Every story is not worthy of being told in a fairy tale style even though words weaving main course of story are far more magical than pixy dust of tinker bell roaming madly with desire of being sprinkled on invisible wings of a poor little girl who believes in miracles.
Evangeline was snatching forty winks folded in an embryonated posture half part due to miss matched frozen tinge of cold in utterly calm noon of June and partly because of ferocious trance she was surfing on. She was battling an abstract War with the only one, she has ever tormented. Her father!
In her daydreams, she was envisaging pebbles of events encased in painful oysters. The thoughts she had always repressed being too much terrorized to ponder upon. The seven year old girl was hiding beneath staircase. When verbal abuse between her parents started to take a physical form. She slammed her ears tight with her tiny hands. Suddenly some subtle footsteps approached her and a hand raised hyperbolized to a more searing form, leaving scalding torrid scars on her body. She might have broken a bone if her mother dear did not get her fair neck throttled firstly by her darling husband before the Ugly man went more callous on the little soul.
No! She has never done a gaucherie. Her only single gaffe was being born, being born a daughter to him. The daily physical abuse was exacerbating to an excruciating mental pain. She lost herself the day she knew God did wrong to her. Her ungifted wait for a good future was only making things worse. Somehow she agreed upon the fact that her Creator forgot her existence. She had foreseen a murder of her beloved mother and now she had begun to wish for it.
Her mother did not remain the one she desired to be rested in lap of and be put to sound sleep in the humming of lullabies. Her mother failed to realize special children are to be treated specially. And that was the moment Elle decided to never give herself an opportunity to be called ‘moma’. The rigors and chills she acquired during recollection of memories shuddered all of her crackled soul. She woke up terrified when a heavy voice from corner trembled to abrogate her fear. The sound appeared to be coming out of someone inside the almost empty room. But there was no physical presence. “Come on Elle you again had visions of my father beating you” the voice chirped to a loud note.
“Sonia I am really sorry but I cannot get over it…dreams lie… believe me I did not kill him.” Elle’s voice box was becoming more versatile as she was having a self-conversation. Her face curves were changing along with her self-modulating accent. Her jaw line appeared to be retracted somewhat when she was playing the part of Sonia. Her face glimpsed with a touch of confidence.
The usual mind conversations we have, seemingly became very real for her. “I know sweet heart my father was such a sweet old chap. He would buy me bunches of chocolates every Sunday. We had movie nights on Saturdays. He would take me to play in yard almost every evening. We had done home works together. I was his lucky charm. I had such an awesome childhood. ….Do you not remember yours?” Her voice was filled with the charm of expectations from her father she had held upon to when she was little.
Pity on her, this was not her real childhood. “No whenever I try to remember, I get a sharp hammering pain in my head” Elle was balming and rubbing her skinny skull with her fragile hands like the pain had never gone. It was always there for her…..to care for her loneliness.
Her listless talk was broken by knock on the only intact door of Zehn-e-urryan mental asylum. Rest were either broken or damaged by efforts of insane prisoners to escape. “It is your final hearing at the court. Get ready Miss Evangeline.”
The warden of asylum was a stout lady with a dark complexion. The sanity and placidness in her tone was reflected from a huge fifty years’ experience at asylum.
“And yeah inspector Malik is here to see you” the old day left placing a package of some clothes at the door step.
As the name Malik struck her ear drum, the vibrations ignited fire in her mind. Those blazing thoughts of the day, she saw him for first time were still afresh. A number of leaves were streaming down to Earth in the form of orange golden showers. Rivulet in the beautiful park reflected light like a prism making a colorful canopy under which golden fishes laid their shelter.
Melodious murmur of gushing water was interrupted by clattering sound of her favorite bangles. Her eyes met his attitude filled orbits. The next moment her gaze was lowered down creating damp dreams beneath her plenty eyelashes. Unexplainable union of visions synchronizing her heart beat with his footsteps was something she had never experienced before.
As the name Malik struck her ear drum, the vibrations ignited fire in her mind. Those blazing thoughts of the day, she saw him for first time were still afresh. A number of leaves were streaming down to Earth in the form of orange golden showers. Rivulet in the beautiful park reflected light like a prism making a colorful canopy under which golden fishes laid their shelter.
Melodious murmur of gushing water was interrupted by clattering sound of her favorite bangles. Her eyes met his attitude filled orbits. The next moment her gaze was lowered down creating damp dreams beneath her plenty eyelashes. Unexplainable union of visions synchronizing her heart beat with his footsteps was something she had never experienced before.
His gaze was still affixed on her. Petrified, she adopted pallor. She did nurture well but consternation of men race was still ringing bells. Her cold struck distraught body was nudging Daniyal Malik to look at her with more and amplifying interest. Swiftly in reflex of trepidation, she covered her body with her fair hands, blood in veins was beautifying glow of her skin giving a bluish green tint to her tightened tendons. Her red laced, white polka dotted frock resisting gushing air adhered closely to her body forecasting her figure. Her jittery gestures big banged in Daniyal’s mind creating their own galaxy in destiny’s sky.
He misconstrued his curiosity as love fabricating steps close to her. Enough contiguous to unravel the mystery she incarcerated for years.
When passing moments thrived to become 3 years, her alliance with him became a lifetime imprisonment blanketed in obsession. She wanted to exert her control on him from his food articles to his social circle. She went maniac after him …lunatic enough to fringe him with chains so he goes nowhere without her permission. From microphones to CCTV and GPS in his car and phone, he was being tortured by her non compos mentis
.Then came ulterior move by God, the rejection. “You are not the one!” He claimed eloquently raising his scarred right brow. It was the pain of rejection that made her want him more. Hijacking her brain to dwell in the whirlpool of pain giving birth to another alter of her, Trita. The one who would either get Daniyal by hitch and hike and at same time being the one who will not let him betroth to anyone else’s. And one day he finished everything by begging for his freedom as he knew she won’t say a no to him.
The story concluded by a nervous breakdown. She let him go. Suicide was an easy go but she could not kill Sonia along with her. Again a war with her Creator started and she took a spear ambushing genesis of her muddle. She liquidated her own father in hope that all her poison will dissolve by antidote but she lapsed, contusions always heal leaving a hue.
She donned a tank kitty top and stacked jeans. Her quarter sleeved shirt made burn marks of iron rods on her forearms noticeable, those were signs of beatings she received from local amil baba as her father believed; it is going to ward off the bad souls and black magic and poof she will stop talking to herself. They could have taken her to a psychologist. But Ghosts and taweez e kasar overpowered psychology.
“Elle… I can save you….. Just talk to Dr. Hsehh. She will separate your alters and you will be free and I will prove you not guilty of act” the ice in room was shattered by the voice she had always loved. He still looked happy. His breathes were still on, no matter Elle was suffocating. “You are dealing with all of this mental fuss only for Trita. You chose to love her not me…in turn I won’t be awarding you with her freedom. I did not kill Sonia’s dad, your Trita did “Elle replied staring pointlessly at marbled floor. May be she did not want to match her gaze with him or simply she could not say no to the irresistible man she loved in all of her forms. Daniyal leaped a fast move pinning her harshly to rear wall with his strong arms, evading every single layer of air between them. The particularly romantic scene smelled of thumping sympathy mixed with disgust. It never stopped to tangle her sensibility, how those arms could suffocate her where she discovered comfort being tucked in years ago. His lips spoke at a pace farther than voice coming out of his mouth. Confusedly he loosened his tight grip on her. This was supposedly going to leave imprint rashes on her delicate skin. His one push had shaken her whole skeleton.
“How many times I have to say…I do not love you or Trita ….I am doing all of this for sake of humanity. Please speak with the psychiatrist .I cannot see you giving up life for me…I just do not want to carry a burden from you to dooms day”. His eyes were burning red with a mysterious passion which was possibly not love.
“Sonia wants you to leave….now…I do not want your favors” Evangeline cried out with so much pain in a single sentence.
He gently placed his forehead on her’s absorbing all the hammering pain .stroking her straight golden streaked hairs softly, Daniyal continued his plea.
He gently placed his forehead on her’s absorbing all the hammering pain .stroking her straight golden streaked hairs softly, Daniyal continued his plea.
“Please Evangeline! Please! Do it for me.” It was a moment Elle never wanted to break apart from but if she had stayed any longer under the enchantment of her would be husband’s touch, she would have easily lost grip on a very non sense decision Sonia rationalized for her.
“If ours love’s insanity then why are you my clarity, if our love’s a tragedy then why are you my remedy” caroling their love song, a question jumped out of irritation in her parched throat.
“It is not love Elle…not our love…I cannot love you …please understand” his tone was slow and full of repentance. He should have never met her. He should not have developed his interest’s base on her discrepancies .It was his fault to emotionally manipulate her.
“Why? …..because I am a psycho?…. A barren incomplete woman… Why? Just tell me why? …it was not my sin to be a multiple personality disorder patient… I never ever had any symptoms except compartmentalization of memories. Ask Sonia… Believe me Malik, I am normal” Elle was beating his manly chest continuously with delicate force pulling his collar almost tearing it. He appeared like a still rock unmoved by her wails. “Because we are not meant to be together.. I NEVER ever loved you… I just want you to be saved from the punishment of sin you did in lieu of getting me” he replied after a long break of silence.
She pushed him far away, she had listened to his ultimatum. If God was never going to stop sprinkling unfair moments in her life, then at least humans should have cared for her. “Then you have my answer, death holds my solitude” she did not possess any sighs in her offered sentence. He looked at her with hope for seconds that turned to minutes expecting she might change her words but she did not.
Living without him in a world where she was a psycho, there was no happy ending in the mental asylum where her prognosis was as poor as Robin Hood. For her, death seemed equally adorable. What could have been easily solved by a warm hug, was put to solution by death. From Elizabeth Darcy of Jane Austen’s pride and prejudice to Kashaf of Umera Ahmed’s Zindagi Gulzar Hai, psychology played the cupid then why it proved to be a stigma for Daniyal. His one yes would have saved her. Only one yes! But he could not afford saying yes to all of them.
Delima Maria
Fourth Year (Q-44)
