I feel strange. I feel stiff, as if I slept on the wrong side of the bed. Something feels wrong but I don’t know what to make of this feeling.
It takes me a while to make sense of my surroundings once I open my eyes. I am very claustrophobic so the last thing I wanted was to wake up in a dark room with no windows. I instantly hate this room, its black walls making me want to break them down and run outside, hopefully into a grass field soaking in sunshine. I try to get up but that’s when I notice the chains around my arms. The stiffness makes sense now.
I hate it when my eyes land on you. I can’t believe I didn’t notice you sooner, you were sitting right in front of me all this time. I hate it cause you are the last person I wanted to see when I am in misery. You tilt your head as you watch me, almost as if you are asking me what is wrong. You have a quizzical expression plastered on your face. I guess my discomfort with sitting under your gaze puzzles you. I ignore you for the time being and look at what I can make of this dark room.
I must admit that it’s not fully dark. There is light inside the room, but I can’t seem to find a source for it. I can see you, I can see the glass wall that separates us, I can see the tiny white clouds floating on either side of me and how beautiful they look, but where is the source of this light, I wonder. And most importantly, what are we doing here? Why am I chained up? Are you chained up? I see, you are not. Then why are you sitting there watching me?
It takes me by surprise when I hear a giggle to my right. I am shocked by the sound but also surprised because I hear my own voice coming from behind the clouds. What is happening?! I look at you and you have that curious expression on your face again, as if you’re just waiting to see how I will react. It doesn’t take me by surprise when I again hear my voice, but again, I wasn’t ready for what was waiting for me.
I look to my side and I see us, I see you, when the clouds part. I look at you confused and you just look back but I see something in your eyes that I cannot understand. The clouds part again and I get one more glimpse of us. I see a beach, I see a blue sky, I see a tree with lush green leaves. It only takes me a second to realize where this place is. And the scene changes instantly. All of a sudden it’s darker and we are on a bed, no, I am in your bed and you are cautiously wrapping your arms around me, making sure that I am okay with it. I look away. This is a like a live screening of my past, our past, and I don’t want to see it.
Looking away doesn’t help much though. I can clearly hear our laughs, our conversations. I hear your voice and I am forced to look back. This is too much. What is this room! I want to scream, I want to hit my fists against the glass and ask you to tell me what is happening. But something tells me that you won’t be able to hear me. I know that I won’t be able to hear you too. I know that there is nothing I can do. So I sit back and let my tears fall. I meet your eyes easily this time, cause pain is something I have never had to hide from you. You meet me back with a sad smile.
I don’t know how long we sit there like that. I have questions. Why are you not trying to escape? Or have you tried everything before I woke up? How did we get here? What is this place, are we trapped here forever? So many questions but it feels impossible to find my voice. So I sit there and stare at you and you stare back. I tune out the noises coming from my right as best as I can. At one point, I wonder if this is hell. You ended things with me a short while ago and showing me glimpses of every happy moment we shared seems like a fine way to torture me.
I don’t notice it at first, but after a while I realise that the noises on my right start to sound distant. It’s like I can barely hear the hearty laughs anymore. This helps. I can relax a bit now, except I find myself looking that way quite often now. I am not sure if I am ready for all of them to fade away yet. This is too soon. Stop. I want to scream at them, but I look at you again and you seem quite okay with letting them go. So I sit back, the exact way you have been sitting all this time.
My tears have dried when I hear the first sound from my left. At this point, I don’t want to check what it is. I know even without checking that it’s us but I refuse to look. A part of me feels relieved that all of us is not gone, but the unfamiliarity of the conversations coming from the left makes me look up. I see us again, except I don’t recognize us at all. I have never seen that dress my entire life. And I can’t recall where this place is.
I don’t look at you this time cause I know that I am not going to get anything from you. So I listen intently to our conversations. We seem to be having a fight. Nothing new for us, but it seems intense. I can make out that I am livid from the way my face is shut up, expressionless, and the way you refuse to meet my eyes tells me that you are angry too. The scene suddenly pauses and melts into another one. A balcony. You can see me standing there and you walk in with a cup of tea and I smile at you as I take it from your hand. We stand there and watch the sun climb down and I can feel the effortlessness with which I lean my head against your shoulder and wrap my arm around yours.
I don’t know what to think anymore. I can feel your eyes on me but I don’t want to meet them cause I know that I will cry again. Or may be I won’t cry and that would freak me out cause there are times when I lose my ability to feel at all. I just look down and sit back, accepting it that I just a saw a version of us that could’ve been. If only.
I focus on the floor this time. I find it weird that I hadn’t noticed it before. It’s made of wood. And coated with black paint. I touch the floor with my palm and feel the roughness of the wood against my skin. The chain hurts my arm, but I ignore it. By the time, I find the courage to look up at you, I am okay. A part of me feels loss and pain but there is also this other part of me that is slightly relieved. It’s like a weight has been lifted off me. Somehow I can let you go now. I don’t know what changed but I can feel the acceptance sinking into my core. I look at you and smile and you smile back and I feel my tears falling again.
I can’t say that I am ready when I feel the ground shaking. It scares me more than anything, especially since I am chained down. What now? It worries me that you still seem so composed, as if you know what’s happening. I guess my worry is evident on my face cause for the first time, you straighten up and point to the right bottom corner of the glass wall. That’s when I see it, a crack starting from there and progressing to the middle of the wall and further. I look at you scared and puzzled but your face is so calm that somehow I know that it’s going to be okay. So I decide to sit back for the millionth time and brace for whatever is coming.
The crack slowly spreads all around the glass wall. I realise that it’s like someone is cutting a cake from one end to the other, except this time we are inside the cake. When the crack is done running around all four edges of the wall, I wait for the inevitable collapse. But I only hear a small ‘clink’. The sudden rush of the sunlight blinds me. When I open my eyes again, it occurs to me that there is water near the glass. It’s like the crack went through the middle of the wall and split it into two, split the room into two, and now there is water in between. The sight of water soothes me and I watch as your side of the room starts floating away. Unnecessarily dramatic, I must say.
We hold each other’s gaze fondly this time. I look you over one last time, I guess I don’t want to forget you yet. Your pink shirt makes me smile, I have always loved it. When your room gets far, so far away that I can barely make out what expression you hold on your face this time, I hear the chains release my hand. I want to shield my face against the sun, but I had honestly missed it, so I don’t.
When the glass wall starts sliding up, I sigh out of relief. I was worried that I will get stuck here all alone. Once, the wall is all the way up and gone, I take my sweet time to get up and stretch my arms and legs. They are definitely sore from all this sitting and chain work. And when I see a gutsy wave splash into the room, I step forward and embrace the cool feeling of water on my skin. I guess it’s time for a swim!
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P.S. This is probably not my best piece of writing. But I just had to write, you know? Isn’t it better to write imperfect stories than write nothing at all? This image, this room, it’s been stuck in my mind for a couple of months now. It just popped up one fine day and I kept on pushing it to the back of my mind saying that I will write it. And I just had to today. I really hope you enjoyed it :)
