A CANDLE IN HER HANDS
BY
IQRA TARIQ
She was walking past a graveyard. Her steps slow, her feet heavy, but soundless. The hour was late ; a starless night yet a full moon shone brightly. Everything was bathed in cool moonlight. The wind was crisp rustling leaves on the trees causing tulips to dance with it. Her feet were bare, the dew on the grass blades kissing them as she walked on silently, endlessly with a candle in her hands; the flame flickering, on the edge of dying but the wind no matter how hard it tried, still could not put it out. Her lips were trembling, eyes were expressionless and her pale skin shone in the moonlight. A heavy curtain of pitch black hair went past her waist, wisps, flying with the wind. Her dress, oh! How it was tethered, black fabric somewhere covering somewhere revealing her pale body underneath.
A particularly strong blow of wind brought an expression so strange in her eyes, she seemed to wake from her stupor and her right hand jerked up to protect the flame of her dear candle. Why was it so dear to her? Did her life depend on it? Did it elicit a particular memory in her mind? Stirred a certain emotion in her heart?
She took a sharp curve and entered the graveyard. Her feet felt no more heavy, instead she gloated across the ground as if feather light but still as silent as ever. Neither a leaf was crushed nor a twig broken under her feet. She just gloated forwards, passing numerous graves on her way, placing not a single glance over them. She felt magnetically pulled forward into the darkest corner of the grave yard. Her secret lied there; slumbering until now, waiting to be woken up.
The magnetism increased as the corner came nearer and nearer. She kept gloating across the ground pulled magnetically, forcefully from her core until she reached the corner. There it was; her secret: her very own grave. The earth was still fresh giving an earthly scent as it hugged the night dew. Her eyes were now focused on the gravestone, carved on it were the words:
R.I.P
Here lies Joanna Smithson
A loving daughter and a caring sister
D.O.B 6th August, 1991
Last breath; 26th April, 2010.
She sat on bent knees beside her grave; staring at it, inhaling it's scent and breezily brushed her left hand over the grave mound. Her whole life was flashing before her eyes. Long forgotten memories burnt fresh in her, stabbing at her heart, making her gasp.
Her father had left them when she was 15. her mother was deeply depressed and so was she, but her mother was strong enough to put aside all this, had found a respectable job and strived to give her own life and her children's (Joanna and her little brother Jade) lives a new and fresh start. But Joanna could not be healed. The inner wounds given by her father could not be made better by any medicine; they had no cure; they just could not heal. They kept bleeding and bleeding until her soul was drained and then she made the worst decision of her life; she started taking drugs.
Those drugs were her everything. They were heaven for her, her ultimate rescuers, her best friends, the most caring ones; at least that is exactly what she considered them, this is what she felt for them. They would take all her pains away. They would take away the consciousness of all the bitter realities of her life. But the relief would be short lived and soon she would be craving for more, never feeling satiated, just always hungry and thirsty for more.
But she was wrong; terribly wrong, devastatingly wrong. They were not her friends. They were not the rescuers. They were the ultimate call of doom for her. They were her blood thirsty enemies and they finally took her life and satisfied their own hunger. And there she lied, covered by earth, deep down the surface where mortals walked.
She was herself responsible for her fate. The tears of her mother and brother which shed every time she took the drugs, every time she had rebelled; now filled her with absolute complete guilt up to the brim of her shallowness. Their wounded expressions at her funeral caused her the worst pain imaginable. How could she ever reduce this guilt, this pain? How could she make up even slightly for her dreadful blunders which had doomed her and her family into an eternal abyss.
She looked at the candle in her hands. Even though her guilt and pain could never be eliminated, her blunders could never be forgiven, she could save others from the same fate as hers. With the help of her candle she would light the flame of hope in their hearts. This flame will make them strong, this flame will give birth to an undying hope in their core.
Her candle was no ordinary candle. She had always been a good person deep down in her heart and her soul's immense remorse, after her death, at her deeds had blessed her with this candle. The candle had showed her the way through darkness. The candle had itself found her wandering soul. Her remorse had called it to her and ever since it had been her companion. She rose to her feet, let a last glance fall at her grave and firmly holding the candle gloated out of the grave yard into the world of the living where people were waiting for her; for her candle.
She had made nothing out of her life but she would definitely make something out of her death.
