Epistle 7: Falling Through the Night A/N: Hey there! :D :D Here is the next update! :D :D A fair warning - this chapter is quite dark, so in case you are uncomfortable, give it a miss. Also, this chapter may seem too suggestive, so before coming to conclusions, I want to clarify that there is a lot of explaining to do in the next chapter, so don't jump to the seeming conclusion.
Not keeping you all any longer,
Happy Reading! :D :D
He woke up from his bed yelling, cold sweat plastered over his face. He looked around swiftly, only to find the empty room staring back at him, the darkness acute. He felt disoriented at waking up that abruptly, managing to guide himself off the bed with difficulty as he found the light switch blindly with his outstretched hand.
He switched on the light and felt his breathing ease. The brightness blared his vision, clearing only after several minutes of blurriness and a couple of tears left his watering eyes. He made his way to the washroom and splashed some water on his face, the cold water instantly working its effect over his slightly heaving form.
He looked up to see his reflection in the mirror, and almost recoiled. There stood before him not a simple looking boy, but a boy whose eyes and cheeks were bruised severely. He noticed that his left eye was now a brilliant purple, along with it being swollen at the same time. His eyes were red and puffy while the bags beneath it were growing bigger by the day.
His face had a gaunt look over it, a look with could be described as nothing short of horror and misery. Turning his face away from the mirror as he felt petrified by his own reflection, he wiped his face carefully and sat on the bed. His father had been out with Harshad Parekh for a week and wasn't meant to return till until three days later.
He felt his throat choke up at the thought of his nightmare, and he gulped uneasily. He quickly pulled open the drawer by his bed stand and removed his diary from it, which was now almost full. He brushed through the pages, ending up towards the last few of them that were empty. Pressing the point of his pen hard into the sheet of paper, a couple of tears fell into the book as he summed up his thoughts and began to write.
I'm tired. I quit.
Ranveer's hand shivered as more tears fell from his eyes. The pen fell down from his grasp, but it did not register with him. He shut the diary again and threw it beside him as he got up and shut the lights again. He looked around the room frightfully as though expecting shadows to creep out from the darkness at any moment.
Shivering, he quickly ran towards the closet and swung it open. Taking a deep breath, he hid inside, the clothes over there providing the perfect comfort while it hid him away completely from view. The scent from his parents' clothes made him feel a little more secure as he shut his eyes, hoping that there would be no dawn again.
17th June, 1996:
I don't know what to do with Ranveer. There is something drastically wrong with him these days, and he won't just let me in. It's why I haven't spoken to you for about twenty days. Too much was going on and I had to figure it out. But I haven't had the slightest of luck so far. Only the contrary. I was so sure that I'd almost cracked his armour, but before I could make any more progress, fate had to intervene like always.
Apparently, my mother had been informed about the fact that I spent the most amount of time with Ranveer in school. I don't honestly know what's so wrong about it, but my mother thinks that I've committed some huge crime. 'Stick to your kind', she tells me. Stick to my kind? What is my kind? Fakeness and arrogance?
I tried to protest but she wouldn't take a word of it. She forbade me to see Ranveer at school and warned me about the consequences lest I did otherwise. I thought that she was bluffing. Unfortunately, she wasn't. She would have nearly had Ranveer thrown out from school had Harshad Uncle not intervened. Never have a felt so resentful towards my mother, and it's eating at me.
I didn't speak to her for five days till she came and apologized to me. She made me understand why she did what she did, and honestly, I haven't heard such rubbish in all my life. I just nodded and nodded for the sake of it, but truth be told, my heart bleeds for Ranveer. I still have classmates to spend time with. He doesn't, and that's where my problem arises.
Ever since I stopped meeting with him, he's become detached. Aloof. Even though he assured me that things were fine even if we didn't interact at school, I realized that there was something drastically wrong with him. In these twenty days that we haven't met, I think I've barely spoken to him at all, not only in school but at home too.
He goes about his usual chores at home, but refuses to meet my eye. When I try to speak to him, he cowers away and runs, barricading himself into the room. I tried to ask Kaka about this so many times, but he himself has no clue about the same. I don't know what it is, but it's something got to do with school.
Things were bad enough as it is when I realized ten days ago that Ranveer had a bruised eye. When I asked him about it, he told me that he'd fallen down and hit his eye. But he refused to meet eyes with me. And in the days to come, I realized that his wounds only got deeper and nastier until his entire face was practically bruised from some angle or the other.
Three days ago, Ranveer was suspended from school for a month, stating violent and disorderly conduct. He came home shivering, a limp in his right leg. I had no clue about what exactly had happened for I'd missed school that day. But from what I got to know, it was some argument that broke out between him and a bunch of boys, and Ranveer had broken one of the boy's nose.
If I thought I'd seen the worst of Baa, I was sorely mistaken because she crossed all limits of cruelty that afternoon. Least bothered about the injuries, she actually whipped him for tarnishing the family name! If there was ever a limit of being evil, this woman did not know any. But what was worst was that Ranveer remained silent throughout the time. Neither did he cry, nor speak a single word. His face was a blank mask until Maa intervened and asked her to stop being barbaric.
Both myself and Maa helped him back into his room and quickly got a doctor to look him up. The doctor reported that he had a mild concussion and had a couple of fractured ribs, to say the least. We could neither contact Kaka for he was out of town with Uncle right now nor did not have any contact details about his mother. So that was out of option.
And as if things weren't bad enough, Baa forbade myself and Maa from visiting Ranveer and taking care of him at all. I tried to sneak to his room several times with food and medicines, but the wicked hag was too smart. After having being slapped by her myself, my mother sought my safety and grudgingly accepted her order. I honestly hope that the hag burns in Hell.
But those things can wait. Right now, I'm going to imply my foolproof plan of getting Ranveer some proper food and medication. I don't even know how he is or what he is doing. I don't even know whether he's alright. But I need to find out at any cost. And nothing will stop me tonight. I will get to the bottom of this for sure.
It's almost 4:30 in the morning. Before anything more happens, I need to leave.
I'll tell you everything once I get back.
Ishaani shut her diary with a finality, quickly shoving it under her pillow. Making her way out stealthily with a tray of food and the necessary medication that she remembered her mother giving Ranveer the first day, she managed to reach in front of his room after ten minutes of utmost care and precaution. Heaving a sigh of relief, she knocked at the door, but received no response.
She knocked for about fifteen minutes before she began to get worried. She did not know why, but there was a sudden ominous feeling that swirled in her heart, a strange fear bubbling along with it. She gave the doors a push and they opened on their own. Worried, she made her way into the room, the darkness impenetrable yet horrifying in some ghastly way.
She quickly switched on the lights of the room and gave a shaky sigh, the light more than welcome. Keeping the tray on the table beside the door, she looked around the room in stunned disbelief. The entire room was disheveled with traces of blood visible here and there. The bed looked slept in but nobody was to be seen.
Ishaani made her way to his bed and saw that the food sent to him was almost untouched. The room had a very deadly silence about it that frightened her and she could not help but gulp unconsciously. Before she could notice anything more, her eyes fell over the diary upon the bed that was left open.
She picked it up and read curiously, her blood instantly freezing as horror paralyzed her.
I would rather die a meaningful death than to live a meaningless life.
Quickly brushing over to the next page, she found another similar sentence.
While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.
Her mind now petrified with what she was reading, she turned towards the last written page in the diary. She clutched the diary harshly as she read the final phrase.
I'm tired. I quit.
She hurled the diary aside as she looked about the room frantically, hoping to find a clue about Ranveer. The room remained eerily silent as Ishaani got up and searched around, the panic growing. Nothing.
She was about to make a dash outside the room when she heard a faint thud from inside the cupboard. Afraid, she quickly rushed towards the source of the sound, swinging open its doors without further ado. She barely had time to react to what was happening when her eyes fell over an unconscious-Ranveer.
Her breath remained hitched in her chest as his limp form fell out from the cupboard, his mouth wide open while his skin was a ghostly white. There was a strange expression on his face that only made her want to throw up and the state he was in didn't do any better.
The only thing that her mind registered was his name that left her lips in the loudest shriek possible as she fell to her knees, trying to get him to wake up. Constructive criticism will be more than welcome and sorry for any typos. :) :)
Next chapter:
Epistle 8
Edited by LadyMeringue - 8 years ago
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