Mystic Oblivion

She followed him to all places he went. Sometimes, the unsolicited company was too much to take, persisted through his gamut of tolerance and he wished he could simply walk away although he knew it was impossible.

He woke up to find her sleeping in peace beside him. She was muttering his name, or was it just his imagination? It seemed only like yesterday when his exposed nerves braided with her hair and lay as a red-black splotch on the concrete. Her soft hair which he had always adored spread over him, the smell of its roots wrapping him in a cocoon of aromatic embrace, giving him the first smell of separation from her forever. The accident could not be averted, and it was simply too much for her to take the pain. She chose to close her eyes in peace, not undestanding he needed her last look, that it was important for him in those moments. Everything they had done together flashed in front of his eyes, and he didn't want to let go. He was lying in a pool of blood asking them to save her as they took her in the ambulance.

Ambulance! He hated the siren now. The rise and fall of the nerve-wracking siren was the last sound he had heard before she left him forever. Infact, all sounds disturbed him now. Even the rhyming chimes of the church bell, that once felt peaceful to his aching heart now excruciated his crying soul. He wished she was now with him, and that they could just walk across the bridge to the park they usually wandered about, hand in hand. He went shopping at Graceys, the local store they always came to. Gracey stopped greeting him ever since the accident, even she knew how hurt he was. As always, he returned empty-handed, too strained to buy anything from there. This place was now strictly for memories, for reminiscing the fond moments of a bond that did not exist in the physical world anymore. Gracey did not mind that!

He watched from his balcony sipping coffee, the little children playing cricket. He remembered how she used to call from the bedroom, "Can you get the clothes darling? It might rain". He wanted to shout back as always, saying she might as well do it, instead stood with tears in his eyes with utter helplessness. He silently wished he could get them for her, would get it for her a thousand times over if only she was asking now. Instead his sobs just echoed off an empty bedroom. It was an irony that a small shack like his could be occupied by so many people, but any number of them could not fill the vast space she had once created and filled. How cruelly empty could this over-populated world be without love!

He pulled on his running shoes, and started his hour-long run. This was the only chore he could do easily now. It was easier to push her thoughts away when he was running, when his heart was beating endlessly, when the persipration was too thick he could be swimming. He always imagined he was running away from her, trying to put distance between them. But she somehow always managed to gain speed, and he would find himself back at home against his will.

He ignored all his friends in office, not that any of them tried to be of valuable support. He had spent so much time at work, helping colleagues, clearing up pending works, even taking up others'. Everyone had been nice to him, but the accident seemed to have pushed them away. May be the world laughs with you and lets you cry alone. His friends avoided him like his pain was a disease that would transmit instantaneously, that they could catch it as easily as common cold just by being in his proximity. He ignored them back, and went about his daily chores, though he was losing his grip slowly. Sometimes, he wound up at home wondering what file he was staring at the whole day. Time just slipped by with more and more empty lunchboxes and a not-so-empty heart.

Then came the part he could simply not understand. He felt her presence as usual during dinner, and he would talk to himself about all they had done and could have acheived together. He felt she was nodding, though he couldn't be sure. Sometimes, she raised her face and gave him a vague smile. He could see her clearly, the most benevolent face in all worlds, the nose that he wished he could gently bite again, those lips that kissed him so often he could still smell her sweet breath, those eyes, it was always her penetrating eyes that got inside him and churned his emotions for her. But he never understood why they were always filled with tears. May be she didn't live happily in the other world? May be she felt too lonely? May be she was wishing him to come join her? Or is it that she couldn't let go though she wanted to, just like him? He would never understand. Then he washed his hands and went and slept in his grave, to return tomorrow.