Her Secret

Chapter 18 - HS

"IT SMELLED LIKE A BROKEN HEART AND A SHATTERED SOUL."

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It smelled like ash. His nostrils inhaled the burning air, charred with the smell of rotten flesh. It smelled like a flame destroying a home, leaving behind debris to mourn. It smelled like burnt flesh, like someone ripping out a piece of his heart. It smelled like a taunt thrown his way, like someone just stole his favourite chocolate, like someone hurled him down multiple stairs and left him to bleed. It smelled like a broken heart and a shattered soul. It smelled like his demise.

It smelled like death.

Just not his.

He blinked, the burning air stinging his eyes. Tears blurred his vision. It pained. Every inch of his body hurt. Especially his heart. It was being ripped apart, torn open. A trail of blood mixed with tears, his eyes bleeding red. They were a deadly gradient of black, grey, and red.

He stood up on wobbly feet, his stinging eyes found it difficult to distinguish between what's real and what's not. There was smoke everywhere, in the air, around him, inside him. Everywhere. He couldn't see anything. The burning in his eyes intensified with time.

There, a flash of lightning, thunder of the clouds, he looked up to a greyish black sky. The sky tricked him as he saw a reflection of himself, his eyes, and the clouds wept for him. Drops of rain fell on his skin which tingled with the contact. The site cleared, and all he could see was scraps, and ashes, and burnt metal, and a red-coloured liquid.

His eyes trailed the liquid. It was blood. He saw a hand, and then hair. So dark, so deep, a colour he often thought held so many emotions. A black of the night, a black of numbness. He saw this hair, they looked familiar.

He looked further, following the hair, following it till the roots, a forehead, pale with hints of blue, and eyes--

He gasped. A hand grasping his chest where his heart lay, just like in his nightmare. It pained. It hurt. He was out of breath. Everything felt ruined. He was sweating. A trail of it tracing his jawline and moving down south.

The nightmare was so vivid, so tortuous that it almost felt real. He could feel the ash on his tongue, smell a metallic scent in the air. The memory felt real. It felt like he was back in that rain, water mixing with flowing blood, washing it away from the ruin of what was once before a beautiful family.

Flashes of dark, deep black hair still ringed in his mind. He woke up before he could see more. His mind wasn't strong enough to stare at the deadness in the eyes he once thought was his world.

Although, the smell of blood and the churning in his stomach felt too real. He pushed back his hair which was slick on his forehead with sweat, sticking to his skin. A cluster of multiple flowers surrounded him.

He remembered then. Ansh, the intruder, Anni.... "Oh shit! Anni!" He fell asleep! Cursing himself in his mind, he stood up in a haste. The scent of blood was too strong, which meant......

He turned around. There she lay, scratched and bloodied. The grass turning a gruesome shade of red and green as she bled. Her chest heaved up and down, in a rhythmic manner which told him she was alive.

He rushed towards her. He had slept for God knows how long. She is lying there in the grass for God knows how long. Stupid. So, fucking stupid Malhotra. He crouched before her, examining her. There was a cut at her arm, thankfully the other arm which didn't carry a wounded shoulder. One more graced her thigh, a smaller and less deep cut, probably saved by her sweats. A graze of what he assumes is a knife lay on her wrist, too close to her vein.