

MK: William Gibson opens Neuromancer with, “The sky above the port was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel.” Your writing has a dayglo feel with descriptions such as, “u were a fever of fever of brilliante, minarets, coin slots.” There’s a similar blurring of the biological, technological and erotic in your glitch art. What is the appeal of these accelerated elements?

KMC: I’m not sure. I never go into the creation of collages with a preconceived idea of an overall composition, or even with specific images in mind. Usually, I’ll just flick through photos until I come to one that grabs me, then work quickly and instinctively from there. Of course, there will be things you gravitate towards more than others – certain images, colours –but I really try not to question or overthink things. I’m often surprised by what I come up with. I attempt a similar thing with the poems, but the process is slower and more exploratory, the editorial voice harder to please.

MK: The goddess Venus appears throughout Midnight Double Feature. What is her role?

KMC: Right now, I see Venus as a kind of Virgil figure to whoever our Dante is in MDF, guiding them towards integration, or oblivion, or both. But my thoughts on Venus change each time I come back to the work.  

MK: This expanded Director’s Cut of Midnight Double Feature features an ending that substitutes J.G. Ballard’s Marilyn Monroe, scorched with radiation burns in The Atrocity Exhibition, for Michelle Williams. You describe, “Michelle Williams supine across Martian landscape. Michelle Williams as landscape.” Can you discuss the coda?

KMC: “Coda” came from watching a film called My Week with Marilyn. In that film we are watching Williams, who experienced the tragic loss of her husband Heath Ledger only a year or so before filming this movie, playing another tragic figure, Monroe, shortly after she suffered a miscarriage in her own life. There are many echoes and reverberations going on there, but I think the poem is mainly about our relationship to the 20^th Century. In The Atrocity Exhibition, it’s important to remember that Monroe and Reagan and Kennedy were all contemporary figures when Ballard wrote it. Reagan, for example, wouldn’t even be president for another decade or so after those chapters were written. So – why not use a contemporary actress like Williams for the landscape instead someone like Marilyn Monroe, who died decades earlier? We need to investigate contemporary figures imaginatively to make sense of the world around us, to fully understand what we’re dealing with. Also, I think there’s a need to get out from under the 20^th century and its ideas, “the doldrums of past imagination”. Although we’re 25 years into the 21^st century, it feels like we are still operating within the framework of the 1900s, still playing by its rules in material ways. It’s like we’re so spooked by the present, we’re afraid to look to the future, and so we end up looking backwards, and holding onto these mid/late-20^th Century cultural icons like Monroe or The Beatles like talismans, hoping that they will somehow how lead us unscathed to the 50s and 60s in this century, rather than properly confronting the past as it manifests in our present. Obviously, by heavily referencing The Atrocity Exhibition, a book written in the late 1960s, there’s a fair bit of irony going on in “Coda” too.

MK: Lastly, if you could screen a double feature at the end of the world, what two films would you show?

KMC: Tarkofsky’s Nostalghia. Jim Henson’s Muppet Treasure Island. 

This chapbook may be ordered here from C22 Press.

Matthew Kinlin lives and writes in Glasgow. His published works include Teenage Hallucination (Orbis Tertius Press, 2021); Curse Red, Curse Blue, Curse Green (Sweat Drenched Press, 2021); The Glass Abattoir (D.F.L. Lit, 2023); Songs of Xanthina (Broken Sleep Books, 2023); Psycho Viridian (Broken Sleep Books, 2024) and So Tender a Killer (Filthy Loot, 2025).

from Symphony No. 13
(deconstructed idyll idol)
from Insignificant Figures

A form extant
a slow movement through dissonance
sonorities sought in faces staring from inside
the framed photo
uncertain
partitions terminating
a past
in a blur the eye returns to observe
a door open
intermittent light
and other faces
unravelling sparrows
caged in memory
threadbare fragments
leaving forms
tenuous if
barely discernable
footsteps and voices
orchestrating the environs
a room surrounding
a quantum fog
greyed out
embers
iron filings
and a blank wall as a presence
to reflect
the edge of a frame eschewed
time aligned to gravity’s passage
to synergistic perturbations
of a theoretical singularity
cosmic veils in flesh and bone stalemates in blood and cellular stigmata
and to
define this space
as elemental
to observe
an open doorway
light traversing corridors
a sift through
sallow interiors
windows as grey
overtaking the blue
or to speak of one
who is immune
to these changes
surpassing the blood
brain barrier
to usher in
speculative destiny
a surrounding spatial waste
a singularity sought
in all but a physical constitution
a palliative depth
that remains the unplumbed
hinged mechanism
rusted over
…
+++++++++++++++++

Substances to differentiate
a vase
a ledge
a table of chairs
an unopened door
holes in the floor
and sun elongating

two rectangular voids
in a brick façade
“and that we have found

ourselves here again
removed into
an intimate echo’s
effacement of days
landscapes and the horizon
a world of imaginary numbers
having only half heard
a parody of voices
a colloquy of memories
a dissolving into worlds
indistinct and made
nameless by fate”
in this a song
reaching beyond touch
maybe another
dimensional plane
abstract musings
dissonance and counterpoint
a Bach fugue
resonating sublimity
points and promontories
of relativity
a widening berth
to turn the ship
unobserved through the window
a crescent moon arisen
silhouetted winter branches
and hearts given
the confines of loneliness
assembled in rooms
two by two
talking of worlds
that intimately refuse
to cohere to sight
to repeat the many words
that have since been deemed
as inarticulate as shadows
angled on walls of flaking paint

The glimpses of a nothingness
conceived in flimsy husks of faith
fated nocturnes
recalling a logos lost
behind a fence
-line’s
torso
-moon drift
altering the presence
of a Sunday morning
where they are talking of the dead
rising on the final day
where a relative measure
is to be achieved
with the intervention
of myth or fact
negating Einstein’s law
or in a garden of olives
where Christ is said to have wept
here a variable has been
removed from an equation
the perpetuation is
an unknowable hypothesis
as the sun recedes
on the ecliptic
the season draws down
a solo oboe through the fabric
constituting an aspect
in a continuum
hidden in plain sight
another anomaly of presence
a synthesis of elements
flowers in a vase
ocean through a window
aspects of objects
sooner seen
dispersing on a landscape
or through the alcove of a room
prayers to invisible demigods

penitent rags of fleshly supplication
clinging to internal deserts
and this draining aridity
surrounding every heartbeat
its reticent ocean
a choral ecstasy
hymns to the unborn
held in limbo’s cellular memory
a non
-terrestrial realm
coalescing forms
in a stasis of voices
…
++++++++++++++++
from
Fractal Labyrinth

33

Descriptions
forged in temporality
hazy sun
through grey clouds
each moment’s duration
a change in perception
too many variables
where place names
abandon a landscape
where the lay of the land
follow
s contours
through lines of sight
through annular spaces
in the flux of the irredeemable
quantum occurrence
or the mnemonic concretions
that travel from the past
an altered awareness
negating the clockface
and its ageing manifestation
the habituated intransigence of place now in an oblique presence…the present

returning through the (r)evolving door
hazy sun
through grey clouds

34

This window
seems less comprehensible
for all it refuses
to let in
though there is no mystery to this
no clock to denote
the arrival of entropy
entering the terrestrial environs
no hesitation to exit
through the doorway
to emerge onto an empty landscape
to know no objective reality observation cannot resolve
no primordial
beat of the heart
at birth
leaving only conjecture
to work through
the physicality of space
the atoms existing
in the absence of thought
in the opacity of images
in the subtle echoes sounding
in the slow drain
through clutter and accumulated debris
through the inaudible illusions
sufficient in their being
apart from what the eye can resolve

35

Noting these clouds
…

before the sun sets
and that there will be no equilibrium
to the visions entering
the darkening room
no transparency allotted
to the opaque eye
moored to the precision
of a physical existence
and in this room
there are stains on the wall
facing north
one can detect
magnitudes in flux
complications of structure
dimensional boundaries
that ebb and flow
and grayed spaces
retained for faces of the dead…
toward what end
is it needed
to return here again
to extinguish the candle
to bleed an intoxicating breath
into a sacrosanct realm
to feel beneath the epidermis
fractal bits of vibratory echoes
a consciousness of voices
without breadth
without blood
without
a physicality of decay

In 3 Minutes of Listening

The beat

of this country

is near

everlasting

bells ringing long ago

and now

the brokenness healing

blowing down walls

and hearts bursting open

with glorious endless love

seeing

through the trees

branches open to all of us

even when we cut them down

treehouse built by Daddy

for children touching the sky

with dreams of flight

and no fear of falling

cloud pillows

and flying carpets

when our fathers leave us

by dying on the vine

we will sob within ourselves

growing older

in a world whirling too fast

until we realize

not fast enough.

Sacrifice

Books opened

to torn out pages

wondering why someone did that

when trees died

to make the paper pages

and sometimes the ink

made with blood…

Wisdom

My 93-year-old mother laughs

and my wife does a dance

in the center of the living room

as 3 old people remember

there’s more to come.

The Purity of Vivian Maier


Vivian D. Maier (1926–2009) was an American photographer whose work was discovered and recognized only after her death. During her lifetime she took more than 150,000 photographs. She is not known ever to have shown them to anyone.

No hail to fame, not even a shy
nod to sharing, it would seem.
Just her own small delight;
the tough love of light.

A photograph? 
Not a serious thing
when she was young and taking,
as they say, pictures:
mere proof of fact,
magnet for fashion magazines,
hook on the local newspaper stand,
damning piece of evidence,
tool for advertising,
and glamour’s sinuous liar;
captive in a web of shadows,
bare, brutal, impossible
almost to deny.

The only one invisible,
the photographer,
capturing reality
in a little black box.	

Maybe that was why
Vivian Maier, governess,
lover of children, 
caregiver, one of the
perpetually invisible,
slightly awkward
with her black magic box,
took all those photographs—
the crowds, the streets, the mansions,
the disillusioned sidewalks,
the phantoms of the alleys,
the secrets blazoned to every sun,
the hands, the faces, the entire world—
in secrecy and stealth even
the shadow of herself;
the ephemeral caught 
in amber—
to capture, to master,
in pure little rectangles of joy
with her invisible eye.

_____

Christopher Bernard’s book The Socialist’s Garden of Verses won a PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award and was named one of the “Top 100 Indie Books of 2021” by Kirkus Reviews.

BENEATH THE WORDS
by Haroon Rashid

Creation does not begin with a word,
but with stillness
a pause, before the rush,
before the world insists on speaking.
It begins with the quiet observation
of a world moving without permission
a leaf, stubborn in its fall,
a cloud folding into another,
a glance exchanged across crowded streets,
never to be remembered.

Stories live in what is not said.
The visible is but a fragment
what matters lies hidden,
beneath the surface.
Like an iceberg,
its strength resides in the unseen,
where shadows move in silence
and thoughts drift like forgotten tides.

To write is to observe,
not merely to see,
but to feel
the weight of a shadow on a hot afternoon,
the ache of silence between words,
the whisper of wind through ordinary things,
the sigh of trees that have witnessed lifetimes.

Language is not decoration.
It is the pulse of the soul.
Every phrase must earn its place,
must be sharpened against the stone of truth,
must tremble with meaning
each syllable a heartbeat,
each line a breath caught in the throat.

An ending should not close
it should linger,
softly, like a thought that refuses to fade,
a door left ajar,
letting the mind wander,
finding its own way out.

There is no beauty
without attention
no truth
without the courage to face it.
No art
without the risk of vulnerability,
the surrender to what we do not know.

What we create
is not for applause,
but for connection
so that someone,
somewhere,
feels less alone,
when they find their own heart
hidden in the spaces between lines.

The work is not to impress
it is to remember,
to reveal,
to reach.

And if nothing golden is found,
then let the ink bleed honestly.
Let the silence speak.
Let the page carry the weight
of what we dared to feel.

Because in the end,
what matters most
is not how beautifully we wrote,
but how deeply we made someone stop
breathe
and remember
that they are not alone
in this vast, unspoken world.

— Author Haroon Rashid

ABOUT HAROON RASHID

Haroon Rashid is an internationally celebrated Indian author, poet, and humanitarian whose soul-stirring words transcend borders, cultures, and languages. Revered as “a movement of thoughts” and “a soul that breathes through verses,” he is a global ambassador for peace, education, and sustainable development. Through literature, he fosters empathy, cultural harmony, and a collective vision for a better world.

KEY LEADERSHIP ROLES
• Global Ambassador & International Member, Global Federation of Leadership & High Intelligence A.C. (Mexico)
• SDG Ambassador (SDG4 & SDG13), World Literary Forum for Peace & Human Rights
• National Vice Chairman, Youth India – Mother Teresa International Foundation
• Peace Protagonist, International Peace Forums – Mexico & Greece
• Honorary Founding Member, World CP Cavafy

AUTHOR & LITERARY CONTRIBUTIONS
• We Fell Asleep in One World and Woke Up in Another – poetry book, translated by 2024 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Eva Petropoulou Lianou
• Author Haroon Rashid Quotes – A soul-deep treasury of reflections
• Works translated into: Greek, French, Persian, Urdu, Arabic, Chinese, Tamil, Hindi, Sanskrit, German, Indonesian, Bolivian, and more.

GLOBAL HONORS & AWARDS
• Diploma de Honor al Mérito – Mexico (2025)
• World Art Day Honor – Indonesia (2025)
• Friedrich von Schiller Award – Germany
• 4th World Gogyoshi Award – Global Top Vote (2024)
• 1st Prize – Silk Road International Poetry Exhibition (2023)
• Golden Eagle Award – South America (2021 & 2023)
• United Nations Karmaveer Chakra – 2023 & 2024
• REX Karmaveer Chakra – Silver & Bronze – India
• Global Peace Award – Mother Teresa Foundation (2022)
• Cesar Vallejo Award – UN Global Marketplace
• Honorary Doctorate in Humanity – La Haye, France (2021)
• Sir Richard Francis Burton Award – European Day of Languages
• Prodigy Magazine USA Award – Literary Excellence
• Certificates of Honor – Greece, Serbia, Indonesia, Mexico
• Honorary Award for Literature & Arts – Trinidad & Tobago

GLOBAL PRESENCE & RECOGNITION
• Invited Guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show
• Featured in O, The Oprah Magazine
• Speaker at:
• International Peace Day – Mexico & Greece
• 3rd International Congress of Education – Mexico
• Paper Fibre Fest – Represented India in China, Greece, Mexico, Peru
• UN SDG Conferences, Global Literary & Peace Forums
• Work featured in education campaigns, peacebuilding initiatives, and cross-cultural literary dialogues
• Admired by global celebrities, educators, artists, and policymakers

CULTURAL AMBASSADOR OF INDIA
• Embodies India’s timeless storytelling, spiritual ethos, and peace traditions
• Bridges Indian philosophy with global consciousness
• Revered as an ethical thought leader, visionary poet, and global voice of unity

PHILOSOPHY & SOCIAL VISION

Literature, for Haroon, is a sacred space for:
• Healing, empathy, and consciousness
• Advocacy for:
• Mental Health Awareness & Emotional Resilience
• Climate Action & Sustainability
• Spiritual Depth & Interfaith Harmony
• Youth Leadership & Cultural Preservation

He aims to inspire changemakers, dreamers, and peacemakers across generations.

GLOBAL PRAISE & LOVE

Described as:
“A movement of thoughts.”
“A soul that breathes through verses.”

Celebrated across Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas, Haroon is loved for his:
• Authenticity
• Emotional depth
• Literary brilliance
Honored by governments, universities, and global literary councils.

TITLES & GLOBAL IDENTITY
• Global Literary Icon
• Award-Winning Author & Poet
• International Peace Advocate
• Global Educator of the Heart
• Cultural Diplomat & Ethical Leader
• SDG Voice for Education & Environment
• Voice of Peace, Passion, and Purpose

QUOTE BY AUTHOR HAROON RASHID

“It’s our responsibility to create a better world for our future generations.”

CONNECT WITH HAROON RASHID
Follow and engage across all platforms:
@AuthorHaroonRashid
(Facebook, Instagram, X/Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Threads, and more)

A strange octet

He carried a cage

with nothing in it.

A small bird.

Thalidomide wings.

Flew quite delicately.

Mouth open. Mute.

A beautiful song.

It carried the cage.

The Roberta Flack CD

In the evening, in

between the hisses

of the lawn sprinkler

on one side & the

airconditioner on

the other (where

some southerners

have moved in &

are having trouble

adapting to the heat)

L. puts a Roberta

Flack CD on &

in the evening

Suzanne takes my

hand & leads me

to a place near

the river where

there is otherwise

silence.

Panodrama

The sea comes up

out of the sea &

washes the city with

a green light. It is

a kind of symbiosis

that allows street-

lamps to also shine

through as a contin-

uous but black by-

product of an alter-

nate reality in  which

many things that might

still exist will take on

a different color to

how most people

will remember them.

manganese petit mal

Despite the low penetration

resulting from bitumen aging,

& the fact that photo-oxidation

can speed up that aging process,

the takaful industry continues

to be nascent. Cyber cover is

making strong inroads into trad-

itional insurance; &, oh boy, don’t

those beef tenderloins look amazing!

A line from John Sandford

Today we emptied the pond. It’s

an active & intentional skill that

can help reduce the body’s res-

ponse to foreign invaders. Many

people have experienced the

strong connection between stress

& the absence of things bucolic.

The countryside was nothing but

farms at first, but later augmented

by Sisley’s artistic interludes from

Moret-sur-Loing. Thus the trail

we leave behind becomes precise.

As the Crow Flies

There’s a saying in English:

“As the crow flies.”

It means a straight path—unbending and direct. Apparently, crows love to fly in straight lines. They aren’t troubled by bends or barriers, not like us earth-bound beings facing obstacles at every turn. And unlike airplanes, crows aren’t bound by strict navigation systems.

In practice, this idiom often shows up when talking about routes—be it literal or metaphorical. But walking or living as the crow flies, my friend, is not an easy job at all. Sure, you know a straight line will get you to your destination faster, but can you really glide across homes, crowds, fences, and ponds just because you want to follow a straight line? Can you thumb your nose at every twist and turn in life and embrace the simplicity of the straight path?

It’s a familiar question. And its answer isn’t unknown. A simple life is delightful—but becoming simple is a terribly hard thing. And yet, sometimes, miracles happen. Like a sudden spring that paints black tar roads in fiery hues of Palash flowers. Then, and only then, the path becomes like that of the crow—straight and unhindered.

What’s that? Things are getting too tangled? Alright then, no more delay—let’s begin the story.

                  ***************

That day, Prabir was getting ready for office, as usual. He was caught in a whirlpool of tasks and thoughts. In the middle of this rush, his phone rang. He clicked his tongue in annoyance. Unknown number.

He picked it up, irritation evident in his voice:

“Hello? Who’s speaking?”

No response.

“Ugh!” He was about to hang up—when a low, grating, mechanical sound came through.

Then, a hoarse whisper:

“Prabir! Son, don’t go out today! Today is… different. Stay home.”

Who on earth calls to say nonsense like that during busy office hours? He was just about to snap back when the line went dead.

No time to waste. There was an urgent group meeting at work—being late could be disastrous.

He grabbed his car keys and left. But something unsettling had lodged in his mind.

Who had called? What were they trying to say?

The voice… it sounded familiar. But he couldn’t quite place it. His mind grew absent. A faint melody seemed to rise near his ears—first just a murmur, then clearer:

“Life’s no longer straight and narrow / Laughter today is just borrowed / I survived—but barely so…”

It was true. Life was tangled in needless complexity. Work, more work, and more work. Always running. No time to pause, to notice the magic in the ordinary.

Chasing deadlines and targets had left him drained.

Stuck in traffic, he reflected on all this—until suddenly, his senses snapped back.

The world around him had changed, as if by magic. No traffic jam ahead. No bustling crowd on the sidewalks. No weekday chaos. And he wasn’t even driving—but the car was speeding ahead on a silent, unknown road, straight as an arrow. Was this possible? Or a nightmare?

He pinched himself.

“Ow!”

Nope, he was wide awake.

Then, like a flash of lightning, he remembered—

That voice earlier? It had been his uncle Hari. Uncle Hari, who had died five years ago from a terminal illness!

A chill ran down his spine. Was danger approaching? He tried desperately to control the car—but it was no use. He had no control. No one around. Even if there were, who could stop this possessed vehicle? Still, by instinct, he screamed:

“Help! Help me! Please, for God’s sake—help!”

Just then, he noticed a young woman sitting beside him.

Masked.

Her eyes caught his attention—intense, magnetic. Even amid this chaos, they captivated him. Her gaze held sorrow. A deep, distant sadness. She reached out to the steering wheel. With a mere touch, almost magically, the car slowed a little. Still racing forward, but calmer now.

Prabir, voice shaking, asked:

“Y-you… how did you get here?”

She stared at him, wide-eyed, sharp-toned:

“What do you mean how? You were the one yelling your lungs out—Help me! Help me!

And now that I’ve come, instead of saying thank you, you’re interrogating me?”

She pulled down her mask. Her face clouded with a storm of hurt.

Prabir cleared his throat awkwardly:

“Sorry, sorry! You’re right. I forgot myself completely. The way this morning’s been going—my head’s about to explode. Anyway, thank you. Thank you so much.”

She stayed quiet, lips pursed. Then said in a choked voice:

“Forget it. You’re only thanking me because I pointed it out. Otherwise you wouldn’t have.”

Then came the downpour. Rain matched her heavy sighs as she went on:

“I always try to help people. Always. But people… they misunderstand me. They say awful things behind my back. Smile to my face, then betray me.I don’t need anyone. I have no friends.”

Prabir was in a proper fix now. The haunted road. The possessed car. And now, this mysteriously appearing girl filled with sorrow and magic. But it was true—if she hadn’t slowed the car, he might have had a heart attack by now. Her sadness touched him.

Gently, he said:

“Hey… don’t be sad. We’re friends now.”

He extended his right hand for a handshake. She looked at it suspiciously. Then wiped her eyes and took his hand. A soft smile spread across her lips.

“You seem like a good person. That’s why I came when you called for help. Okay, then—we’re friends from today.”

The car was now cruising gently along the straight road.

Another change:

Earlier, the road was flanked only by thorny shrubs. Now, silk cotton and gulmohar trees lined the path, ablaze with red flowers. Even the black tar seemed to blush with their hue.

Prabir hesitated a bit, then asked:

“Yes. Definitely—we’re friends. But tell me something. What is happening to me? The car is driving itself. You showed up out of nowhere. How did you hear my call for help? And how did you enter this locked car?”

The girl laughed, like a waterfall—clear and musical.

Then said:

“You really don’t know? Well, just like crows fly—Sometimes, humans get to travel that way too. Not everyone. But some. On very special days. Like today—you got the chance. As for how I knew? And how I entered the car? We can do that. Such things aren’t difficult for us.”

Her voice had regained its sweetness—but her words were strange.

Prabir stammered, “N-now w-who’re we?”

She replied, quietly, seriously:

“I’ve never told anyone this. I won’t again. We are the forms of consciousness—the Chaitan-rupis. Those for whom rainbows rise even in deserts. We are they. Keep this secret. You can’t trust everyone like you. Usually I lock my heart in a vault. Too many spoil it. Not everyone’s like you.”

Prabir didn’t fully understand. He just laughed awkwardly and scratched his head.

After that, they passed time chatting. Prabir lost track of how long. Then, suddenly, the car stopped. Grotesque figures—half-human, half-beast—stood blocking their path.

They circled the car, leering and making obscene gestures at Prabir and his mysterious companion.

Yes, Anamika—that’s what Prabir had decided to call her in his mind. Maybe she isn’t ordinary and somewhat uncanny. But she is good. 

The grotesque cheers of those hideous humanoid figures had nearly deafened the two of them. Anamika had been quite composed until now. But suddenly, she seemed to shrink inward. Tiny tears streamed down her cheeks. Prabir’s heart ached too, but his jaw tightened with resolve. He held Anamika close with both arms. 

A few words escaped his lips.

“Don’t be sad at all, Anamika. Why should you let people who hold no place in your life, good or bad, hurt you? Don’t let them make you sad. Just imagine you’re watching a film. They’re all acting. So don’t let it get to you.”

The girl wiped her eyes and softly said,

“Anamika… what a beautiful name! I really like it. And now I’m no longer sad. Because you’re here—as my friend.”

The car had started moving again, gathering speed. Those grotesque human-like figures had been flung far behind. A few tried to chase after the car—but failed to catch up.

In a tone of mock regret, Prabir said to Anamika,

“Looks like I’ve lost my job!”

Anamika replied,

“You’ll find another. But if you hadn’t come this strange way—like a crow in flight—we’d have never met. What would’ve happened then?”

Prabir gave a soft smile and nodded in agreement. As the crimson glow of the setting sun stained the horizon, his lips gently touched Anamika’s forehead.

The car kept gliding forward in a soothing rhythm—straight and steady. Just like a crow flies!