Till The Count Of Five ✓

Chapter 26

Chapter 26

Maybe life didn't suck. It just popped up awful things such as dilemmas and feelings and made one feel ungrateful to life.

Vee

6th May 2019, Monday
7:30

"Whose idea was this?" Hardik asked in awe.

"Shay," I answered, equally stunned. "But everyone helped her from what I've heard."

"Honestly, if it wasn't her, you guys would be losers."

I couldn't agree more. With a Vice-President like Shay, we would be doing great throughout the year. I smiled, my insides full of pride. Whatever gave her the idea, it was amazing.

"Why are you smiling like a child?" Hardik nudged me.

"I'm just enjoying the paintings."

He snorted. "By staring at your shoes? What's up with you, huh?"

"Nothing."

I took a step ahead and touched the first painting she painted, a combination of three faces, all different, equally beautiful and hideous, like us. Ashiamma had asked me for an idea and the thing that popped up in my mind was a face, then another and finally the bridge that connected the two. They fit each other like pieces of different puzzles adaptable to changes. A girl's left side with a guy's right, supported by the lips and chin of another face, all their noses broken but completed together. If they chose to leave, they'd die. If they stayed together, they'd support each other but would find flaws in themselves, how one's nose was crooked, other's cheek bruised, one was missing eyes, other was missing opportunity to taste.

When Shay had seen it, she had asked Ashiamma what it meant. It was a good painting, she had said. Shay had insisted it had a meaning which I ended up explaining.

"And their bodies?" She had said with fascination. "What if they're different but have one heart. Yet they manage to stand apart."

We both had ended up creating a story out of it, one that Ashiamma wasn't interested in. They had different bodies but shared the same blood. It was the brain of the first two that caused trouble, difference in opinions, difference in likes and dislikes, difference in feelings and hormones and everything that pressed the heart to divide into three to withstand each one's changes.

That was the beginning of falling apart. It was dreamt of by the two who formed the upper face but not the third face, the one with no brain, just a heart. It was this person's heart that broke and what was left behind was a residue. They could survive alone now but it would not really be living or even surviving if half of the sense organs are missing. Days later, they came back together but never regained their ability, at least not without a reminder - the little crack where they merged.

"Not necessarily." Shay's frown had not liked my ending. "Skin grows back after injury without leaving scars unless it's deep. Was their desire to live separately deeper than the pleasure of complete experience?"

For some, it could be. For some, it may not be. For those three, I preferred not to come to a conclusion because my mind could never be stationary.

I stared at the background colours, their collision with the foreground. A line ran between their faces as the crack. I frowned and took a step back.

"This isn't real," I said.

"What?" Hardik asked.

"This is not what she drew." The line was supposed to be only till the middle, the indecisive minds unsure about the future. But I saw a complete partition separating them.