A flame in the Storm

Chapter 19

CONTENT WARNING: STRONG MATURE CONTENT. Read at your discretion.

All the events described are fictional and bear no resemblance to any person living or dead.

I woke up with a bandaged forehead and my face clean of my blood.

"Why don't you just kill me?" I begged him "I cannot endure this anymore."

"I cannot let my plaything die. How would I amuse myself then?"

If there was a hell on earth, it was there and I was being punished daily in it. He had lost his fascination in my remains, being done everything now and began to find new ways to torment it and amuse himself. It seemed like he had no soul in him. He was a true monster behind a human face. I remembered looking at his face and feeling charmed by it, those fleeting moments of happiness I had felt, those times I had trusted him. The lies I had told my parents and friends to be with him. I was paying for everything in horrendous ways. I hated myself with equal intensity as I hated him and I had begun to hate god. If there was the god he wouldn't have let me suffer like this. Maybe Rizwan was right, there is no god.

The only thing I had left in me was the ability to feel pain and he made sure I felt it in every breath of my horrific existence. "Remember my slashed wrist, they were only scratches but you had become so afraid of it," he said "I want to see how afraid you will be when you get them" and proceeded to slash both my wrists with a blade. I let out a wounded cry and hoped this to be my last torture and then I would find peace in death. But I was not that lucky. He bandaged my wrists after a few minutes.

I clutched his leg as he turned to go.

"You had me enough times that you don't want me anymore" I struggled as the pain didn't allow me to speak; through jagged breaths, I whispered, "now end it all for once."

He sat and stroking my hair with his hand said in a low voice "Not yet dear" and went jerking me away.

He sat there playing with scissors in his hands, the scene sent shivers down my spine, I didn't know how I was able to endure all this, my spirit was broken but my soul denied to leave my body and worse I could still feel pain and fear. How I wished I could stop everything. I no longer dreamed about safety with my parents or seeing my friends again because I no longer slept, the pain didn't let me even when he was not around. The only thing I now longed was to be dead and even that luxury was denied to me.

"I was thinking," Rizwan said "how would you look with short hair or better with no hair. Let's give you short hair first". I sat motionless in the chair while he played with his doll. My long hair strands falling all over me. There was nothing that mattered to me anymore. I was in fact grateful it was not my hand or any other part.

"Not bad," he said analyzing his work of art. "Now without hair."

My head was shaved clean with a scalpel.

"You know what?" He said one day scrutinizing me "you are not hot anymore, all these marks," he said proceeding to make another one with his cigarette as I cried in pain. He always found a new place to stop his cigarette bud on my body but he did spare my face. "With no hair and your bones protruding beneath your skin. Eww, you have become ugly."

I looked up to the sky and shouted if there is God and if you cannot save me then at least let me die. And finally, my prayers were answered.

One day he came and blindfolded me without saying a single word in an urgent manner, he then tied my hands and legs with rope and covered my mouth, wrapping in a bedsheet, put me in a closed place which I was unable to comprehend. I could say it was close because I began to suffocate in there. It started to move and every few minutes I bumped into metal. I was being carried in arms. The next thing I knew I was free-falling, unable to let out a scream and when I was surrounded by water everywhere. I knew I was drowning before I stopped feeling anything.

PRESENT DAY

I forced my eyes to open and saw many faces looking down at me. Then they closed. I began to hear voices, "such horrors with her, I can't imagine how she survived." Then I heard the voice I so longed to hear, my mother's.

"Maria" she sobbed. "What happened to my child?"

I opened my eyes to look at her teary face but I couldn't keep them open.

A needle was pierced in my hand but I had endured worse, it didn't feel like anything. Then there was blankness everywhere.

Next time I opened my eyes I saw my mother reciting the holy Quran tears flowing through her eyes at my bedside and my father pacing the room with prayer beads and raising his hands in prayer every few seconds. I glanced around the room to find my grandmother in Namaz. Seeing my family after such a long time felt like feeling the first ray of sun after floods assuring that the worst is over and now everything will be okay.

Mom I mumbled through the oxygen mask attached to my nose.

She saw me "Maria" she cried in both relief and pain. My father and grandmother rushed to my side. "How are you dear?" Dad asked but my grandmother was busy thanking God.

How do I answer the question of how am I? One thing I could say was I am not dead.

"She is fine now," mom said stroking my bald head "let her rest."

"Thank Allah we got our daughter back," the grandmother said holding dad's arm.

"Yes," dad wiped his tears.

My eyes closed again.

My eyes kept opening and closing every few hours. In those moments I noticed the stark change around. Walls had changed from black to white, the darkness which my eyes got accustomed to having been vanquished by the lights. I saw blood which was not mine for the first time dangling above me and glucose bottles. I saw many faces coming and going including Raafay and his parents, Farah, Uzma and also people I hadn't seen in years. I guess I had become an artifact whom everyone had to see at least once but the best thing I saw was my mother beside me, always. Every time I opened my eyes she was there, either reciting holy Quran or with prayer beads, her hands raised in desperate prayers towards the one who I ceased to believe.

"You will be fine now", the doctor said she was about my mom's age and had brown stethoscope matching with her brown Sari. She had an assuring smile on her face while her eyebrows were knotted. She removed the food pipe and oxygen mask.

"Thank you, doctor," mom said, "when can we take her home?"

"Give her a week here, her wounds are raw, let them heal and I have few more tests to do."

"Okay," mom asked, "can I feed her?"

"Yes but start small, she has been starved for long" she saw me with eyes full of sympathy. "Anyway" she sighed unable to look at me anymore. "Inspector Prakash is here. He wants to take her statement now that she is conscious."

"Okay," mom said.

Mom went outside and the door opened, what I saw was Rizwan coming over me saying "it isn't over yet", I lost my voice and my breathing became heavy, my clothes became wet with sweat, unable to get out of the bed everything became what it had been, dark.