River of Melted Chocolate – A Story by Mehreen Ahmed

River of Melted Chocolate

A full house at the movies did not deter more people from pouring into the theatre hall. They came in droves from every walk of life to watch a much anticipated movie, called Chocolate River. The wealthy, for paying more, sat separately in VIP lounges and the poor took all the front seats and sat in the passageways when there were no more seats available. Chocolate River, a horror movie, wasn’t just the regular gore and blood bath of a Viking wasteland of bones and skeleton-filled war-fields. It had been produced by a producer who had a penchant for movies with a spiritual bent. The characters were almost ethereal, who flaunted a sprite-like existence in abstraction so skillfully contrived that viewers only saw these characters mediated through marked footsteps on chocolate, melting into a river.

The viewers paid good money to watch this movie which was cutting edge, abstracting the spirit from the body, a performance which could be sensed through the delineation of a physical environment viewers were acutely aware of; it depicted a physical house, blue, with a red pointy roof, where people presumably gathered to have a party. Guests were arriving in all sorts of vehicles such as horse-drawn carriages, fiery chariots, busses, even electric cars, bicycles and scooters, scooting to this house. However, when the vehicles stood in front of the house, the viewers didn’t see anyone egressing or stepping out from these vehicles, parked as a sign of this gathering. Surely, those vehicles were driven by human hands and feet carrying passengers who should be all getting off or getting out at some point, now that they had been parked in front of the house for a while.

Inside the theatre hall people were eager to watch human bodies. They got increasingly restive, fidgeting sloppily at the front edge of their small seats. Those who had the cheapest seats tried to inch away from being crammed between people so closely that they could smell the body odours tickling their nostrils. As much as they wanted, they could not inch farther away sideways or forward without colliding into those sitting next to them. The only way out was to keep shifting from corner to corner, backward and forward in the cramped seats. With very little room to manoeuvre, some elbowed each other on a common armrest, causing rash, brash tiffs. For those who sat in luxurious VIP lounges, their distress was noted differently; they stood, slinking up and down the space, frowning, gazing at the white silver screen, sighing, then finally sinking down in the leather upholstered soft cushions, drinking red wine served on the house, occasionally holding the hands of kin sitting next to them; no wine or bread for the cheap seats up in the front.

A quarter of an hour had lapsed, and still, no sign of a human body was visible on the silver screen. The doors of the big house opened and closed. Opened again and closed again with a bang, as though turbulent winds had been appointed as watch guards to usher in the new arrivals. The house was soundproof. The outsiders, the viewers in the theatre hall heard nothing, only imagined what the insiders did or possibly could be doing. Even the walls didn’t seem to have any ears. All ears were tuned into the movie, but they heard nothing, let alone see what the guests were doing. Were they laughing, perhaps? Drinking, or maybe breaking into mayhem within those rooms of the blue house and pointy red roof, misbehaving, a full-on brawl. Dancing with the idiosyncratic Mad Hatter, romancing, supping with kings and queens, or sipping tea with scones and clotted cream?

It was hard to decipher. The movie was as colourless as a whiteboard, and characterless as chalk in its depiction of abstraction. Their vehicles, however, sparkled, which stood in defiance to this rare and odd masquerade. And the contrast was with gold-plated carriages, electric cars, and rubber wheels that the makers could lick. Speaking of which, the materials — gold, the densest metal of all, and copper and rubber that these carriers journeyed in, for up to a thousand miles — evidenced the fair bit it took to get here without any annoyance, through space and time, traveling to this resting place, where the party was being held, tonight. Now those vehicles were parked before this pointy house as the winds took the guests inside, one step forward, two steps backward, one step in, two steps out, swaying sideways in the wind currents.

How long the party was going to last was unknown. The viewers were clueless, and grotty. They felt they needed a break from watching this absurd story with no beginning or end. The beginning, a starting point, was impossible to figure out; infinity derived from non-ending circles. Still, there had to be a starting point where the movie was emergent. At which point, though? Did it even have a starting point? The viewers began to ruminate and doubt the film’s integrity, which held so much promise, that they had come in droves to watch this bold movie. Now, the novelty was thinning. The spectators felt like hostages to such a plotless, pointless movie without a proper premise. 

Were they missing something? In the VIP lounge, the VIPs grumbled over how it was such a waste of their time and money to buy these expensive tickets. They even began to make plans for a full refund. Instead of watching the movie they held a meeting to make the owner of the theatre hall accountable; to ask for a refund. If he refused, they would take legal action; sue the owner; drag him through the courts if necessary for subjecting them to this insanity. There was a unanimous outcry against the movie and the movie owner, both, in the upper and the lower halls.

It sure was courageous, however, just then the doors of the theatre hall also opened. A ticket man stood at the door beckoning the watchers. At first no one understood. Then he began to swing an axe as vigorously as he could to signal that he was ‘telling’ them to leave, not ‘asking’. The VIPs were told to exit first. They stood up and appeared on the door’s threshold. They blinked at what they saw. No less than the most incredible house from the movie stood before them — the big blue house with a red pointy roof floating over a melting chocolate river. Its doors shutting and opening. The golden carriages were still parked, so too all the chariots, the bicycles and scooters, the busses and electric copper-wired cars.

The ticket man told them to enter the house. They did, followed by those too from the cheap seats all the to the end of the hall’s long passageways. What became of them was now all over the silver screen. However, there were none to watch; the theatre hall had emptied.

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Multiple contests winner for short fiction, Mehreen Ahmed is an award-winning Australian novelist born in Bangladesh. Her historical fiction novel is a Drunken Druid’s Editor’s Choice. Midwest Book Review and DD Magazine have also acclaimed her works. Translated into German, Greek, and Bangla, some of her works have been reprinted, anthologized, selected as Editor’s Pick, Best ofs, top 10 reads multiple times, and nominated for Pushcart, BOTN, and James Tait. A reader, and juror for international awards, she has authored ten books. Twitter: @Ahmed2Mehreen

Banner Art: thru screens, a visual poem by Robert Frede Kenter. Twitter: @frede_kenter, IG: r.f.k.vispocityshuffle.