Another uncle died. This one belonged to a young man called Amit. Amit’s uncle was one of the nice ones, and he left Amit a house and money.

Amit made a trip to see the house he had inherited, to decide if he wanted to sell it or not. It turned out to be in a beach-side establishment of wooden buildings. Amit’s new apartment was in a corner—the only things between his door and the beach were the railing of the corridor and the fence of the compound.

Amit moved in as soon as he could.

The house, he found, was furnished entirely with wooden furniture, with the textures chosen to complement the grain of the walls. A large, full bookcase stood beside the door, covering almost the entire wall. Amit felt reasonably sure he could have an orgasm if he looked at it long enough.

Amit arranged his writing equipment on the table facing the only window in the living room, dumped his bags in the bedroom, and set out to meet his neighbour.

His neighbour, who went by the suitably exotic name of Dali, was a former telemarketing executive who had given up her profession to pursue sculpture. She soon warmed to her young compatriot in joblessness and decided to bequeath upon him knowledge of the neighbourhood bar.

Between drinks, she confided in him classified information of her ongoing struggle to persuade the bartender to get her contraband liquor from the West Indies. The bartender was tall, tattooed and called himself Starman. These three properties, as with any randomly selected trio of a person’s characteristics, were not directly related to each other, although Amit was sure he could find something that would link the three. In his drunken state, he declared it the Kevin Bacon of Starman’s psychsosomatic makeup. Amit then requested another drink, and Dali said he would get one if he could spell ‘psychosomatic’. Soon afterwards, Amit was in his bed and asleep.

He woke up the next day with a milder headache than might be expected, for which he was grateful to Dali. After a quick shower, he started unpacking. For Amit, the process of unpacking involved unzipping one bag. Every day, clothes would be extracted from it, until, approximately a week later, the bag would be empty and, so to speak, unpacked. Then he would move on to the next bag.

After getting dressed, Amit sat down in the middle of the living room, contemplating the crates full of books that he had brought with him. The contents of his uncle’s bookcase were fairly impressive for someone Amit unabashedly considered a layman, and at least half of those would have to stay. But the space created by removing the rest would not be enough for Amit’s books.

He stood up in front of the bookcase, crossed his arms, and mustered the most discerning-sounding voice he could manage.

“Now some of you,” he announced, “are going to be thrown out. I hope that you all find owners that appreciate your…charms. But frankly, I don’t care if a beach-bum burns you for baking burger-meat, because you are rubbish and I don’t give a fuck about you. The rest of you, however, are going to feel very, very loved.”

He set about separating and classifying the books on the shelves. Every one he felt interesting he kept to one side of the case, according to author and genre, and the others he threw on the floor.

He perused a particularly dull-looking book with an odd name, and threw it to one side. Then he heard a voice: “That’s actually a good book, you know. Throw this one out, if you like.”

He turned to see where the voice was coming from, and he found a hand holding a book in his face. The hand was attached to an arm that emerged from the bookcase.

“Um,” he said, and took the proffered book. The hand retreated.

Amit hurriedly removed all the books on that shelf to see if there was a hole in the wall.

“Up here,” the voice said.

He looked up to see a face that emerged from the wall. It was wooden, and it was blinking at him.

“Hello,” it said. “My name is Jackson. That really is a good book. I’ve read all the books here. Quite a few times, actually.”

“Really?” Amit noticed that Jackson’s lips moved like a human being’s.

“Yes. There isn’t much to do when you live in a wall.”

“True,” Amit said. “So you’re part of the wall?”

“Yes. If you remove the books on the lower shelves you can see my body.”

Amit did so. He stepped back, and saw that Jackson was an entire naked male figure that seemed carved out of the wall.

“I could wear clothes if this offends you.”

“No,” Amit said, after a little pause. “That’s alright. I need to go and have a cigarette, if you don’t mind.”

Without waiting for an answer, Amit left the flat and headed to the beach.

It wasn’t quite afternoon yet, and the sand was comfortably warm under Amit’s bare feet. He could see Dali near the water, walking with a friend. She saw him and waved. He waved back.

He smoked two cigarettes, and then willed himself to be calm, and went back in.

“So,” he said to Jackson. “Did my uncle know you were here?”

“Who? Oh, the old cigar-smoking man? No, he wasn’t that big on reading. Should you not seem more shocked? According to what I’ve read, this doesn’t seem a very normal thing to happen.”

“It isn’t. But one is philosophical.”

Jackson smiled. Amit noted that the wood crinkled around Jackson’s eyes, and it stretched like rubber where his cheeks were.

“So what do you do for a living?” Jackson asked.

“Nothing, really. I’m a writer, I live on other people’s money. What do you do?”

“I read.”

“I mean, what did you do before you came here?”

“I don’t know. I can’t remember. In fact, I can’t remember anything apart from what’s in the books here. I think my memory got replaced somewhere along the way. My name is Jackson because I like the way it sounds.”

“Seems reasonable to me.”

After the initial awkwardness, the two of them fell into an easy conversation. Later, Amit would sometimes be surprised at how easily this happened, considering he had never before in his life encountered anything remotely like Jackson. Amit found Jackson to be almost an intelligent naïf. He seemed to know anything that was written in any of the books on the case, but nothing else. Amit decided that not owning a computer wouldn’t be a big problem. When Amit was looking for a word or a piece of information that seemed almost within reach and yet intangible, he would tell Jackson, and they would, logically and methodically, gun down all other prospects to reach the correct one. Jackson seemed to find the process of creating non-existent possibilities to be quite exhilarating.

Soon, the sight of Jackson, with his chin on one shelf and his elbows resting on the one below, became a comforting presence for Amit. Jackson, in his turn, came to learn about privacy, and would judiciously disappear whenever Amit was in a particular mood.

Amit did not tell anyone—not Dali, not his friends in his far-off home-city, not his fellow sufferers from the old failed writers’ club he used to frequent.

“Who do you talk to, all day long?” Dali once asked him. “You don’t even have a phone yet.”

“Myself,” Amit answered. “I am a writer. I have to make notes. I have to write realistic dialogue.”

Dali shrugged. “Just don’t get too weird for your own good.”

Soon enough, as these things go, Amit started buying books he thought Jackson might be interested in. He would silently place them in a corner of the bookcase when he thought Jackson was not looking, and by the next day, Jackson had read them and was eager to dissect them. Amit had to get new bookcases to contain the old ones. He promised Jackson he would soon get a television, and lots of movies. Jackson liked this concept.

One morning, Amit chose a particularly delightful mood to wake up in. He whistled as he pottered around in the kitchen.

“You seem chipper today,” Jackson said.

Amit came into the living room with a cup of coffee. “Actually,” he said, “I am extremely nervous. I have come to a decision.”

He placed the coffee on his table, and headed over to the bookcase. He leaned his elbows on the shelf, like Jackson did so often, and brought his face close to Jackson’s.

“I think,” Amit said, “I am falling in love with you.”

Jackson was taken aback for a moment. Then a smile creased his face.

“How wonderful,” he said. “I have to say the feeling is quite mutual.”

Jackson reached out and held Amit’s hands in his own. They kissed. Jackson’s lips of polished wood felt odd and exciting to Amit.

Amit stood back and smiled. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a rose carved out of wood.

“A little gift,” he said, and gave it to Jackson. He also placed a set of new books on the bookcase.

“Enjoy,” Amit said. “I’ll be back in a little while.”

Amit left the flat, and jumped over the fence onto the beach. He skipped and danced for a few moments, then lay down on the sand and stared up into the morning sky, a smile playing on his face.

A shadow fell over him. “Hello,” Dali said.

“Hey there.”

She sat down next to him. “A penny for your thoughts,” she said.

“I am working out some logistics.”

“Logistics of what?” she asked, puzzled.

Amit thought for a moment. “Wood,” he said.

About the Author

Aditya Bidikar lives and loafs in Pune, India. When he started writing at the age of 11, he wanted to be Edgar Allan Poe when he grew up. He later found out how Poe died, and he then gathered bits and pieces of ambition to create a goal that did not include him dying in the street.

Aditya currently works as a translator and writes bits and bobs (including short stories and comics) in his free time. This is his first professional fiction publication.

He blogs at http://aditya.wordpress.com/. You can Follow him on Twitter.

He would also like you to read his comics at http://lafcomics.wordpress.com/.