Sublime IV
We weren't in college anymore and it was time to bring out the big guns. Transitioning into adulthood was merely moving from a sepulcher to a limbo of words and people. They were everywhere and their voices thankfully were marred by the voices in my head. They kept me company when the world became too overwhelming to deal with. Mal made friends and I made some more and together, we were happy. The boy was there; still lurking, wishing, fantasizing, dreaming and wishing; definitely wishing that I was out of the scene.
I am naturally more gifted when it comes to observing people and nothing ever misses my eye. Remove the filter of emotions and attachment from your mind's eye; you will know what I am talking about. I had seen him the day I had moved in to our new apartment. You had to give it to him – he was one persistent dude. But then again, he was the best adversary I could probably ever have.
Ambivalence settles around me as I sunk deep into mattress at wee hours of morning waiting for Mal to come in. A new pattern has emerged were in I am the dutiful friend waiting for her friend to come home after a night of frolicking. Social life was suffocating but Mal seemed to have found her wings again. Traces of the high school popular girl start surfacing on a twenty something face and Mal knows that her life was finally getting back on track. I watch her, my eyes hiding in the glint of my spectacles as she runs around the apartment getting ready for the evening. She twirls in front of me when ready and her face is radiant. I suppress the urge to strangle her. It was too bright, too peppy and too…human?
One day she comes home scared, finally realizing that she was probably being watched. There are some people in this world can pick up scent of a man attracted to them. It's built in radar that catches the drift and invades them with sense of self preservation. It's probably that part of the genes that we have carried since the dawn of evolution – the instinct that helps recognizing that one is being hunted. Mal was unnaturally gifted in that. She wasn't observant as me and she had figured out weeks late but she had. And the boy hadn't even made himself visible and kept a safe twenty feet distance.
Just like I had instructed.
Mal tells me that it was a guy on street who was infamous for eve teasing. I wait patiently for her to explain things further but my mind is far from being patient. Finally!
Two days later I see what she meant. A moron makes crude remarks when we pass by and even gropes us. I silently accept the treatment and even play the part of victim beautifully. I would have been a great actress but then again the mask of being humane would have been so underrated then. I look discreetly at the shadows created by thick shrubbery and give a nod. The boy is there, I know it.
I always know when he is around. I was the wind beneath his wings directing him to places where he never thought he could reach. It had taken some effort to find him though. It wasn't easy but it wasn't too hard either. I convinced Mal that it was best to take help of private detectives. She agreed without too much of hesitation. And that's the Mal I always wanted – scared like kitten.
My little pet.
His obsession of Mal has devolved him completely and it angers me. The boy was once brilliant and played mind games with me which no other man could fathom ever before. The dangerous game of push and pull was yet to lose its momentum but even before I could plan an end, this boy was already losing it. I enter his tiny apartment by shipyard and see photos of us. He sits in a corner and watches me unblinkingly as I look around the house talking mile a minute. I am most comfortable here and with him I don't have to hide. He watches me with rage filled eyes with an otherwise passive face. That's what I love about him. He gives away too much yet fighting every muscle in his body to obey his command.
There are only photos of Mal and sometimes both her and me. I glance through them leisurely stopping and running my fingers across few of them as memories hit me. I flicker the photo that is gently swaying as the fan two feet away from me whizzes in my direction. Something under that photo catches my attention and I rip the top one out. I ignore the growl and send him a look that makes him sink further into corner. Good. He understands the relationship perfectly.
The uncovered photo hits me for a moment and I am unable to recover immediately. I look at the photo and look at him finally looking back at the photo again. I see that the photo is quite large and he had deliberately camouflaged it with others. I trace the curls on the photo, my reflection, and wonder what had made me smile like that. I peer at the photo and look at the eyes and something heats up in my vein when I see what I never thought I would see.
In that photo, I wasn't a monster; I was just a eighteen year old girl having a good time.
Simply a human, I was.
The dichotomy hits me and I swirl in contradiction. The paradigm of uncertainty gobbles me up and my mind is suddenly chaotic. The organization is lost and the order collapsed. I swallowed and took a step back stumbling a little. The boy dashes forward and catches me before I fall. He holds me from behind and I rest my back on his chest and collapsed on the floor. Unknowingly a cry, a wail breaks out from my heart and my shoulders shake. Tears flow and I don't understand what was going on in my mind. The voices were roaring and his voice hushed them gently.
For the first time in my life, I cried.
He held me for the rest of the day and we spent hours in silence. We both knew what we were and what we were capable of; I more than him actually. Mal would never understand these feelings, the sense of losing a grip on the world and entering our own where our rules apply. In reality, no one ever would. It was in our nature to be like this – to be demons of a human's nightmare.
I walked back home in idyllic transcendence and the world started looking different around me. The voices in my head were calmer and the order had been restored. In the hours he held me close to his chest like I was his most precious item in this world, I knew exactly how to end the years old game of push and pull.
I had allowed him to bathe in his fantasy for far too long now. Like I promised him years ago, I would get Mal to do it. Salvation from this world in the hands of the woman he couldn't live without; the philosophy wasn't lost on me.
Once decision was made, making a plan and executing it was far simpler. The boy was helping my cause due to his own damaged psyche. Mal was scared but I coaxed her – gently, like teaching a cub how to hunt. It took weeks convincing her and going through the plan. I was aroused when I saw white hot rage throbbing in her when she talked about the boy and how he invaded her life to the point of making her a criminal. In few weeks she had accepted the solution I had proposed and the calmness, with which she went through the plan, shook me a little. It was sensual, intimate and sexually gratifying.
Her submission to my plan which involved killing the boy was my victory and my own.
He was strangely calm when he saw the two women entering his small apartment. I think he always knew how this game would end yet he persisted. Wasn't persistence a frustrating yet a gratifying process? You wouldn't know. You wouldn't understand. I do. He did. Like I promised Mal, the plan is executed without a hitch. She hesitates for a moment but composes herself and fled the apartment. I couldn't do that. I sit on the floor next to him rocking myself and sit there for couple of hours. The bloodied body doesn't bother me one bit. When I walk out of the apartment, I sigh.
I open my purse and take the envelope the boy had left me. It contained the picture that had broken me down in his apartment the other day. Behind the picture were three words.
"Always with you"
There are no tears this time, no emotional trigger and no apathy to the dead boy. I walk back to the apartment in a slow pace humming an old tune.
Hear the trumpets hear the pipers.
One hundred million angels singin'.
Multitudes are marchin' to the big kettledrum.
Voices callin', voices cryin'.
Some are born and some are dyin'.
It's alpha and omega's kingdom come,
And the whirlwind is in the thorn tree.
Mannat Har Khushi Paane Ki
Cricket
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