Secrets And Sins [Completed]

55. A Cry For Help

Song of the chapter is Repeat Until Death by Novo Amor

-55-
-Zoya Afreen-
-Present-

___________

Delmore Commercial Area
24 December,  2019
3:45 pm

The sun had started drowning in the horizon, just how I was drowning in my despair.

It was difficult for me to stay inside my room anymore. My eyes hurt from crying, my throat felt sore from screaming into my pillow. But mostly it was my heart that ached.

I hadn't known how to accept the news of Ahaan's death three days back. I spent every minute of the past three days wishing to wake up from this nightmare, wishing someone would tell me that all this was just one big hoax.

But that didn't happen.

It never occurred to me earlier how sickening death can be for people who actually cared for the person. I had often used Alishka's death as a means to get under Kartik's skin, never knowing how much it might've hurt him.

No matter how fucked up she was, she was his sister after all.

For me , death had always been inevitable. Something that you couldn't escape from. I had naturally never been afraid of it. But I couldn't comprehend the fact that the only person whom I could call my best friend was taken away from me.

For Christ's sake, he was just seventeen.

He had his whole life ahead of him. He could've become a professor at a renowned college. He could've come out to the world as who he was. He could've married a guy and lived a happy life.

This wasn't fair.

I swallowed the lump forming in my throat as another couple passed by the pavement, looking at me weirdly. Why wouldn't they be weirded out? I had been sitting in the roadside bench for almost an hour, without so much as moving. My eyes were trained at the road in front of me. Cars hurtling down the road and the busy bustle of people shopping for Christmas was all there was in front of me. But I couldn't care less.

The memories kept flooding my head and I couldn't stop them. His laugh was all I could think of. His last words to me were of help. He had called me because he thought I could help. He probably would've thought, 'It's gonna be okay. I had called Zoya. Zoya would be here soon.'

But it never happened. I was late and he was already dead. Once again, I was a disappointment in his life - in death too it seemed.

I stood up abruptly. This was getting too much again, so I started walking wherever my feet took me. As I walked on the sidewalk of the town's commercial establishments, my shoes scraping the asphalt in the softest of ways, I clutched my bag closer to my body. The sun hung above the traffic light on the main road and it's weak attempt at bringing warmth created humidity in the air.