Face of fear- Strangers in the night

Death doesn't haunts me...what's gone does.

Her sleep was interrupted by a phone call being made in her parent’s room…she got up sleepily walked in to the other room…looked at her father and her mother and the man making the phone call, but her mind registered nothing. She walked back into her room like a zombie and slept.

“Ishi utho bhi, tuitions nai jaana kya?” hearing her mother shout, she woke up with a start. ‘Thank God it was just a bad dream’, she thought.

Outside the window the world was still dark. Has to be it was quarter to five in the morning. She rubbed her eyes and took few minutes to adjust to the conscious state. She looked at her little sister sleeping beside her. She, at times, creeps into her bed. She smiled at the usual scene, except something was wrong, incredibly wrong. The house was silent like a grave. She could hear the tick tock of the clock and it felt eerie. She got up slowly like she is in a haunted house. Her each step felt like some loose wood plank will make a creepy sound and she will have a heart attack right then. She peeped into her parent’s room and saw her father sleeping alone.

‘Of course, mom is always in the kitchen by this time’; she walked to the kitchen only to find it empty. ‘Might be in the bathroom’, but she wasn’t there either.

Her heart was gripped with the fear. She slowly crept back to the only room left, their drawing room. She stood there, her eyes wide with disbelief. Her darkest nightmare stands there. She stood their, in a trance…as she watched her mother…lying there on the floor…covered in white clothes…her face serene…as she is in deep slumber. She unconsciously walked to her…sat beside her with great silence as if scared to wake her up…and she looked at her beautiful face for what seems like an eternity. Last night was no dream…last v has left her whole life feeling unreal. She stood up…gave one last look at her, knowing she will not be able to gather enough courage to look at her again…and she left with heavy steps…feeling like a dead.

She stood at her terrace…staring blankly at the empty space ahead…bit and pieces of memories flashing like some movie teasers…but she felt nothing inside. She turned back at the sound of steps…saw her father standing…he has aged a decade overnight.

“chai banaati hoon”, she said without looking at her father’s red swollen grief stricken eyes with her dry ones. Somehow she has not been able to cry. She felt void, empty, and incapable of any emotion.

Sometime in the later part of the day her grandparents came. The rest of the day passed in a blur…she was in a trance…her body went through the necessary deeds but her mind registered nothing. Her last memory had been of her mother’s calm face and she wanted it to stay like that. Next she remembered someone suggesting her to drop her boards…She had forgotten…she is 17 and she has her high school boards in three months. She walked in to the room “I am going to appear in boards”, declared in a calm decisive voice. Though she had no idea how…and she doesn’t really remember anything else…even when they took away her mother…but she does remember her sisters crying like banshees in pain…or her father looking like a zombie…This was her worst nightmare…a nightmare that’s going to haunt her every night.

Years passed…but for Ishika, time had freeze a decade ago. She was a full fledged woman now…married with a happy life…a satisfying job…she now have everything her mother wished for her…but somehow it all felt fake…incomplete…and unimportant. It took her a decade to gather courage to go back to the place that holds her mother’s last memories. And now when she stands there, in front of the gate, it felt like she has traveled back in time…and the memories flashed again…from the corner she kept so securely locked till now. As she walked in through the gates she could still hear the laughter…of her mother…her sisters…and her own. The house still stands as it had back then…only dead. She walked in to the house to her room…where her day would always began with her mom waking her up…she reminisced her happy childhood there…then she walked back to her parent’s room, where it all begun…where her world started crumbling.

She can never forget that Saturday…when her mom was doubled over her stomach pain…and she sat there…beside her…studying…in case she needs something. Her pain got worst and she asked Ishika to cook khichdi for she was unable to get up. When she came back from kitchen, she saw her mom in the bathroom vomiting mercilessly…and she could see the foam coming out the sides of her mouth. She cursed herself for not calling a doctor sooner. She, in a hurry, called her friend’s father, who was a doctor. And after his medication, her mother fell asleep…And she sat there watching over her. Never even once did she think it will come to this. She moved her hands unconsciously over the edge of the bed her mom last slept in…She remember her father shouting in distress while she was getting food for them both. She threw the plates in despair and ran…and she saw the foam dripping out of her mother’s mouth…She remembered doctors coming and leaving…she remembered the stretchers and the IVs…and the vain attempts to take her mother to the hospital….she remembered her scared little sister and her father looking like a lost old man. Someone once said to her that being near to the person you love a lot in their last time is a blessing…but for her it has been a curse…a curse that never have and never will let her be in peace.

She then walked in to the room where she had last seen her mother…so calm and quite…so free of all the worries and life… and she remembered the doctor making the phone call…and she remembered him saying, “I am sorry your daughter is no more”.

And she broke down…and cried…cried for all the lost times…cried for her mother…cried to pray to grant her relief from the shadows of the strangers in the night…strangers she once loved…and still do…cried because she no more was capable of bearing the pain…cried for her release and liberation.