Haunting Memories

Chapter 4

What if it was Aarav? 

Ritika stood at the door of her bedroom, staring inside. The bed was unmade, clothes were scattered across the floor, bottles of perfume and her hair accessories made a mess on the dressing table and Aarav’s chair leaned against the window. She stared at the chair, her eyes filling up and her heart beat rising.

The first few days after Aarav had died, she hadn’t let the maids clean up because she couldn’t bear to have the last traces of him removed. She looked at his t-shirt in one corner of the room. She had watched him take it off that night. She had fought with him for throwing it on the floor. But then they’d patched up before they’d slept, thank God, because he never woke up. He went to sleep for good.

Her family had told her it was a good death. A quick death. Better than days in the ICU in the hospital. But she couldn’t help wondering whether if she’d gotten up at the right time, seen he was having a heart attack and called for an ambulance, he would have lived. She felt that such a quick death didn’t leave time for good byes, didn’t give you a chance to say all you wanted to. There was so much she wanted to say to him, if only she knew... 

She turned her gaze to the broken vase on the floor. If you departed so suddenly, did it make it difficult for you to leave? Did the person find it hard to believe that he was dead? Did the soul linger on, trying to fulfill last wishes?

A sob escaped her and she clasped her hand over her mouth. One night, two months after the incident and after the continued insistence of the house maid, Ritika had decided to clean the room herself. That night, as Ritika rushed out the room in fear, her hand hit the vase on the stand near the window and it broke. She never returned to clean it up, and she gave strict orders to the house servants to stay away. She didn’t spend the night in her bedroom anymore. She just heard from the room next door, and watched as more and more of her belongings broke randomly during the night. 

One week after that night, all alone on the first floor of the house, had convinced Ritika that she needed to move out more strongly than any other arguments from her sister. When she had told Anjana about it, she had sounded concerned, but Ritika doubted she believed her. But she had come, thought Ritika gratefully. She slid her hand across the wall until she reached the switch board, flipped the light off and withdrew her hand with a shiver. She reached in for the knob, and pulled the door closed on the wretched room. As she left for her new bedroom, she couldn’t help a backward glance.

What if it was Aarav?