Village of the Blessed

The man sat outside his door looking at Mt. Seraf on the horizon. The brutal cold of the night wind did not bother him anymore and in the darkness nor did the shadows down the lone street of the village.

His son appeared at the door from the recesses of the small house and straddled on his lap. The boy was chilled to the bone. The man held him closer and quietly spoke in the child’s ear and they both laughed a little, perhaps for the first time in many days since the blackout.

It was at 3 pm exactly 95 days ago when the lights went out in the village of Talhor near the mountains. No one understood why it had happened and the officials did not provide an explanation. The citizens of Talhor sat in darkness for weeks and waited. This had never happened before and it took getting used to. Then the news trickled in that blackouts were happening in other villages too, the largest of these, Madgir, closest to Mt. Seraf in the northeast had plunged into a permanent night. Again, the officials did not know. A state representative finally appeared at the village square and announced that Lord Perma wanted his subjects to experience the blessings of the night for an extended period of time and hence the lights were cutoff. The man, like all the other citizens, did not question this idea. Of course, Lord Perma came before the interests of the people. It was due to him that they had lived in great prosperity for millenia. No wars, no famines, no injustice and no poverty. He had cured the human race of its poison.

But the man had never seen Lord Perma and nor did anyone else. The lord lived in complete obscurity and was possibly dead since no man lived for ages. He was a god whose name alone was worshipped and who had no surviving family. So it burned at the back of the man’s mind as to how a dead god was dictating orders for the people. No one questioned and everyone believed.

Two days later a procession of army trucks were seen passing through Talhor sometime after midnight. The cargo was gold-dusted transformers the size of a small hill. Someone said about two hundred of these were being taken in the direction of Mt. Seraf. The man thought this was curious. Why were transformers being brought in the middle of a blackout that was deliberately imposed as a way of spiritual cleansing for the masses? The mood, however, in the village lightened and gossip went round that these transformers would be used to solve the power crisis. Many questioned, and rightly so, what good came of transformers if there was no electricity to begin with?

The blackouts were now in their fifth month and it was clear that the transformers had not solved the problem, yet, in the dark of the night truckloads of transformers and steel cables continued to pour into the village and head to the mystical mountain in the far lands. The citizens prayed to Lord Perma and cries of repentance rang through the streets in the twilight. People had started to burn their electronic possessions in the large plaza on the outskirts of the village. Smoking piles of 6K televisions, penta-core computers, smartphones and digital glass among other paraphernalia lay waste in sacrifice to the god who had forsaken the sinners of Talhor. The village chief went a step above and burned his entire ‘smart’ home in the hills near the forest. It was his second home. Fortunately for him, his first house was brick and mortar where he now sat sulking as he stared at the burning skeleton of the newer home against the setting sun.

The man sat outside his home with his son, both quiet and both reminiscing of days gone, and watching the trucks roll into the village like a trail of ants. There were no jobs anymore and no one had to work. Lord Perma took care of the citizens by sending each person enough free money to last every month and more. Anyone who wanted to make more had the option of applying at their local electric station and a job would be created for them. Not many people did it and the ones that did would resign after a few months and return when they needed to earn more.

At that moment a rolling rumble went through the village. The man’s house shook for less than a minute and screams were heard from the street. The man knew this was not an earthquake and looked in the direction of the looming mountain. A faint blue glow seemed to radiate into the sky from the summit. Lord Perma’s wrath. An hour later, it happened again but this time no one screamed, instead prayers and chants were heard.

A serene mysterious calm fell upon the village after a while. The sound of forest animals and beetles in the bushes poured in through the windows now and then. The dark of the night seemed blacker than other days and the howling of the wolves in the valley were not heard as they always were. The man did not eat or drink, his appetite was lost in the gloom of the days past and he peered into the room at the back where his wife and son were trying to sleep restlessly. He walked out of the house and stood looking at the mountain. And then he thought he saw the sky light up again and silently in the horizon a large metallic dragon head, with brilliant glowing lights circulating down along the length of its giraffe-like neck made of curled and stacked transformers zapping threads of piercing current, shoot out of the mountain, linger and watch over the village, before dropping into the abyss on the other side.

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Copyright © 2021 Mizanur Rahman.

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Published by Mizanur Rahman, in the United States of America.