The Book that doesn't have a Cover

        Darkness. Pitch dark, shadows, the deafening silence of the lightlessness. Shivering, feeble, unstable I was piled up at the corner. Darkness was omnipresent at that very moment, around and within me. It was as thick and tight as some solid mass. I could hear my whimpers as if it's an echo. My heart was thumping against the breast. Hair, sweat, skin everything had a nauseating stench of something or someone or many.

      Seconds or minutes or hours, time wasn't my concern of that moment, but pain was. It isn't like I could subjectify the origin of that pain, the threshold, the source. Pain ran through every vein and in every inch of my skin and even on the insides. Scalps had to be caressed as pearls of blood started appearing on the lost hair roots. The claw marks were still wet, hard and deep at random places of my skin.

     The cannibals' tooth dug deep into my arm, neck, breast and at places which I cannot look out with my naked eyes. Electrifying pain jolted into my inner thighs every passing moment. The bin beside me looked no different than my physique - worn, dumped and devastated.

    'Calm down, it's nothing, it's nothing but a weird dream. Ease out' told myself which was in vain. It was what happened to the other girls' who were shoved into the darkness. Their voices being subdued by YOU.
       
         You started considering Hymen as a qualification - to be a girlfriend, to date, just to be friends with.You needed that girl with a hymen and so judged girls' based on the presence or absence of the Hymen. That girl who hung herself two full moons ago had a good smile but had no hymen. You called her a whore, a slut, a ho. And you spun stories about her never-existed series of boy friends and immaterial neighbour who sneaked into her room every night. Your cruel tongues didn't stop stripping her naked even after she turned into ashes. 

     My sob grew worse. The more I tried to suppress the worse it got. I let them all out till I got no drop to weep. The salinity seemed to cleanse the disgust that had spread over my skin. Some vague hope crawled on to me, some light, some courage tore apart the slithering fears that awaited to devour me. The hysterical anxiety has now taken some rest.

     The Society always stalks, right from the dawn of civilization, it has always been stalking. With it's cruel eyes, it keeps on staring at us. While we bleed, while we grow it keeps on instructing that the pride is underneath the skirts. It advises whom not to Love, whom to bed, when to beget children and if there's any doubt it asks to prove ourselves to walk through a pyre. Where was it when the girl was bullied, where was it when men let their devils in loose, where was it when I was crying out for help hours ago?

     Skin is just skin. Heart felt light after those tears. It took me some more moments to gather myself up. The roads were dark without any lamps. Darkness doesn't threaten me anymore. A sleepless dog that was passing sniffed at me like it does to anyone else. Unlike humans, Dogs don't judge. I Gently caressed it's head and walked slowly, without any fear - I've got nothing to lose.

"What happened yesterday?"
an accident.
"Seems like you got hurt pretty bad huh?"
Just lost some skin.