Rehnuma

Prologue

Blood. So much of it. It's splattered around walls, on the floor. It's everywhere. It's in my vision. I see it everywhere I turn. My hands, my feet. I might not have it on me but I feel it. They killed that boy. Right there, because he talked too much.

What kind of a reason is that? I might be a kid but I am not stupid. They've let me go but at what cost? They'll find and torture someone else now. And the dread in my stomach tells me they'll torture them more than they ever did to me.

My stomach coils, the soup mother gave me wanting to come out. What kind of people live in the world, I used to ask my father. He always said every kind. The good and the bad. He never told me monsters was on the list too.

The kind to kidnap a twelve year old kid, whose only fault is being born in a rich family. The kind to keep him hostage for two weeks, starve him, and murder people infront of him. It doesn't sound like much. I used to read of murder in books all the time. But reading about it is clean, you imagine it the way you want.

The ones I saw? They were messy. Traumatizing. But the one that hurt the most was that of the boy. Same age as me. He was my father's driver's son. He was kidnapped with me. He was my friend. He talked too much. That's what they said before they slit open his throat.

His blood splattered. It was on me. He had spoken the last time because I asked him something. 'Are we going to die here?' . He had said, 'no. We will get out of here. Don't worry.'

Oh such Fools we are. False sense of security, my elder brother told me about it. Vivaan bhaiya says it's the lies we tell ourselves, that keep us moving. I never understood it. But I do now.

I haven't been able to forget a single drop of blood that splattered around me. On me.

I've scrubbed myself clean of it. I do it everyday. Yet I feel it crawl down my arms sometimes. Dripping down the side of my face. I feel it everyday.

And I just want to get rid of it. I will let snakes crawl over my skin if it means I won't feel the blood. It's weird. I hate snakes. But I hate blood more. Father made me meet this woman, she is my therapist. She says it will be over soon. That I just have PTSD.

But I need it to be over now. So I stand under the shower and scrub again. I scrub until my skin breaks. I stop. I don't want more blood. No. No.

What am I going to do? I have blood on my hands. My friend died because of me. I've seen his parents cry and mourn their loss but I haven't had the guts to tell them it was because of me. That in a way, I killed him.

It's all my fault. It's all on me. The blood. The death. The life he lost. All of it, is now on me.

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