Gentry

A short story by Nikhil Tindale

The twin babies appeared on my desk without reason. It seems complicated but it wasn’t
really. They weren’t there and then they were. Why look into it any further? I walked into my
room that day, took a seat at my desk and was about to pull out my notebook when I saw
them; Two baroque babies, corpulent and clean, staring up at me. One a deep brown, the
other a bright white. Each the same size as a passport. They looked at me sagely. I blinked.
Being a generally practical person I figured I should probably do something about them.
Using a pencil I brushed the brown one gently, testing its reality. It began to cry. I didn’t want
to touch it for fear of breaking it so all I could do was feed it. I thought for a while then
remembered my Mother cooking roti downstairs. It would be easy to chew for a baby and so
went to get it. I broke a tiny piece off and tentatively handed it to the brown one. He grabbed
it and without thinking ate it. He soon stopped crying. The little white one then started
wiggling his fingers around and so I gave him one. He ate it all and did the same action
again. He got through three more pieces. It was quite endearing to watch them. I felt an odd
sense of ownership and resolved to name them. After all, I was basically their parent. While
the two rolled around I picked up my dictionary and flipped to a random page for each. It was
through this method that I landed upon the name ‘Pole’ for the brown one and ‘Gentry’ for
the white one.

Weeks passed and their personalities began to grow like little flowers. Pole was introverted,
preferring to spend his time hiding in whatever dark spots in my desk he could find. Gentry
on the other hand was as forward as one could be and I found him crawling up my forearm
on multiple occasions. Things seemed pretty normal until I realised that Pole had become so
thin that the faint outline of his bones shone through his skin. I resolved to watch them during
mealtimes to figure out what was going on. It didn’t take long. I found Gentry eating his
portion at which point he ambled over to Pole before beating him over the head and stealing
his meal. Aghast I put a stop to it by pushing Gentry away whenever he tried to steal. Soon
Pole grew healthy once more and equilibrium was restored. Then a turn for the better; I
came home to find Gentry feeding Pole his own food and, I kid you not, hugging him, their
skin contrasting like a yin-yang. Flushed by my parenting skills and the good morals I had
instilled in the little babies I gave them each an extra meal for the night before going to
sleep, content with the knowledge I’d done something right.

Gentry quickly became more and more affectionate towards Pole, almost to the extent of
coveting him. It was at this time that Gentry started to become thin. I ended up having to
feed Gentry far more every meal because he’d give half of it to pole. But he quickly grew fat
and although the hugging continued he stopped feeding Pole while maintaining his larger
portions. A few days later I found Gentry swelled to the size of a textbook and no Pole in
sight. I looked everywhere thinking he had been misplaced or gone wandering but after
wrecking my room searching I couldn’t see him anywhere. I spent the following nights in
worry waiting for him to return but he never did. Every time I thought about him I ran a hand
through my black hair. I had liked him a little more than Gentry.

In the meanwhile Gentry began eating everything he could find. First he tore through my
writing -fiction being an ailment I have not yet treated- with such voracity that after only a day
of leaving him alone I came back to find my entire stockpile of notebooks gone. I could do
little about this and retreated to the wild embrace of anger for a whole afternoon, refusing to
feed him. Then I came back the following day to find my Ganesha statue and Incense pots
vanished. By this time Gentry had engorged himself so much that he no longer fit on my
desk and I had to relocate him to the space under the bed. When I tried to feed him his
regular dinner he would only mewl pitiably and so by trial and error I found that his favourite
foods were items gifted to me by my grandparents. I fed him Tamil prayer books, statues of
the gods, lamps, I even resorted one night to writing an entire story set in India – a very sad
one with a lot of suffering, he seemed to prefer those – which I then pushed through the
cracks under the bed. I heard the faint tearing and gnawing of his teeth, which he’d formed
quickly, ripping into the fresh ink and paper followed by the self satisfied licking of his pink
lips.

This continued for what may have been months, raiding my house for any relics of my
ancestry I could find until one day I came up with a tube of henna only to find him gone. I
lifted my bed and his warmth was replaced by dust. I searched across shelves and under
tables but he’d simply disappeared. I stood and felt very cold. Then I felt a hand on my
shoulder. I turned. His jaw was slack and slavering, his eyes all blue. His skin was so white it
shone. He looked exactly like me, only cleaner, smoother. He was the marble statue and I
was the wooden imitation. It was a reasonable trade, really. He wanted my history and I
wanted his clean, white, void.