A Court's Maim

ستمگر | Criminal

Chapter 22.

The nib of her pen shattered. For the tenth time in that hour. Jagged her limbs were in a juxtaposition. A calm mind but a broken hold on her sense of realities as she smudged over the drafted request to bail her husband out. Her fingers shook with a pain that numbed her bones — the lithe fingers that were used to ruffling his hair each morning curved around the spine of her pen in a splitting ache. It struck her every now and then ; the silence, the loneliness that he had covered without knowing. Grazing the edge of a new pen, her name carved into it she tried once more. Feeling the edge crook once more.

Groans of frustration spilled out of her lips, set into a deadly snarl since the clock had struck six in the morning. Her legs shook, vigorously covered underneath the drape of her silken black bell bottoms. The wheels of his chair squealed as she leaned back, resting her back. The ache between her eyes pinched her nerves. It felt suffocating—to breathe inside a space that smelt wholly of him. Of his bourbon and cigar infused cologne ; two things he otherwise despised. Bruises on the back of her knuckles with splinters jagged between them offered some comfort. When nothing else did.

In despair she kicked her feet against the leg of the table.
Disappointed.
Defeated.
Doomed.
The manilla envelope with the green stamp glared at her in alarm even before the sunlight could shine in it's fullest over the still half asleep city. A stamp paper. The name curved weighed down on her lungs as she tried to fill out the form for the nth time. Tears — of frustration and of loss kept her hostage. Tipping her face, her neck fell lethargically over her left shoulder. Every breath was bartered. Culminating into a larger than life event. Amongst the alarms that went on inside her head, seated in the comfort of her husband's study. Barekhna felt weak.

You should have let go off the case when you were warned. There they were, the taunting warnings she had done well to put under-wrap. Wearing the heavy black coat meant she could not give in. To help the enemy was to feed a devil. To honor an ill foreboding. Which was all the reasons why she had chosen law as her career. Which had inherently been the forefront reason of her passion. Though it was almost always, that threats though did not deter they did harm. Harm they did. Breathing sparsely through her burning nostrils she placed her hands before her mouth. Fingers interlaced, eyes closing accordingly as she imagined his presence before her.
The associated warmth.
The comforting hold.
The generous kisses.
A train of compliments.

I wish I had cherished you enough.
Regret piled against her skull, convulsing a headache there. Nothing but an obsidian shade of darkness filled her horizon. Filling her mouth with in ornate taste. The sourness chipped at the sweet flavor of his mouth. She could feel, as her blue blood fingers traced the skin over her lips — his kisses. So ordinary as they had been once to her, she would sell a soul to have it back again. To feel his innocence perch through as he moved his lips against her. The sloppy caress of his fingers against her chin. Even the harsh breath that resulted from it all.
Barekhna missed the touch of Aliyaar.
She was determined to bring him back.

Grunting at last, she threw the pen across the room. Watching, at a loss of breath as it shattered against the dark cherrywood chest of drawers. Weightless it fell, a smudge of ink tracing the beige carpets. Maimed. The room, the papers, the files, his laptop and even herself — they were all maimed with his touch. His absence crushed the wind out of them. Traced the life out. Sucked the air away. Tucked away underneath the obsidian turtleneck she wore was half a heart. That beat with dexterity. The aristocrat in the blood and soul was hell bent on funding a few pockets to buy freedom. The inches of her that belonged to her husband — the chunk of her heart that he had taken along — forbid her.