The fraud

She looked his way and with a brisk wave and stifled smile, muttered goodnight and turned towards the door. She left the party and walked a few steps when the familiar voice spoke from behind her. 

“I though we’d never meet again” 

She paused on her way.

“So did I”

He moved a step closer toward her.

“What happened to all your laughter? I used to tell people about it”

She turned to face him.

“Your memories have been kind to me.”

“You seem different. Cold. Whatever happened to the girl everyone fell in love with?”

She looked him straight in the eyes, indignantly.

“She was an imposter. Her fate was the same as that of any other fraud. She got found out and was forced to drop her act.”

He looked back at those eyes and before he could form his thoughts into a sentence, she promptly turned around and walked away as fast as she could, without running. She was glad she didn’t bring her car today and the subway was a long walk away. She’d need the walk.

He wanted to follow her. He wanted to ask her more questions. He was angry. How could she call the only girl he has ever loved an imposter? How could she lose her so easily? 

Yet he couldn’t move. Or speak. He kept standing there for a while after she left. The chilly wind was somehow comforting.

“Honey, here, you forgot your coat inside! Why did you come out in such a hurry?”

He turned around to face the voice. His wife.

“Oh! I am sorry! I just had a call I had to take. Let’s go inside now.”

News Of Death

A word in a shriek. Many more words.

She looked up.

Words and more words and more.…

Wait, she can't hear them anymore. Everything is moving. Lips, people, things. Yet she can't hear any of it.

Everything is moving. She is not. She is trying. She can’t.

Her limbs. They feel different. Light? Cold? Warm? Loose? Absent.

She sees everything yet her brain refuses to process her vision.

There's no air. She can't breathe.

Vacuum.

A moment. The longest moment her memory permits.

Years later, she will live this moment again. It wasn’t a shriek this time. It was three telephone rings.

And a few more years later, yet again. It wasn't a shriek or a ring. This time it was her name, in an unfamiliar tone, that led the words.

These vacuums never came alone.

There was always a predecessor moment when everything was unassumingly normal, that she would remember with uncanny precision every time her memory took her back to them.

And the succeeding moment when she was thrust into all the chaotic movement and sound around her, with her loose limbs and her sleeping voice gathering sudden voluntary momentum, without her conscious permission.

She never knew what to make of the vacuum.

Was it a monster holding her back too tight, suffocating her and forcefully shutting her ears rendering her mute, inanimate and deaf for the longest minute?

Or was it an angel of kindness, permitting her a moment of transit, devoid of every thing, every feeling, before her life changes forever?

Taking away a piece of her, leaving her broken forever, but gifting her a moment of numbness before she feels it?

A kind monster?