AVYAKTA_Nocturne
What if one day you came home from school and found your mother hanging dead from the ceiling?
Anaya and Meera Dhanraj were ordinary seventeen-year-old twins and everything in their life was fine, until the day they came home from school and found their mother hanging from the ceiling.
She reached for the switch.
The light turned on.
For half a second, the world made sense.
Then Meera looked up.
And screamed.
The sound was raw, piercing, animal. It tore out of her throat before she could stop it, before her mind could understand what her eyes were seeing.
Anaya turned quickly and her breath left her body in a single, broken gasp when she followed direction of Meera's eyes.
Her mother was hanging from the ceiling.
Suspended.
Motionless.
The rope cut into the space where warmth used to live, where arguments echoed, where laughter spilled during dinner. Her dupatta twisted unnaturally, her body swaying ever so slightly, as if the house itself had breathed wrong.
Anaya's vision blurred.
"No..." she whispered.
Her mind refused the image, rejected it. This wasn't possible, this wasn't real, this wasn't their home.
Meera collapsed to the floor, hands clawing at her hair, sobs tearing through her chest. "Maa!" she cried. "Please-please-"
Anaya couldn't hear her.
Everything sounded distant, muffled, like she was underwater. Her legs refused to move. Her eyes refused to look away.
The ceiling fan above stood still.
Silent.
Watching.
The light flickered once, briefly, as if unsure it should stay on.