A Portrait of Pain

Cold Summer Night

Word Count: 781 words.

It was on a summer night that Rajesh killed his mother.

First he watched her sleep, the way she'd watched him sleep when he was little. He watched her sleep, like a demon inspecting its host, before he turned on the lights to wake her up.

Her eyes, two dull circles inside baggy folds of flesh, opened by the piecemeal to a squint. When they registered the sight of her son, they brightened a bit. For her, the world always took on a filter where Rajesh was concerned. She had never seen his flaws or his faults, or more lately forgotten about them afresh every morning — she saw only his smile.

This eponymous smile he flashed at her as he coaxed her out of bed that hot summer night. How gently he helped her to her feet, what a lad! Fetched her slippers too, guided her small feet into them smooth as you will.

Rajesh was prepared to answer why he was waking her up this late in the night, but his mother only asked what was to eat for breakfast. Poor woman could scarcely remember her own name these days, let alone the complicated cycles of night and day. Her dementia was getting more crippling than ever.

Which was one of the reasons Rajesh had to do away with her, as much as he appreciated that without her there would be no him. He had attended business school — "studied in" would be stretching the truth thin — and of the few things he had learned there one was: out with the liabilities, especially when suffering from a deficiency of assets.

While any lesson learnt there had been unable to save his firm from going bankrupt, or to save him from being crushed under massive debts from loan sharks, it did help ease his conscience when, drunk as a skunk, he decided he could no longer afford to have his mother hanging around. Literally.

He took hold of her hands, the hands which had fed him sumptuous meals every day after school, and he led her out to the lobby. It was a small, suffocating lobby. A broken light flickered on the ceiling.

Rajesh looked around each time it blinked. There was no sign of anyone.

He led his mother to the filthy stairway. Urged her to climb just a little further when she said her knees hurt like the devil was dancing on them halfway up the steps.

Finally they reached the roof. Finally his mother came partly to her senses, and asked him: "What are we doing here, Romesh?"

Romesh had been her husband's name. Rajesh's father's name. Father and son looked nothing alike, but God knew what filters her diseased vision was set on these days.

"We are here to look at the stars," Rajesh told her, stone-faced. There were no stars in the sky. It was as black as the sin he was about to commit.

She said, "Your voice . . . You sound . . . strange."

"It's the cold. It always gets my throat."

His mother nodded sagely, even though it was the middle of summer.

He pulled her by her hand to the roof's edge, impatient to get the deed done. She looked down at the silent, sullen neighborhood with an open mouth, as though it were one of the seven wonders of the world.

Rajesh stepped back, so that he was directly behind her. He made his heart into steel. He raised his arm, poised inches away from his mother's waist. It was now or never. Now or never. Now or never—

His mother spoke: "Romesh . . . Rajesh's teachers called me up today."

That gave him a start. "Really?" said Rajesh. "What did they say?"

"They say he's mean to the other kids in school. Picks on them. Bullies them; and bullies the teachers too."

Rajesh remained as quiet as a sickness. As quiet as the sickness devouring his mother.

Said she: "Do you think we're raising him right, Romesh?"

"Yes," Rajesh croaked. "You shouldn't worry too much."

"But I do," sighed his mother. "Oh, but I do. He's my child. What if he turns out rotten?"

"He won't," said Rajesh.

"How can you be so sure?" His mother turned around slowly to face him. To look at him with her glazed-over, baggy eyes. "I just want him to be a good boy—"

Rajesh shoved. Swift as a gunshot.

With not so much as a whimper of surprise his mother fell down the side of the corrupt building, and so she died that terrible summer night, by the hand of the son whose smile was her only treasure.

Impulse writing. What do you make of it, darling readers?