Deepak's Mistake

Deepak's Mistake.

Snakes of hot air hissed upwards from the red baking earth. Deepak
licked a bead of sweat as it met with the corner of his mouth. It had
been a long journey but worth it - even in the backseat of an open top
people-carrier. He thought back to the moment he had waved farewell to
the old woman in the village. She'd had that strange look on her face,
whatever, he'd been smiling then and he was still smiling now. Life was
going well. Funny how things went; he'd travelled all over the world:
Italy, Africa, South America, Siberia even; it was almost surprising
that India had come so far down the list. It wasn't really as he had
expected though - it was dustier. Padhya village he had left was
certainly a dustbowl, just north of Orissa (another dustbowl) it would
take him at least a day to reach Calcutta again. He would need to hurry
up in order to catch the plane on Tuesday. Then it would simply be a
small matter of convincing the boys in the taste lab, another small
matter of convincing the board and lastly, and the easiest part of all,
convincing the rest of Britain. Not even that, he could bypass the
first two stages if need be. Everything seemed so easy now. Maybe he
was starting to become lazy? Apparently, nothing breeds laziness faster
than success. Nonsense, he wouldn't be here if he was lazy; he'd be
leaping into his Porsche and going home around now, still not long now.
All he had set out to do was find a recipe for an authentic new tasting
relish. Job done; his bonus was in the bag - he would think of the old
woman and her peculiar smile as he collected his pay cheque in a couple
of month's time. In the meantime, he let his hat drop further across
his face until the world more closely resembled a letterbox. The
people-carrier went over a bump and he grunted quietly.

Carol swore as she caught her shin on the corner of the low steel
trolley carrying the jars. How much longer before the end of the day?
If only she hadn't forgotten her watch. She was always forgetting her
watch. There should be a clock on the wall; all workplaces should have
a clock. She put another jar of relish up on the shelf. Her back hurt.
It must be nearly time to go.

Vod cursed Melchnik's message, this was it, this was war. Melchnik
swore when he saw Vod's message, he had gone too far, there was no
alternative but all out war. He finished stroking one of Marda's
seventeen undulating breasts and pressed the button that had spent its
entire life waiting to be pressed. `Vod did likewise; in a flurry of
pulsating yellow laser beams, Vod, Melchnik, Marda and all seventeen of
her breasts were no more, both planets were no more and everybody on
both planets were no more too. A puff of vaporised smoke coiled slowly
like a gigantic green slowworm through the outskirts of outer space.
One stray laser bolt which had arrived too late to hit everything
(everything had already been hit) continued to travel on its way.

Carol swore again. That was it for one night, time for home. As she
walked back to the staff canteen, one of the shop supervisors dimmed
the lights. "You off then Carol', he said.
'Yeah, only just, I didn't realise it was this late'.
'Last one here, not like you Carol'.
She didn't reply but cursed quietly under her breath and went to pick
up her bag. She left with the supervisor but declined a lift to the bus
stop. All was now quiet in the store. The jars of relish sat quietly on
the shelf. If anyone had tested them they might have realised that the
relish didn't taste quite as wonderful as Deepak hoped.

In the small dusty village of Padhya the old woman laughed again. It
was probably around the seven thousandth time she had laughed that day.
A yellow-billed mina bird mimicked the sound she made and laughed
back.

The laser beam travelled for several thousand million miles before
colliding with anything at all. The moment it connected with the exact
aisle in the supermarket, where the relish was stored, nobody was
within a three mile radius of the store.

Deepak woke suddenly in the night. He'd had a bad dream, it was one of
those dreams that you still half believe is continuing once you wake
up. he checked time glaring through the darkness in red neon numbers
like demon eyes. 3.45am.

The explosion emanating from the supermarket was magnificent. Coloured
lights and bands of flame whipped into the sky like sparkler trails
drawing flowers in the air. And with the random balls of fire surging
into the sky went all the groceries in the store. Not the relish; that
was far too potent and incinerated on the spot.

When Mr Mayers woke up the next morning he had a strange surprise.
There, waiting outside his front door was his usual weekly shopping of
two loaves of bread and three tins of sardines. He patted his dog,
Fuzzy, on the head. He'd made such a racket last night, it was a wonder
that he hadn't woken up the whole neighbourhood. Meanwhile, all up and
down the street other people were finding their shopping waiting
outside their doors or sometimes up trees and in hedges for that
matter. Mr Mayers smiled happily, he'd thought that they might have
forgotten his bacon but they hadn't. It did smell a little more smoky
than usual though.