They slowly walk back to the room he had entered from that is, he realizes, her art room. When they enter, he looks around to see a more colorful room with canvases and loads of art supplies filling the shelves. A table at the other end holds two water glasses and palettes and he terms it as her work station as he sees a canvas stand next to it. It is when she opens it that he notices it, nestled between two shelves, a door that seems to be the entrance to an attached room. She switches on the light and he sees loads of painted canvases and posters and sheets.
She walks deeper into the room and he follows silently, knowing she is leading him to show something for a purpose. She stops abruptly and he almost dashes into her, managing to balance himself the last moment. She turns and looks at him, her eyes red and puffy but still holding a strength within its folds.
"What I am about to show you is disturbing. People say truth is bitter but it can also be harsh and cruel. Nothing of what you are about to see is pleasant in any sense. Okay?" she asks and he nods.
"Okay" she whispers a little lost like she still expected him to back out despite deciding on the contrary some time back. She takes a deep breath and moves towards the last two rows of canvases that seemed to be the only ones covered in a white cloth. She moves towards one and lifts the cloth, facing away to avoid breathing the dust. Before he can see what is on the canvas though, she stands in front of it.
"Six years ago, I was married to a man who I did not realize until it was late, was a beast. My life was hell with him and he made me truly realize what it meant to be in pain every second of every hour of every single day! He stopped for sometime when I got pregnant but the beast cannot hold onto shreds of humanity for long. It is not in his capability. And my baby paid the price for it" her voice cracks as she says it and steps aside, letting him see the painting. A painting that has her dreams for her baby ruthlessly shattered.
Baby blue wind chimes hang over a crib that has a few toys and a baby blanket. They are painted with a shine like they are brand new as can be seen on the left side because the right side is splattered with blood. All around the crib are scattered toys and baby clothes. Near the leg of the crib is a toppled milk bottle oozing out blood.
It is a simple painting depicting a horror that goes beyond words. He cannot describe how it feels, this heart-wrenching painting that holds her dreams as a mother and also holds the vacuity left by a baby she strived so hard to protect from its own father but to no avail. It holds her evisceration and it holds her guilt. It holds the biggest loss of her life.
He does not say a word because he doesn't know if there is anything he can say that can make it better. Make it okay because it is not. It is not okay, it is not acceptable. They stand looking at the painting, a paradox of innocence and guilt.
_
Perturbation, insanity, grief, guilt and trauma, when expressed in art, are more gut wrenching, he realizes. The manifestation of her trauma-warped paintings that screech to the world after taking it captive in the sheer, raw horror they emanate!
The next white cloth that lifts reveals a portrait of a woman, a candle stabbed in her left eye right at the pupil and her right eye a black eye. Her nuptial chain is wrapped tightly around her neck, choking like a noose. Blood drops dribble from the cut on her lips. Her hair is left open, vermillion sindoor in her parting and all over the length of her tresses like it is bleeding along. His heart shatters as he sees the candle symbolizing hope piercing her eye like it is the source of betrayal, the one thing that caused the most pain because it is what made her hold on. Marriage, a beautiful and pure bond that he has seen defiled in his own so-called family but which still remains an institution he has never lost faith in, he understands was her literal purgatory, defiled in such a monstrous way by the man who should have been her companion and he cannot even grapple with a painting that is the bare depiction of it while she has endured it all.
It hurts, it hurts because this hurt is so so little against the avalanche that is her pain and anguish that she has borne all along, one that is still alive and parasitic within her, tormenting her for assumed mistakes and karma of a lifetime nobody even remembers and he feels the outrage pooling within him. She is shaking beside him, her wounds open and sore and hurting and so very visible to him, wrapped in bare bare vulnerability that there is and being afraid for it because wounds long untended, ones that have taught themselves to heal always fear the balm. When you've been so bereft of it for so long, how can you welcome what you had pleaded for but was never given?
He wraps an arm around her, slowly, hesitantly pulling her trembling form to himself when she provides no resistance. Her head rests against his chest as he envelopes her in a comforting hug, knowing without having to be said that nobody has held her like this since so very long because he would know wouldn't he, the void, the yearning, the acceptance. To be human is the desire to be loved and to be held. To be understood. To be human is to be comforted when you've long since bled in solitude while only ever craving a pair of arms that would wrap around in warmth and chase the sting of the cold away. She wraps her trembling arms around him, their grip light at first only to tighten the longer he holds her. But the way she holds him is a position mirroring his and the tears slip past his eyes as he realizes that despite her own state, she wants to hold him the way she also realizes he has never been held.
They linger in the moment, a moment profound and fulfilling. The warmth and comfort of the hug envelopes their bruised, battered hearts, chasing the underlying cold away. The tears that flow down now are melancholic in the bliss and anguish enveloping her. It is then that it comes to her, the flashes of memories- when she had been a sixteen year old lonely, hurt and bullied girl and had wished so desperately for what she has seen all around, a friend, a companion, her person. When she had been twenty-two and battered and hollow, her body covered in scars that hurt so less as opposed to the chasm within her and had wished only for one person, just one person who would see her beyond her obese body and what she has to offer, who would want her, accept her. When she had been twenty-three and had only ever wanted the pain and solitude to end, to abandon her like everybody else had because they still kept her alive and painting and still wishing in futility for somebody to stumble across her door and for once in her darned life, stay! For once, wipe her tears away and understand that she was human too, not an animal, not a tissue paper but a breathing human! When all along, she has desperately wished for her person because she is not a loner, never was somebody who thrived in solitude because her silences have always been forced and taught due to her circumstances and because she has always wanted to find her home since the moment she knew sense, her real home.
What had she ever wanted or asked for that any girl wouldn't have asked? Or maybe it was audacity just because it was from her.
Now in his arms, it feels like her audacity has been pardoned. It feels like she has come home after a long journey. It feels like her desperate wish that has remained the only thing she has asked from her God and the only one he hadn't granted till she gave up on it, has been answered.
Later rather than sooner but not never.
_
WC: 1463 words
Love,
Pratyusha
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Edge Of The Night | ONC2024 ✓
General Fiction[Open Novella Contest - 2024] ONC2024 Longlister Round 1 & 2 Qualifier Prompts: 24,5 Tired of rising from the ashes, when his last reason to hold on falls apart, a man seeking peace moves into a new apartment. What he doesn't expect is to become e...
