Trapped

“As the moon will soar high in the sky, I will embark on another painful journey. What is a night to me when every moment is dark in my life.

It has been three years, and I am still to know about the happiness he promised me the day we got married. A happiness which I have to derive from serving his happiness, a happiness which I have to derive by being trapped in this house or the happiness I’ll derive by killing my own dreams. Just like every night, his hands like a lizard will crawl on my bare skin that has been polluted by his dirt since day 1.  And as I lay all night staring at the ceiling and shouting in the silence, I wonder if he has ever heard the screams which explodes from every pore of my body. A body he uses to fulfil his thirst every night.

From the silhouette of the bed, every night I see a monster staring at me. It is growing in size by each passing day, and laughs at me, at my misery. I wonder if I should be scared of that monster, or of him.

Last night he came home all drunk, this has become a regular affair in past few months. And whenever he’s drunk, he loves to slap me. However, who am I to say anything, who’s there to listen to me. His family asks me why haven’t I given them a grandson until now, but how can I tell anyone about those lonely evenings I have spent in abortion clinics killing the underdeveloped offspring of this evil. I don’t want my child to grow up in an environment which reeks of hate and helplessness.

This house, which I loved once is clutching me inside its jaws more tightly with each passing day, every corner reminds me of those dreams I killed to get married to him. Every light bulb reminds of the sun that I haven’t seen from past one week since he locked me inside this house for complaining to his mother. Every word of his hits me like a spear and draws a drop of blood. With each droplet I am dying, just like her, my baby, whom he killed because she was also a girl like me.

I think that monster is actually my saviour; I have seen him smiling at me. I guess he’s calling me towards an abyss, a beautiful abyss and today mirror shows me the face of a victim who would prefer death over life any day.

Death over this kind of life.”

—–

He turned over to the next page and it was blank. It was the last page in her diary lying under the bed.

“What did you say, what happened to her?” Inspector asked him after closing the diary and keeping it in his bag.

“Last night when I returned from the office, I saw a window broken and I found a letter in which she has mentioned that she’s going away forever,” her husband answered.

“Jayesh, note down the report and take all the necessary information,” the inspector instructed the constable and walked out of the house.

The early morning sunrays fell on his face as he looked at the diary again. There was an expression of satisfaction on his face while he whispered to the winter wind as if asking them to deliver his message to her,

“Best of luck for a new life.”

He smiled and walked on.

 

Photograph By: Sarika Gangwal

Written By: Abhinav Chandel