APPLAUSE by Shradha Umesh

The windows seemed to whisper to him, or perhaps he was just imagining things. 

It couldn’t even be called a window; more of an opening in the wall than anything else. Outside, the light had been leeched out, a thick darkness suspended from the sky like impending doom. Or blessing. Ravi couldn’t tell.  

They said his name was prophesied. He believed them. In retrospect it was a pretty obvious lie. They just wanted the drought gone and the rain to come back. The very fact that the attic was in the tallest point, on top of the tallest mountains, should have made his hackles rise. They had known that he wouldn’t come down. At least not all the way to Earth. Instead, they told him he only had to fight the demons in the attic, burn them all to crisp; he had after all been getting hotter. In return, they would offer him more water, more of the precious water that they barely had.

He was their hero after all. 

They kept saying he had to use the stairs. There was no other way of entering. The windows were too small. So, he had squeezed up the steps to the attic. His shoulders hunched at the space, the stairs barely holding his feet. 

Now, he laughed at how well they had tricked him, how they had convinced him to take this human form and walk up, into these four walls that seemed to absorb even the light of the sun. He looked at the window again, and laughed, of course it was dark. With him inside there was nothing to give them or the Moon light.

He didn’t understand. He really didn’t. Weren’t they the ones who had prayed to him, because the rains were too much? The water kept scooping away the forests, pushing sludges down over houses. Flooding fields, blocking roads. There was too much of it so they had begged him to dry it up. Now… now they wanted it back? And for what?

He had thought they liked him, worshipped him. Till yesterday they prostrated themselves before him, crying, begging. So, what had changed? Hubris perhaps? He had been too prideful; he had always been. He had let all their sweet verse get to his head. They knew if they couldn’t appeal to his sympathy then they had to only appeal to his ego. Oh, but how he had fallen! Icarus would laugh. 

The humans had never liked anything that threatened their sustenance, so they had locked him up. A prison in the sky. Isolating him completely so even the heavens wouldn’t save him. And he had been naïve, he had thought himself important, but all he had been was naïve. Shimmering golden and bright he had set out to be their hero, fulfil a prophecy, their endless myths, have them worship him more.

Now all he could do was sit there, rattling the windows sometimes imagining it was talking to him. Soon, however, they rattled on their own. With him gone the rain came, and so did the wind. He saw nothing, but he felt the wind, and the water seeping in through the cracks. It slowly drenched his flames, and the steam rose up in the small room, but it remained cold. 

He thought he heard laughter. He couldn’t be sure. It could be the people’s relief, but in reality, it was just the windows applauding as it witnessed the slow drowning of the sun.

Shradha Umesh is an aspiring author who spends her time watching anime and reading. She holds a degree in BA English Language and Literature from Mar Ivanios College, and lives in Kerala, India. She likes everything gloomy, and fantastical.