Kalarikkal House [7]: Chapter 82, p. 16

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Chapter 1 - In An Unknown Land

Chapter 2 - Kalarikkal House

Chapter 3 - The Condition

Chapter 4 - What Do You Know of Us Anyway?

Chapter 5 - Murderous Witch

Chapter 6 - Violence Begets Violence

Chapter 7 - Ruminations

Chapter 8 - Stillness

Chapter 9 - Umikiri

Chapter 10 - The Incident at the Pond

Chapter 11 - Kashi Chechy is a... Puli

Chapter 12 - Nalan's Lie

Chapter 13 - A True Disappointment

Chapter 14: You Owe Me

Chapter 15: What More Could I Want?

Chapter 16: A Memory of Something That Never Was...

Chapter 17: Shivan

Chapter 18: Shavathaalam

Chapter 19: Two and Two

Thread 2

Chapter 20: Sorceress

Chapter 21: Doppelganger

Chapter 22: Man-eaters

Chapter 23: Another Dawn

Chapter 24: About Last Night

Chapter 25: En Manamurukum...

Chapter 26: The Lion Cub

Chapter 27: Air

Chapter 28: Straight Talk

Chapter 29: Chamber of Secrets

Chapter 30: Navarasas

Chapter 31: Brothers and Sisters

Chapter 32: Acid

Chapter 33: Public Enemy

THREAD 3

Chapter 34: Land of the Dead

Chapter 35: Tempting the Fates

Chapter 36: The Certainty Principle

Chapter 37: Abomination

Chapter 38: A River Runs Through It

Chapter 39: Heart's Blood

Chapter 40: Der Schrei

Chapter 41: Damsel in Distress...

Chapter 42: The Dreams - Part 1

Chapter 43: The Dreams - Part 2

Chapter 44: The Dreams - Part 3

Chapter 45: The Awakening

THREAD 4

Chapter 46: Indigenous

Chapter 47: Uncharted Waters

Chapter 48: Eviction

Chapter 49: Omniscient

Chapter 50: The Fog

Chapter 51: You Against the World

Chapter 52: Ente Sooryaputhrikku

Chapter 53: Novel

Chapter 54: Fifth Day

Chapter 55 and Note: Of Sadistic Pricks and Barbarians

THREAD 5

Chapter 56: The Great Melt

Chapter 57: Once Upon A Time...

Chapter 58: Kabhi Dil Ke Kareeb...

Chapter 59: Truths and Lies

Chapter 60: Fire and Water

Chapter 61: An Eternity

Chapter 62: Serendipity

NOTE

THREAD 6

Chapter 63: Fathers and Daughters

Chapter 64: Arbitration

Chapter 65: The Sound of Music

Chapter 66: Devaki

Chapter 67: Ang Laga De Re... - 1

Chapter 68: Ang Laga De Re... - 2

Chapter 69: Deja Vu

Chapter 70 - S&M

Chapter 71 - S&M - 2

Chapter 72 - S&M - 3

Chapter 73 - S&M - 4

Chapter 74 - Lakshmi

Chapter 75: Lakshmi - 2

Chapter 76: A Prayer

Chapter 77: Seetha Kalyana

Chapter 78 - Possession

Chapter 79: Marked in Blood

Thread 7:

Chapter 80: Ananthapallavi

Chapter 81: Family

Chapter 82: The L Word

Congrats For The New Thread..

Chapter 80 Ananthapallavi

"Achan ammavante koode chellu. Kurachu neram Narayaniammayide aduthirunnittu avidunnu vannolu. Enthayalum ammayikku ithra sukhamillatha sthitikku..." (Go with uncle, father. Spend some time with aunt Narayani and then come with uncle and family to the reception. Especially with aunt not feeling well...)

Her father looked up to the second floor balcony and she followed his gaze. She looked back at him. This was only the eighth time that he had looked up in the last several minutes as if to reassure himself that one of his girls had indeed gotten through the wedding ceremony with no calamity striking them down.

She could feel the start of the tightening in her chest and knew that it would not be long before her palms grew clammy and her airway started to slowly close in. She needed her father away from the house before that happened.

"Achan chellu. Njan ivied undallo." (Go father. I am here, don't worry.)

She looked at her uncle and he came over to take her father's hand. He was one of the many relatives who kept their respectable distance from the house. Evidently in old age, and now ailing, his mother, aunt Narayani, wanted to spend some time with their father... especially on this day when the unthinkable had been accomplished. And that too, in this very illam. It had been at her father's insistence that they had held the wedding ceremony at the illam. As if to show the world that the Gods didn't think this a blasphemy.

Her father gave one more look upstairs before squeezing her hand.

Then much to her relief, he left with her uncle.

It still took another ten minutes for the house to empty of all guests. By the time the last one left, it was all she could do to focus simply on breathing. She leaned back against the door and pounded her chest. She didn't have any of her old medication left, she knew. She hadn't had a panic attack in a long while. In almost a year and a half in fact. What her psychiatrist had prescribed back then, even if there had been any left, had long expired.

She should have been more careful. She should have realized the triggers before it even reached this point. Starting the day playing her veena certainly helped. Soothing for the soul it had always been, but for the past two years, it had also been preventive medicine. She had learned to read the signs of her body well. It sometimes told her that her head was not in a good place before she even consciously felt the distress.

She forced her legs to move and told her mind to retreat to safer images...

Safer images...

Trees... he was behind one, waiting for her.

Pond... he was just outside, winking at her.

Lilypads... he was wading around their twining roots, reaching for the perfect bloom.

Sunset... he had snuck up on her countless times...

Sunrise... he had had to force himself to leave her embrace then...

Her veena... he had written so many keertans for her to play...

She managed to make it into the downstairs music room and close the door repeating the same mantra in her head.

Think good thoughts... only good thoughts...

There were so many good thoughts of him... any thought of him was good...

All except one...

She pleaded her mind to not give her that one...

She slid down to the floor and she held her head between her hands.

Please... not that one...

Before her mind heeded her plea, she heard the scream... her neck snapped up as her eyes opened.

She could hear it get louder...

It was her sister.

She was out the door and running up the stairs the next moment, her legs carrying her far faster than she thought possible.

The door was closed, she could see, but she ran at it at full speed. She threw her entire weight against it without stopping and felt only a slight give before it flung open, both panels slamming against the sides. The broken lock hit the opposite wall from the impact.

Her eyes fell on the bed.

They were both naked, she could see, but it barely registered as she took in the blood that was on them and spreading through the sheet under them.

For a moment, she simply stared, her eyes taking in the image and superimposing it over the one that her mind had been fighting all morning.

Then they blurred together and all she could see was the corpse... the one covered in a white sheet that they had carried in to the house next door... the house where she was going to be welcomed as a bride in two weeks...

It had looked nothing like her Ananthan.

It was a stranger... a stranger with massive white gauze covering most of his head and with thick cotton balls stuffed inside his nostrils. She had wanted to ask someone where they had found this inhuman looking puppet from. But she had held her tongue and had shut herself in his room for the rest of that whole day, drifting in and out of sanity. She had thought that he was hiding in that room and had searched for him in every corner, asking him quietly to come out and to stop playing tricks on her.

But he hadn't come.

He had left her behind and she had had to painstakingly put her broken heart and fragmented mind back together, day by tormenting day, night by tortured night...

And here he was again...

Bleeding out on that bed, right in front of her eyes, dying all over again...

"Ichechy!" she thought she heard someone call out as everything shut off and she crumbled to the floor.

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Yipeee... Me first... falling in love with arshi again...
Lovely update
Arnav is alright? Right?...
Waiting for next update

I feel as if i'm running with swirling mist around, thinning now, thickening later. You have us in a grip almost panting😆

Awesome part
Congo for new thread

Oh my god devi, its so exciting and thrilling... is pallavi imagining all this after seeing Arnav bleeding... is she getting visuals of her own marriage day... omg I hope Arnav is fine and nit badly hurt.

yay!

new update 👍🏼




She is such a contained person in her grief

ever the big sister ever the caretaker

so many things to put one foot in front of the other to survive day by day

you just want to put your arms around her but even that will not help

Kashi's fathers nerves must be wound tight even though he decided to brave the odds

Such a fatherly thing to do; as if telling his girls there are no curses, just live your life

the blood makes me wonder if Khushi had a miscarriage although I will have to read back a few chapters

Riveting and engrossing as always

thanks for updating

congrats on the new thread..!!!
need to reread the whole story again to connect dots..!!