Life Sentence

CHAPTER 18

“You know, my sole purpose here talking to you is to help you get better and understand things better.” Fatima, her psychiatrist made it clear to her gently for one more time than she would care to count.

Just like every other time, she held the loud exhale that threatened to let itself out and announce it to Fatima that she was utterly bored of this line of hers, and said, “I know, Fatima. Trust me, I know. That’s why I spend an hour here every week rekindling the memories which I wish would remain buried. Just in hope that I get mental peace.”

“Then, maybe . . . just maybe, you shouldn’t lie to me and to yourself.” Fatima looked over at her from behind her glasses that made her look like a strict school principal. And Kubra felt truly admonished.

“I’ve never lied to you,” Kubra tied her hands on her belly and lowered her head so that her chin touched her neck, hoping the embarrassment wasn’t evident on her face. Who was she even kidding?

“No, I suppose not. When one spends too much time lying to himself, he often forgets what truth is.” Fatima left her notebook, something Kubra noticed she rarely did. Like everyone else, Fatima too had some quirks, Kubra had only figured out three of them. She entwined her fingers on the table and leaned forward. Even with good seven or so feet between the couch and her chair, Kubra felt as if she was piercing her soul with that dark gaze of hers, stripping all the layers she’d wrapped around herself. “So tell me, Kubra, have you forgotten what truth is?”

Kubra wasn’t in the calming environment of the doctor’s office anymore. The Goosebumps that erupted all over her skin left little to guess where she could be. There was only one place she’d been where she was defenseless against the cold.

The four grey walls around her were too narrowly spaced that they were barely enough to hold one person. Yet two other girls, exactly like her own, one with the meanest expression she didn’t even know she was capable of expressing, and one with most hopeful one, sat on the floor with her. Accompanying her. Befriending her. Torturing her.

She remembered the number of times she had sat between the two and wondered which one of the three was the real Kubra and which one was merely a figment. Like the empty person that she was, often times she was convinced she was in the head of one of the other two.

But no, she came to the same conclusion she always did. If she could still doubt, she could still question, she was in charge. Most of the times it didn’t feel that way, but she was still her own person and the other two were simply imaginations. Hallucinations.

She gasped back into reality and found Fatima waiting for her patiently. She hated when she did that. What it would take to bring her to the edge, she wondered. But that wasn’t the only thing she hated. She hated how she would force her without even forcing her to go back into that horrid place.

“No.” She exhaled through her nose loudly. “No, I haven’t. I know what the truth is. Better than anyone. Better than you.”

She emphasized the ‘you’ at the end, wanting her to understand that she was still her own self.

Fatima made herself comfortable on her chair, leaning back and crossing her legs. “Then, if you know I have only your best interests at heart and you know the truth, why are you holding back on me? What are you afraid of?”

“Being locked up inside four walls again, this time in a mental asylum,” she mumbled, more afraid to be made fun of than of the fear she was talking about.

“I’m sure whoever has walked through my office door has had that fear one moment or another. But I assure you, they are happily living their lives with their loved ones.”