Prologue
Smothers stalked along the frayed edge of the ancient rug, for once not swishing her tail maliciously. Her gait was feline and sorrowful. She turned her head sideways to look at him and there was something akin to sympathy in her pale green eyes.
She knows he decided.
She was unnervingly human for a cat. He was convinced she understood most of the things they said and almost everything they didn't.
Smothers.
A hollow laugh escaped his lips as he remembered the day they had named her that. The monstrous pain returned, though, with the memory, almost immediately sobering him up. And once again, he let himself drown in his well-deserved misery.
The wind hollered outside, madly and scornfully. This place had always been cold and damp, its decrepit walls helpless against tempestuous weathers. He recalled how they would sometimes light a fire and pretend they were out camping, dismissing the dull weather as a part of their adventure. But tonight, he welcomed the ungodly howling of the wind and the teasing patter of the rain. Simply because it synced with his miserable insides.
If pain were tangible, he would have been suffocating beneath it right now. As it were, even after unbuttoning the first couple of buttons on his shirt, he had the distinct feeling of being unable to breath.
He wasn't surprised when she staggered in. She would have known that she would find him here. In this dilapidated, crumbling ruin which had once been their home away from home. It was flawed beyond reason and yet it had felt perfect. With its tall white marble pillars, forming delicate arches at every turn and empty, roofless rooms overrun by tangles and tangles of vines, the place had promised them stories and adventures.
Now, he saw it for what it truly was - a black ruin.
He didn't bother to look at her or even acknowledge her when she came to kneel in front of him.
I don't want to talk to her he reflected, selfishly. He wanted to be left alone, to peacefully wallow in his pain. In truth, what he really wanted was to escape that pain. And as long as she was around, he knew he never would.
As if in defiance of that crushing realization, with one last surge of rebellion, he leaned forward abruptly and touched her lips with his.
They were firm and unyielding, even as he placed a hand on her flushed cheek. But just as he was about to give up, he felt her tremble slightly as she parted her lips, almost in resignation. For one fleeting moment, he was elated. He moved his hand to the back of her head, effectively deepening the kiss.
But it lasted only for a second. She pushed him and he complied, knowing full well that it wouldn't change a thing.
"That dress looks stunning on you," he said, without a hint of smile. The dress was white and slightly soaked, owing to the light rain outside. Her auburn-ish hair was wet and tangled and her faced looked feverish. To him, she looked indubitably beautiful. It made him acutely aware of how hopelessly in love with her he was.
But he looked into her eyes then and realized it wouldn't matter. For she was looking at him with a disheartening mixture of pain, anger and betrayal.
Her face was blank though, as she consciously tried to repress her emotions. That's what she always did he thought resignedly.
"You didn't tell me." She stated, her tone equal parts hurt and accusatory.
He simply looked at her, trying to take in as much as he could, as though he knew this was the last time he would see her.
"I will never forgive you for that." She continued, with bare conviction in her voice.
He said nothing.
Flared by his unresponsiveness, she lunged at him, viciously attacking every part of him she could get at. He made no move to stop her. He knew where the urge to physically destroy something came from, his trashed apartment being evidence enough. She was hurting herself more than she was hurting him and he knew that's what she wanted, what he had wanted - some respite from that internal pain. As though the physical pain would be enough to quench that gaping hole in the chest.
She got tired of it eventually and having nothing else left to do, she broke down, as smithereens of what they were lay scattered around them.
And for the first time in his life, he saw Sharon Raiprakash cry.
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