Tears | [BoyxBoy] | English

13

I regained consciousness only a week and a half after Mehansa's burial. I hated to admit that she was dead, but there was nothing else I could do. My phone was switched off since she died and I didn't even go to school. I couldn't imagine how I could get through a day without her.

Her death investigation was stopped as her father was abroad. I was sure that after her post-mortem, the father would definitely get some punishment. There were abusive scars on her body. I waited for her autopsy to resume as soon as the father returned. Mehansa's room had been opened again by the police but I did not have the strength to go there. Three days after they brought me back home from the hospital, I took the strength to open the door of her room.

When I opened the door, I was hoping that she would be curled up on the bed, but there was no one in the room. The room was plunged into darkness as the window curtains were drawn down. I closed the door of the room and slowly stepped to her bedside. Her bed was messed up and I ran my hand over the folds and gently leveled it. Remembering that Mehansa would not sleep in this room again made me feel a lump of saliva in my throat. I was always filled with guilt about going to the event that day. If I had not gone to it that day, I would have been able to pay attention to her, I had invaded my mind. Her death was entirely my fault. It was my fault for not being able to give her the protection she needed, the attention she needed.

I lay on her bed. Unlike yesterday it was cold today. I ran my fingers through the edges of the bed sheet in an unsuccessful attempt to mend it. At the same time, my eye caught the bottle of Nutella lying on the floor near the door of the room. It was the bottle of Nutella I brought her that night. After getting out of bed, I picked it up and opened its lid and looked at it. I felt tears welling up in my eyes again and I shivered again and sat at the foot of her bed. I felt my hunger flare up again with the smell of the Nutella bottle. From the day Mehansa died, I did not eat and lived on anything a neighbor forced into my mouth. Suddenly feeling hungry, I pressed a finger into the Nutella bottle and popped it into my mouth.

The taste was addictive and within a few minutes I had finished quite a bit of the Nutella bottle. After closing the bottle and keeping it aside, I got up and went to her bathroom and washed my mouth. Mehansa's room was full of emptiness and everything was dead and I picked up her phone which was left on her table and turned it on. On the front was a photo of her with me. After seeing the smile on her face in that picture, tears welled up in my eyes again. I closed it and put it on the table and left her room because I knew I couldn't bear to stay there any longer.

I was curled up on the sofa in the living room staring blankly at you, and I came to when someone came out of the downstairs bathroom. When I looked up, there was my father. I did not know exactly when he would return to Sri Lanka.

He picked up a nearby bag without saying anything. I just stared at him blankly, having no idea what was going on. He went to a shelf in our house and took a photo from there and put it in the bag. At first I didn't catch anything, but soon I realized that he was collecting all Mehansa's photos in a bag.

I freaked out.

Not even a month has passed since her death.

Father hates her so much?

I jumped off the sofa and punched him. 'Put them back again again!'

Dad looked at me with a bit of anger. 'Let me be free even after that  whore is dead!'

I felt like my stomach was on fire. I questioned where he got the right to call her like that.

'He! You killed her! Let her rest in peace now!' I did not even understand the meaning of the words that came out of my mouth.

Dad grabbed my shoulder and pushed me to the ground. At first I couldn't do anything because my back was hitting the ground hard, but I quickly got up and grabbed my father's arms and started shaking him.

'You! Why are you doing this to Nangi!' I started to cry.

Dad dropped the bag he was holding and grabbed my lips and started shaking me. 'She... that bastard girl reminds me of him. She was born...'

A painful yell came out of my mouth. 'All this happened because of you!'

'What do you know Miniru! When the man I loved slept with my own wife and had a child, you tell me to love that child? Knowing that I lost my first love because of that disguised girl, how  can I look at her face again!'

I started to sneeze. For a moment I felt him. Hiding among people who hate homosexuality and having to marry a girl even when he was gay. and after that his own boyfriend having sex with his own wife and giving birth to a girl.

'But... it... wasn't Nangi's fault,' I hid my head in my hands.

Without saying anything, Dad bent down and picked up the bag from the floor and started collecting her photos to it again. I didn't have enough strength to fight, so I fell on the floor and started crying. I firmly believed that nothing that happened was Mehansa's fault. I knew she was the child of my father's first lover and my mother. After the revelation of her birth, mom moved abroad with my second sister while dad's boyfriend went back to his married family.

One thing I did know was that I had a brother my own age. But I didn't know who it was. Mehansa, me and my unknown brother were children of two mixed families. The mess was too complicated to sort out.

Dad had a boyfriend in school and when they both grew up they were both married to women forcedly. My father and my mother had my older brother and my father then had an affair with his lover's wife. The result was the birth of my unknown brother. Mehansa was born out of an affair between father's lover and my mother as a revenge. Mehansa's and my unknown brother's secret was revealed after my second sister was born.

As a result of the problem that followed, my mother went abroad with the younger Nangi and the elder Ayya, and the relationship between the father and his lover ended. The other one currently staying at our house was Dad's second lover.

I hated both my father and his boyfriend. I hated the way they treated Mehansa who was born because of his fault. But I couldn't do anything. Mehansa had left without coming back.

As Dad was carrying the bag full of Mehansa's pictures, I got up and walked past him to grab it. But my father's boyfriend who came from upstairs grabbed my waist and pulled me down. Once again my back hit the ground hard and my head went blue.

Then I passed out on the living room floor as I lost sight of everything.

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TEARS
2022.07.20