LIVING WITH YOU

I stop writing suddenly. The pen falls out of my hands.

A gentle breeze brings in that peculiar smell that I have just begun getting used to.

I sniff.

I can’t believe it.

My heart starts racing.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath till the smell fills my lungs. I take a deep breath till your smell fills my head and drives me mad. That typical smell after you have just had a bath.

I breathe again, and I forget all about my submissions and notes and books.

It couldn’t be!

Has your love driven me so mad that I am imagining and feeling things like they were real?

How could you be in my house!

But the smell… it refuses to go away.

I get up from my chair and walk out of my room. My heart’s begun to race faster, if at all it can. I tip-toe towards my door.

I open it.

The smell hits me. Stronger.

I am sure by now that my olfactory has gone haywire.

I track the smell to my parents’ room.

My parents’ room?

I reach for the door.

I open it.

My heart stops beating

“Hey, you up already?” Dad asks, looking at me.

“What’s that smell?” I ask.

“You like it? One of my friends gifted it to me,” Dad says, throwing a bottle of cologne at me.

I catch it.

I open the lid.

I smell it.

I close my eyes.

I smile...

ITI

There was once a scene I randomly came across in a daily soap on TV. The girl’s face was new, and for a change she looked sensible. I paused momentarily. The girl was reading a letter. From her father. A sentence in the letter kind of stayed with me for a long time… ‘There is no one in the world who hasn’t at least once felt like ending it all and taking his/her life.’ I pondered over it for quite some time, and it led to me filling up over six pages of my personal diary.

But I couldn’t recall any of those pages.

All I could recall that moment was that line I had randomly heard that day.

There is no one in this world who hasn’t at least once felt like ending it all…

I looked at the white hills around me. I took a deep breath in. One among my last few ones. I felt the cold air pass through my nose and into my lungs. It filled my lungs. The cold was getting to my bones. I could feel it. I looked up at the sky.

I threw my shirt off.

My upper body was bare.

I began climbing again. My mind clogged with thoughts for a few moments, and then cleared into an emptiness that I never thought I was capable of feeling… just like the clouds were clearing from time to time to reveal a plain, blue-grey, empty sky. With no airplanes. No birds. No eagles even, when it is known they ‘fly above the clouds’. But then I realized.

I was above the world.

Just like I had once been.

But this time, I was really above the world. Up and above. Where no one could reach me. Or find me.

Up and above the hypocrites.

Up and above people.

Beyond the reach of mom and dad.

Beyond the reach of anyone.

It felt amazing.

My pace quickened. I was almost jogging up now, the stones cutting at the bare sole of my feet. The blood caked around my toes almost as quickly as it started flowing. It froze, and the red crystals fell off my feet and crushed beneath them as I broke off into a splint___ or as close to a splint as my condition could allow me. No clothes on, except my thin track-pant. No shirt, no shoes. Nothing. Except the cold cold wind blowing across my entire body, determined to throw me off my feet. To bend me. Break me. And I determined not to be broken.

Not to be broken before I decided.

Before I chose to break.

I felt small drops of water freeze over my body and melt___ for surely I couldn’t possibly sweat in these conditions. Even with all the running. I possibly couldn’t. You don’t sweat topless and in below freezing temperatures. The wind was cruelly cold. It stung my bare body, as I ran against it.

I ran like my life depended on it.

Ha.

How far the truth was from this thought. This stupid stupid thought that had entered my mind.

Even in these final moments, I hadn’t given up being stupid.

Stupid.

Fucking stupid.

But no more now. It was all going to end. Shortly.

I had reached the highest point I could. I looked around me and took in the earthly beauty, as an unearthly calmness settled over me. My breathing grew steady. I wasn’t feeling cold anymore.

I looked up at the sky. It was blank. Empty. Just like my mind, at that instance.

I looked down, into the valley.

My final resting abode.

I looked up at the sky again.

I saw her face.

The only truth of my life… which had ceased to exist… which stole away from me any reason to live.

I closed my eyes.

I spread my arms.

I am coming…

I jumped.