One Shot - The Role

Hello everyone, had written something after a long hiatus. I know most of you are waiting for Raison d'etre and other stories. Many of you are wondering why my blog is privatized. I have answers for all, just need some time to answer. Anyway I have exams in a week after which I will be making accept requests to my blog for accessing. Hope you be with me till then.

The Role

The pencil in her hand poked her insides of her palm as she saw the actress enact her role. There were murmurs around her and her frustration increased with every passing minute. She knew it that there was no fault of the female protagonist in this. She was doing a great job, yes, but there was something missing... something lacking that made her uneasy. There was pain, betrayal, expressed beautifully in those large innocent eyes of hers, yet...

The resounding yet was thumping in her heart. The woman was doing a great job in trying to enact Lekha, the character she sketched, but the truth was that she isn't being Lekha. The Lekha she knew and conjured isn't this, can't be this.

She believed she never sketched her characters, she discovered them. She get to know the layers beneath them with every word they utter, every gesture they make, and now when she was watching the characters she sketched in flesh and blood, enacting a scene she herself had written, she felt a deep sense of uneasiness in her stomach, a feeling of suffocation building up inside her, clawing at her heart.

She never realized she was crumpling the script she herself has written for the drama, until she felt a hand on her shoulder.

"What's wrong?" she heard one of her friends ask, to which she didn't bother to reply, except for shrugging the hand off her shoulder, throwing the crumpled script away on her desk as she stormed out on to the dais.

The spotlight flickered as she stepped on to the stage, and she saw the girls' eyes flicker as they met hers over the male protagonist's shoulder, and the lines she was about to speak trailed off, as her countenance was marred with confusion.

She didn't utter a word, except for taking slow steps towards the couple who were standing facing each other. Murmurs among her team increased as they were surprised to see her walking onto the stage the rehearsal for the drama they were to play the day after in the very auditorium they were in now, going on. Once she reached closer enough for the protagonist to sense her presence, she stopped and waited.

She saw his body go tense. There were minor details all of them, be it the way his back went slightly stiff or the way the muscles in his shoulder tightened, or the way the fingers of his right hand curled, yet they were imprinted in her memory.

She saw him turn and face her, with surprise in his eyes, though she knew there was recognition. He didn't know she came yet somewhere he had known moments before turning that it was her.

She saw his lips part, as she waited for him to say something, but words didn't come out. She pressed her own lips as her eyes lowered, and the corner of her lips curled up without any mirth.

By this time the girl who was supposedly playing Lekha forgot her initial confusion as she was so engrossed in the scene that is being unfolded before her, that she didn't observe when the spotlight had shifted to the couple before her, who hadn't spoken a word yet, but between whom the atmosphere was so thick that the tension in the air was palpable.

He watched as her lips curled up mirthlessly and as she met his eyes, he momentarily forgot what he was about to ask. Closing his eyes and taking a deep breath in, composing himself, he asked "Why are you here?"

He didn't understand. She was the script writer, and why would she interrupt the rehearsal?

He saw her look at him for a beat before looking away, the smile still persistent on her lips, the very smile which made him uneasy, for some reason, the very smile which he knew didn't depict any happiness, the very smile which is pricking him, and if he was not wrong, even her.

"That is a question I have no answer to" her voice sounded calm now, so calm that it had only been riling him up, for god knows what reason.

"But I assure you I won't take much of your time Sir" she said giving him a smile, making her dimples visible.

She was close yet distant, near yet far, her words sounded plain yet filled with a deeper meaning, that he had lost it and had took a staggering step towards her.

"What's going on here?" he hissed as he towered over her.

"Besides I coming to pay a visit to my employer at his home, in order to drop an important file, nothing significant I suppose" she said with the same cheery smile which started to get on his nerves.

"Lekha!" his voice boomed in the auditorium, as he grabbed her shoulders.

No one noticed that he called her not by the given name but a character's name, no one maybe not even him had noticed how easily they slipped from reality to the fictitious world they were enacting.

She didn't flinch nor had she looked away. She instead met his gaze head on, with a blank expression that killed his being. The death grip he had over her shoulders softened as they felt a rough scar she had on her right shoulder. His fingers withdrew from her shoulder though he had the urge to make it go away, the scar on her skin, the blankness in her eyes, and the hurt her heart held.

"Why are you here?" he asked, his voice softer this time.

Her eyes dropped this time, and the smile vanished. "To wish you" she said her voice a notch lower "A happy married life"

The fist around his heart tightened at her reply. How much had he wanted to take her in his arms and never let go, but he couldn't, not now, not when he was tied to another woman, the very woman who was waiting for him, in the next room, for their wedding night...

He stepped back immediately as if he touched fire, at the realization. Here was the woman he loved and worshipped for the past three years, and whom he had betrayed in the worst possible way ever and now on the eve of his wedding, he was standing in the attic with his wedding suit on, and was meeting his ex-lover.

"Go away Lekha" he said as he turned his back to her, fisting his hands.

He didn't expect her to reply, but she did anyways and he couldn't help but to feel as if someone slapped him when she did.

"I had already crossed the threshold sir," she said as a wayward tear ran through her cheek "I went away before anyone of us realized"

That was the last he heard before he closed his eyes, in utter shame and guilt. That was the last she heard before he felt an eerie silence around him, and that was the last he heard before he heard thunderous applause pushing him out of his reverie.

It took a moment for him to realize what he was and where he was. He wasn't in the attic on his wedding day, he wasn't wearing his wedding suit and he wasn't Aaron. He was Arnav, who was supposed to enact a role, who was supposed to ask Khushi, the scriptwriter about her impromptu interruption of the drama they were rehearsing. Amidst the deafening cheer, he watched the woman before him and felt a tightness in his chest, and he couldn't place a finger on the reason. She was not Lekha, neither was he Aaron but when she raised her eyes to meet his, he felt he was Aaron, she made him feel he was Aaron. In twelve years of his acting career, never had this happened, something like this when he forgot his identity, when someone made him forget reality... As she walked out of the hall, he was left watching her retreating back, amidst the deafening sounds of applause with a constant thought pricking him.

They say acting is behaving truthfully under imaginary circumstances, and he couldn't dare think how much of what happened now would be and could be true.