The Rivals (Rewriting)

Menace in Melancholy

Unedited

"Rishi..." I wheezed out of my siesta with a terrible nightmare, uttering the one name which I have grown to detest the most.

I dreamt I was being chased by a coyote through the school grounds with the face of that abominable human being. The coyote had already pinned me to the ground with his claws and was about to devour me whole with those fangs before his head distorted into the integral symbol and I woke up with a jolt.

It has been long since I had a dream about school.

Why him out of all the people?

I haven't had any solid interaction with him for the past two years. All we have done is sneer at each other while passing each other through the school corridor. We haven't even had a decent verbal fight in months.

I rubbed my eyes and stretched myself on the sofa while yawning.

Of course, it wouldn't be a good dream if Rishabh Singh Rathore is in it. I brushed the thought off by convincing myself that I might've been involuntarily thinking about him while solving my mathematics homework which I was honestly struggling with very bad.

He, on the other hand, was really good with equations.

He was good at everything, that jerk.

The thought was long forgotten and I had already sunk into the world of calculations before I could realise that the guy right then was just a block away from me at his best friend's house, enjoying his share of peace in the rainy weather in the neighborhood.

***

The constant whistles of the pressure cooker almost jammed my senses, compelling me to bang my head repeatedly on the cushion. Cursing my Mom's bad timing to wash the clothes while setting the cooker on the highest flame—I managed to limp my way through the living room, out towards the kitchen.

My feet had gone numb from sitting in the same position for two straight hours and I whimpered as the blood came rushing back in my leg. I was used to this pain by then as I often forgot to change my sitting position, afraid of losing my focus on the book. I would sit around for hours, either reading a book or staring at nothing in particular if the mood was melancholy.

Turning the knob off, I walked back to the couch and settled down, huffing. I could have used that energy in solving the half solved equation, which had precisely eaten up two of my pages and is still eating up my brain. Math is hard. But not that hard if indulged in with proper concentration. And in no circumstance would I get the peace to indulge with concentration in that house. Peace was a luxury, you see.

I couldn't help but glance at my mother in awe who had two buckets full of washed clothes and was running hither and tither to manage a rope to hang those inside. The incessant rain wasn't helping us either.

Rains reminded me of those times when I was young and used to love the frequent pitter-pater. The black clouds in the sky would merry the heck out of me.

A simile of peacock could be used for my state back then. I still remember the days when I used to come back from the swimming sessions late in the evening, watching the clouds circle overhead as my father drove his scooter as fast as possible and I clung to him with my head held high, as if I could reach the sky and touch the clouds.

Looking out the window, all I could think about was how the gloomy atmosphere would take me back to the world of Harry Potter-the dark sky, the smell of wet soil, the pattering of the leaves against each other and all the more, the ever so lasting thrill of the arrival of an unknown epoch. It still does make me feel certain things but the things will never be the same.