Kaustubh Dudhane > Recent Status Updates

I’d never thought this would be my end: confined on all four sides by wood and stone. I’d always thought my end would come to me on the open ocean, by a storm, the arrows of Imperial soldiers or a knife between the shoulder-blades from the Ioph Carn. But I suppose death, like life, often doesn’t meet expectations.

One of the parents had told the Empire, and the Empire had set a trap for me. I was oddly flattered – they’d never tried to set a trap for me when I’d been a smuggler, which was probably why I’d been able to get away with that shipment of witstone.

Children often learned their trade from one of their parents, or at times from a close and trusted friend. But knowledge was meant to be shared, one generation to the next. Instead, my father locked it away from me, guarding it more jealously than he did the piles of witstone in his storeroom.

Drink was an easy way to make friends, and I wasn’t looking to make permanent or loyal friends of them. Just afternoon friends. Friends enough to pick their minds clean and leave them with the thought, “He was a nice fellow.” Enough to dissuade them from finding any Imperial soldiers stationed here as soon as I left.

Mephi crept over to me. He placed both paws on my knee, his whiskered face solemn, blood marring the fur beneath his mouth. “Not good,” he said in a squeaky, guttural voice. He patted my leg. “Not.”

A beating at the hands of the Ioph Carn I could handle. Being chased out of the harbor and losing the last of my witstone – that too it appeared was not beyond my abilities. But this?

One more life saved. It was a pittance, unutterably small against the scale of the lives lost. But it was there. And one life certainly made a difference to the one living it.

Chickens were relatives, natural allies, and they lived among the humans. We could get to the humans if we could free their birds! That was the day I became convinced of the revolutionary potential of the domestic barn chicken.

From a socialist viewpoint, your runs should be for the greater good, but the capitalist thinking is: the more runs you accrue, the better your team is.

Only in cricket could 39 beat 99.94 But Bradman was a calculator, and Trumper was all the colours of the rainbow. It is unfair to compare the two.

The entire thing was made to look more dramatic as Gavaskar had on a wide-brim floppy hat with padding inside instead of a helmet. With an early form of arm guard, wrist band on the other side and something tucked into his trousers that looked like a bandage from a First World War bunker, he looked like a character in a John Carpenter film.

Someone has painted a cover drive, or maybe that famed manual The M.C.C. Cricket Coaching Book has come to life.

The final touch to make it look like another era is the fact that the batter has a wide-brimmed hat and not a helmet.

This is the Indian Mithali Raj playing just one of her thousands of perfect and textbook cover drives.

According to a Sam Perry article in the Guardian about Lehmann’s coaching course when he was still in charge of Australian cricket, ‘The first point of his opening slide simply said “WTBC” (translation: “Watch the ball, cunt”), going to show that even the most elementary aspect of Australian batting now requires aggression.’ 😂

The idea was simple; pitch it on the stumps and jag it back into the pads. It meant that cricket became similar everywhere. But the MCC countered that with a change to the laws in 1957 that stopped fielding teams from having more than two players behind square on the legside (many people believe this law changed because of Bodyline).

But time was a resource they'd spent too freely, and now the bill was coming due with interest calculated in lives.

Hope was thin armor against the world's sharp edges, but sometimes it was all you had.

Tomorrow would bring recriminations and hard questions. But tonight, they had liquor and weed, lies and each other, and sometimes that was all the comfort cruel worlds offered.

Memory was malleable, especially when soaked in alcohol and fear.

The remaining crowd perked up like vultures scenting fresh meat. They loved Kon, but they loved watching friends hurt each other more.

Here, hope died choking on sweet smoke and bitter booze while men cheered. The floors were pre-sticky with yesterday's violence, the corners pre-darkened with a thousand nights of sin, everything pre-corrupted for efficiency.

I’m concerned my demonic possession isn’t running to schedule, isn’t a shareable issue.

Something about her smile made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I’ve met nasty people – and downright bad ones. Childhood bullies. Drug dealers. Strict teachers. That estate agent who still sends me his newsletter, no matter where I am in the world. But this woman’s eyes pulled me into a void from which the darkness stared back.

“You still haven’t told me what you need to go to Maracanda for.”
“It’s private.”
“You can tell me if it’s—”
“It’s not my doodle. It’s…my sinuses.”
My doodle had played a significant part in my demon story. It’s where all my good sense had been when I accidentally broke the fabric of reality and allowed the New Dark’s harbinger to slip into our world. I’ve since sworn to leave my doodle out of all major life decision

People stop thinking about you the moment they turn a corner. In a stranger’s memories, you’re a fart in the wind. Unpleasant but quick to disperse. The only ones that matter are your friends.

Her father had taught her that, routing greater numbers of brigands simply by having a couple of warriors approach the flanks of the enemy, blowing their horns and making as much noise as they could, while he charged in from the front.

All veteran warriors knew, when their hands and feet grew clumsy and their weapons heavy, to heed their body’s message – those who didn’t would die when they might otherwise have survived to fight again.

Rage erupted inside her, its burning need for vengeance welcomed, so long as she was its master, not its slave.

Glory doesn’t keep you warm at night. Glory does not regrow severed limbs and heal broken bones. Seeking glory only gets those around you killed, and even if you survived to bask in it, I promise you would come to regret that sacrifice.

The regent’s dog, Brutus, sat at attention beneath a hanging haunch of beef, ever hopeful for somebody to drop something he could steal and scoff down. The kitchen was his favourite place in the entire palace, for obvious reasons.

“So what if you are afraid of the dark?” she said. “I promise you, boy, you should be far more afraid of me and that assassin out there than any evil spirit.”

Briar scowled at the lazy little stinker, entirely envious of his morning nap. He cracked an eyelid and grinned in that particularly smug way animals do when they know they are winning at the game of life.