And I Died Slowly
By Shatarupa
The foremost sense that returned to her was that of her skin pricking against her sticky, mascara-loaded eyelashes. Hours back, she was carrying them flawlessly, but now, they were reflecting her coral turbulence. “Choose somebody who destroys your lipstick, not your mascara”. How amateurish!!! She had lost both and was not gaining from them.
Kavya was pacing breathlessly through the elongated corridors of the city hospital, with frequent glances at the doctor’s chamber. Her fate was sealed in the reports she was awaiting. Her patience meter was skyrocketing. Unable to hold it back, she rushed past the door, briskly avoiding an imminent collision with an attendant. Dr. Mishra looked stunned, and smartly avoided the expression with a welcome utterance. He read her reports neutrally, yet sensitively. Half an hour later, Kavya walked out of the infernal news feeder with a fierce decision which she could not have embarked upon in her wildest dreams in a sane mind.
Seattle was her new destination. As the ground closed slowly, she riveted her thoughts back to the business deal she was expected to model. Not an issue in finding a big fish in the market when all you have is one, concentrated focus. “Is that you, Miss Urvee??”.She turned her head to find a board bearing her name, a man calling out to her and a luxury car waiting earnestly to be tried upon. She was right. Mr. Vaibhav was no tit bit. He was a lone in the crowd. Or so it appeared.The city never slept. She had descended at midnight and the hustle and bustle was quite obvious. The Range Rover smoothed through it.
Mr. Vaibhav was a warm person with frozen cores. Something about him was odd, she could feel it yet it was undetectable. Urvee’s boss was pinned down on fixing everything perfectly. The meeting was better than expected. However, the implementation phase required two more days. Urvee placed a call back to her boss in India.
“Sir?”
Silence.
“Sir, we are tied!!”
“Hmmmmmm. Good job”. The phone went dead.
“Rusty attitude”.Urvee was well aware of what success meant to sir. He lived on them. Stardom has its sides too. Urvee lounged on the plush sofa in the living room of her guest house and flocked her inner recesses. Was she also living on them, by them or for them??None of them.She was the only person after her boss who knew the real business behind every deal they made. And the scene that figured out farther down the lane was a black hole that was magnifying each time she went out for a new tie up. There was no end to it. The path slipped further every time. Her thoughts hazed through her eyes. She fell back deeper and deeper until she knew nothing more.
The streets of Seattle were overflowing on that day. Urvee’s capsules had cruelly been lost. Whether or not she wanted, she had to live on them. She has been for a length. The outcome was never apparent, yet she was dying. Everybody has to. For her, death was a friend next door who could come knocking by any moment. While crossing a group of window-shoppers, her heart missed a beat. I know him,but never mind,let me get going. No gains digging sources of latent wounds. She walked off, consciously but.. The man was blocking her path just too nicely to avoid. A wave of familiarity passed by. He recognized her as one amongst the mass and hung his head down for a few moments. Then he talked, talked and talked. Urvee stood still at her place, incapable of motion till the cessation of his rants and a long time hence, finally dragging along herself to her room at the guest house.
The conversation had left her shattered. She could not bring herself to justify the nightmare she has been living for the last six years. She has been adding catalysts to her weapons, triggering the chances of her already destroyed destructions. Backing off was no more an option. She has to take forward what she has brought along. Tonight was not lifeless, as all the previous ones. The deal was done.
She entered a comfortable suite on the 117th floor. As she sat on the queen sized bed meant to be her earning source, a spark ignited somewhere within her. How was she to reset all her diversions to stability.“I cannot act further. My morals are barring me. Only if the mistake had not occurred, or I would not have acted upon it, so rashly.A sense of foreboding engulfed her. Something told her Mr. Vaibhav was modest enough to consider her plight. She would give back the entire lump some consideration he had paid that was staying at her guest house. And everything else he would order. Except the cause she was here. She straightened herself at the sound of a click.
Mr. Vaibhav was draped in a towel that threatened to slip off. He closed on her with a lopsided smile that flickered on my boss too, each time she hit upon a night. Distancing, she suddenly found herself pleading at his feet for rescue from this nightmarish deal. Patience has never been my virtue and that is the reason I am here. Nothing goes planned, everything is impulsive. His smile did not fade. His only reaction was dropping down his last retreat of clothing and pulling her back to glorify the joys he had paid for. You are my trophy for the night, and heavenly at sight. No amount of consideration or pleading can take you back without me savoring you. He initiated his act.
Urvee found herself falling into the depths of the night six years back. A college girl then, she nurtured dreams like every other girl, and cared for them. As if a realization structuring itself, Daksh entered her life with a royal pleasure. The days that followed bore the batch of togetherness and love. They combed every part of the city and slowly life was transforming to a perfect form.
On a perfect date, he professed his plans to take forward his love and arrange her meeting with his parents at his guest house. She happily followed him, feeling lucky, only to find a cocktail party with a bunch of drunken brats some of whom she had met earlier as Daksh’s friends. Such was the trust that she had built upon him that the only thought occurring to her was him hiding a surprise for her in some way. “No qualms, it was a surprise, only too dirty to be called one. It was a shock.”She was drugged and carried to her boyfriend’s room. The night testified against the death of her intimate desires at the hands of Daksh. This could have been the best embankment between us, instead his alleged drunkenness destroyed me with full vigor. Now, I was his legacy, who could feed his companions too. Hours later, I walked out painfully, swaying through the experience that was to nullify me forever. “Choose somebody who destroys your lipstick, not your mascara”. How amateurish!!! I had lost both and was not gaining from them.
I had dragged along a cheerless existence. I had nowhere to turn to, nobody to account for. I was an orphan. Nobody would listen to me. I silenced the roaring complaints within me and went on until I participated in a blood donation camp. I met Dr. Mishra there. A test followed that hinted upon a disease in me. On his suggestions, I carried out some more ones and was figured an HIV positive. I was Kavya.
The moment was picking on me. I would destroy lives like mine was destroyed. I would destroy the feed that fed dreams. I would die, and ensure all would die the same death. Hovering on me was the repulsive passion to encompass all within me, like me. I made nights, I shattered bodies slowly. For money, for revenge. Sir was to come my way, who offered me a lucrative option, to entertain his clients. Since then, I had been working with him as his secretary, as his latent money-feeder. He introduced me to a royal class. He never knew I pursued AIDS, And I Died Slowly each day.
My search for capsules on the streets of Seattle ended with finding a man I had wished to devour six years back. Dr. Mishra hung his head in shame, and informed me about the criss cross of results that his nurse had mistakenly carried. He had tried to reach me but I had changed all my descriptions, name including. I had always felt positive, but today I was negative, I was HIV negative. But this did little to shorten my day of grief, rather filled me with a forbearing remorse. I had always felt that somebody up had written my faulty destiny. But it was me, who had falsified all the rights I could have walked upon. No amount of remorse, grief or guilt could bring back what I had lost. I had erased my luck with my own hands, by bearing a negative catalytic energy. In the means of destroying all, I had destroyed myself with no signs of revival.
I had walked upon to Mr. Vaibhav’s endeavor with hopes of cleansing myself from the impure blood I had been shadowing upon. But… as I dug deeper, I found a new found resolution reflecting within me. Not anymore. As he struggled to tear away her shreds, she found the oddity which had puzzled her on their first meeting. It was ruthlessness. She snatched a knife from the basket of fruits kept on the table and stabbed him. One, two, three, four, I want more…… I will not live the incident at the farm house again. I am killing Daksh and his friends forever. They will not haunt me anymore. Kavya is dead. This is Urvee hitting you. Five stabs were enough. She swiftly crossed the corridors and left.
Afraid of her crime, Urvee ran past the lane and entered the Starbucks cafe. She sat in the Starbucks cafe, sipping her coffee and staring out of the window. The blood stained knife lay next to her handbag, covered with her blue silk scarf…A thought dawned on her. She had to live new. She had to escape.
The next morning headlines showcased a murder at a well rated hotel, and a girl in mid-twenties lying in a pool of blood on the road, her wrist cut. A blue, silk scarf was crushed under the wheels of a running vehicle. Whether a murder or a suicide, that was a mystery.