Twinkle extended a long, delicate manicured index finger towards the floor and shrieked:“Telapoka!

Telapoka!”

Belal got down on one knee and closely inspected the rather large cockroach on the mosaic floor of Twinkle's apartment. Shiny golden markings in the shape of eyes on big, thick black wings. Its mouth and forelegs worked feverishly on a neonorange nugget, crumb of a dropped Cheeto. Antennae twitching in spasms. Spasms of pleasure? thought Belal to himself, I wonder do telapokas like cheese flavouring?

Belal crushed it under the heel of his right shoe in a single movement.

He thought briefly about how people always said that cockroaches could survive a nuclear holocaust and after the last human cities were naught but dust and ashes they would still crawl the earth. “Survive that,” he said aloud.

Twinkle swooned and rested her head against Belal's neck, saying breathlessly, “Oh! Belal you're so brave! I don't know what I'd do without you!”

Belal smiled. I am the man. Most beautiful woman in all of Dhaka city, television star, former Miss Bangladesh and all entirely belonging to me and no one else for three months now. I am the man. Her perfect face, her softpink lips nuzzled against his neck. “Why don't we go to your bedroom?” he suggested.

Twinkle looked up at him with big innocent eyes and said demurely, “We can do that.”

Belal's body stretched out on Twinkle's luxurious silk double bed. He kissed her and reached with his hand into his back pocket but failed to find what he was looking for. Oh hell! Can't believe I left that at home. Oh well, he thought resignedly, can't make the beast with two backs without my trusty latex membrane.

“I forgot to bring a condom,” he said sheepishly. Twinkle sighed and said, “Why don't you go down to the store next door and get one? I'll wait for you.”

Belal put on his shoes and sprinted

down the stairs of her apartment block.

***

Dr. Big Gyan deftly put on bifocal lenses and felt the smooth baldness of his head with the tips of his fingers. He heard the ceiling thump as Belal brought his foot down on a cockroach. Blasted TV actress, he thought, always these big, noisy parties, always all these men coming in late at night.

Before him, in the centre of his Secret Lab, stood his greatest creation. The Fusion Machine, the Hybr-a-tron 5000, the BioUltraUnifier. He couldn't decide on a name, but he knew it worked. Oh yes! Take any two--and this was important only two, never one or more than two otherwise it wouldn't work--animals, place in the blue chamber of the machine, seal the door and pull a switch and Zap! the two would be one, a hybrid of both. The possibilities were endless--dogmen, whale-fleas, monkeytigers, armies of Royal Bengal Tigermen, catwomen sex slaves, aerial chariots pulled through the air by sturdy moth-horses.

Better yet, you didn't need whole, live animals. A corpse or even the smallest fragment of one was enough as long as the other was whole and alive. Dr. Big's mind was dizzy with the possibilities--resurrection of dead tissue, mix dinosaur DNA preserved in amber with a Komodo dragon, an army of hybrid clones of himself using his own toenail clippings

The results of his first test-run of the machine stood caged in one comer of the lab--a mosquito mouse, a dogroach (particularly hideous, Dr. Big Gyan shuddered to think of what a manroach would look like and silently vowed never to put man and cockroach together in the machine) and a goldfish-crow swimming in a glassbowl. The goldfish had until recently belonged to his 7-year old niece.

The machine was out of power now. Not enough juice, he thought. Where's that useless boy? Tell him to get batteries. Ha, ha--he won't be useless after I'm through with him tonight. Ha, ha, ha, ha!

“Sumon!” he shouted, “Where are my Plutonium Power Paks? I need juice, energy for the engines of my genius!”

Dr. Big Gyan's docile assistant Sumon entered, stumbling under the weight of two heavy metal canisters. “Here, Doctor shaheb--just like you asked.”

“Took you long enough--have you seen the most recent fruit of my brilliance, my greatest creation?”

“The Fusion Machine? No, Doctor shaheb, please show me.”

“I'll do more than show you, my boy, I'll let you try it out. I'm putting you in there with my peregrine falcon DarkHawk! With an eagle's wings, vision and strength you'll no longer be a scrawny, useless yes-boy.”

“Sir, you want me to go in there?”

“Of course.”

“No, sir, I won't do it ”

“What?! Why not? Think of all the benefits, boy, you'll be a real life birdman! The power of flight, a sharp, hefty beak, eyes that can see a mouse crawling in the grass from a mile. Look you don't really have much going for you right now. It's only going to make your life better.”

“No, sir. I don't want to be a . . . a freak.”

“Look, I've had enough of this. Don't make me do things I don't want to do boy, don't make me bring out Old Molly ”

“N-O-O!!! Anything but that sir ”

“Then you're going to have to go in there, Sumon.”

Sumon gulped and said a mental prayer as Dr. Big Gyan pushed him into the blue chamber of the machine. Darkhawk was already in there, flapping his wings madly against the steel bars of a birdcage. The door was sealed and for Sumon all was darkness and the mad screeching of a caged peregrine falcon. After a substantial pause, Sumon heard the flick of a switch and . . .

And blinding white light flooded the chamber of the machine, and in that light Sumon saw the most beautiful vision of unification. Everything in the universe gradually is coalescing into a single unbroken mass. One . . .

Then the light went off suddenly and everything was darkness and the voice of Dr. Big Gyan shouting “Bloody Iranian plutonium!” Sumon felt his own body with his hands--no feathers, no beak, no wings. I'm saved! The door swung out and Dr. Big entered with a smoking metal canister in his hand. “Next time we buy plutonium, remember Kazakhstan, not Iran! Not Iran!”

Sumon's whole body heaved a silent sigh of relief.

“Whole thing's ruined now,” continued Dr. Big Gyan. “Just going to have to throw it out.”

* * *

Belal ran back into Twinkle's apartment block and patted the condom in his left pant pocket affectionately. As he went through the door, he noticed the heel of his shoe. Ewww! that's really quite disgusting--all that white fat oozing out, oh well, can't do shit about it now, just take them off at the door and clean it tomorrow.

He began to climb hastily up the stairs, eagerly anticipating Twinkle's warm, sweet embrace. Oh you really are the man, he thought giddy with joy. I can smell her hair, I swear.

Unable to restrain himself, Belal broke into a joyful skip up the stairs. He stopped at the third floor, the floor just below Twinkle's, when he noticed a strange contraption outside the door of Dr. Big Gyan.

What the hell is that? he thought. Looks kind of cool. Let me ask this bald guy--it looks like it belongs to him.

“Excuse me, bhai, what the hell kind of machine is this?”

“Doesn't work,” said Dr. Big Gyan said resignedly, “Throwing it out.”

Belal noticed the blue chamber inside the contraption, big enough to fit a man. Oh, it's one of those 3D things! I've been in one of those!

“Is it one of those 3D things? I've been in one of those!” said Belal, eagerly climbing inside the blue chamber and sealing the door behind him. “Hey it's dark in here!” he shouted, “Come on, bhai, put it on! Put it on!”

It should be noted here that Dr. Big Gyan had no way of knowing about the crushed cockroach on Belal's heel and believing the machine to be destroyed, had no way of foreseeing the consequences of what he then said.

“It doesn't work,” repeated Dr. Big Gyan. “Look, Sumon show him. Flip the switch.”

Which Sumon subsequently did! The chamber flashed with blinding, white light

and the machine emitted a Zap! What then emerged from the door made their veins tingle. “That was quite a trip,” said Belal. “You should take it to Fantasy Kingdom or something. Make a fortune.”

As he turned around and skipped up the stairs to Twinkle's apartment, Sumon suddenly fainted on the spot. Later he told Dr. Big Gyan that it was because he had seen the giant markings on Belal's massive, man-size wings.

“That's how I've always imagined Shaitan's eyes.”

Dr. Big Gyan regarded Belal's retreating figure carefully. Doesn't realize, does he? Well, no point telling him now, it would only ruin the poor boy's night. Most horrifying thing I've seen in my life. Iranian plutonium-should have never trusted it, should have gone straight to Kazakhstan.

* * *

Belal entered Twinkle's apartment triumphantly, remembered to take off his shoes and walked gracefully into her bedroom, saying: “It's okay, baby, I'm back.”

Twinkle's scream was heard all the way to Baridhara. Belal was momentarily stunned and confused. He began to babble, “Baby, what's wrong? What's happening? Tell me, baby, please.”

He heard the door open. It was the loyal and quick night guard Nurul, who walked in with a hefty rifle in his hand and asked: “Madam, is something wrong?”

Twinkle just screamed and pointed at Belal. Belal, at a loss as to what was happening and what to do, reached into his pant packet, pulled out the condom and shouted, “Baby, it's me!” Twinkle suddenly paused. “Belal?”

Nurul turned his head to look where Twinkle was pointing. Being a practical and straightforward man, he did not pause to consider the greater philosophical implications of the sight that now lay before his eyes. He decided instead to empty a rifle round into its head.

Zain Ali is a student in the United States