The Withering

10 | the paranoia

It never goes away, the fear, resurrected with every action that gave birth to it.

He watched as Sarah sliced the apple and two halves of it fell back on the wooden chopping board. She went to slice another one and then another. It was around 10 a.m. on a Sunday morning and Ayaan was sitting on the sofa with his laptop. As an editor of the famous magazine of the town, Sarah used to be busy most of the time during weekdays and that somehow kept his mind busy from buzzing with all the darkness in their life.

On Sundays, however, he had Sarah all to himself. He could watch her move around the house morbidly, doing chores she really needed to or spend the time in their study, reading some books on dark historical origins, something he absolutely despised. They got more attention than her husband, him.

But he was actually happy enough to see Sarah getting back to her normal day to day work. At least, that's what it appeared to him and he was always on his toes to run into another one of her episodes. The therapist's form was still sitting heavily on his work table which he needed to sort out soon.

Ayaan took a sip of his coffee and responded to an email while his concentration was still on his wife standing inside the kitchen, cutting apples. It was something she used to do every morning for him. No matter what darkness consumed her mind, she still took care of his diet and almost everything about Ayaan.

Everything was exceptionally mundane when suddenly his eyes captured the drops of blood on the chopping board. The knife was placed on her wrist and her teeth were clenched. Marks of extreme pain lined her forehead, but no words came from her mouth. His every nightmare had taken up the shape of a reality.

Ayaan rushed towards her, the laptop fell from his lap to the ground with a crashing thud. His heartbeats almost stopped as he jerked her hand and threw the knife to a side. Holding both of her hands in a vise grip, he pulled her to his chest, so she couldn't move an inch.

"Sarah! What the hell are you doing?" He screamed. "Tell me. Why? I want to know what is making you do this?"

Sarah gave him a confused look as if nothing had happened while wrestling in his hold to push off his grip. "What am I doing?"

He looked down at her hand which was still holding one half the apple and her wrist showed no signs of any cut. He instantly loosened his grip on her and stepped back. His breathing was still uneven as he sighed deeply and wiped the drops of sweat from his forehead. Her paranoia had finally managed to set their roots in his mind too.

"Nothing, I thought..." His words died in his throat as he saw the hurt and disappointment shrouding her face. No matter how many times he had tried to make her feel accepted, the truth was Ayaan was tired of acting normal when he knew everything was dark and hazy.

"You thought that I'm getting another manic attack, didn't you?" She completed him, her face twisting in hurt. "You think I'm mad, that I'm insane. Is that what you think?" She gave him a broken look.

"No, I just.." Ayaan couldn't understand what was happening to him. He was so scared of losing Sarah that he couldn't help himself imagining her hurting herself again.

He watched with his back against the fridge as she kept the apple back on the counter and stomped out of the kitchen pushing him aside.

Their lives had become a fucking horror show going on a loop in his mind, and he couldn't hit a pause button which was worse.

***

He found her sleeping, far away from his side of the bed. A bottle of pills laid sideways beside the half-empty glass of water. It wasn't getting better between us. Ayaan had thought the reason he was so obsessed with saving her was that the secrets she was hiding from him were leaving him hungry for knowledge. He thought if she was close to him, that would make her open up to him, but now he wasn't so sure of that either.

She seemed as distant as the first time he met her. Sarah fed him only those bits of her mind and heart which she wanted him to have, but the truth was that it wasn't enough anymore. Having her as his wife and having her in his bed wasn't enough. He wanted to be part of her mind too, and connect with her soul too.

But back to her secrets. Ayaan was hungry for them. He went to sleep thinking about them, obsessing over the worst possible scenarios and woke up with a paranoia of Sarah hurting herself. He told himself, that's why he had to be around her all the time. However, that did not explain why he had to watch her while she slept, as if he was afraid she would never wake up again.

Afraid was a small word, but fear filled him with every bit of helplessness she woke up inside him. But what was he afraid of? Not just her past. The fear came from the realization that he wasn't saving her. She didn't need him anymore. The more he came closer to the conclusion, the more he knew he had messed up.

It made the hair rise on the back of his neck just to think how he might have done the exact same thing she had needed saving from. Had he read the pleadings wrong and it had started surfacing now making him disgusted by his own behavior?

Sarah shifted onto her back and that was enough. She was wearing his shirt, the one he wore to work last night. For some reason the thought of his scent surrounding her skin made him stir with so much need and desire. The shades were open, the afternoon light filtering in enough that he could make out beautiful little details of her sleeping form. She shivered in sleep, and Ayaan realized how the shirt barely covered her upper body and the smooth expanse of her legs was bare to the low temperature of the room.

He walked over to the bed and covered her with the sheet. She released a sigh, her face relaxed as he used his fingers to smooth out the lines of a frown on her forehead. It had almost become his ritual, to watch her sleep, to show her affection when she wasn't flinching away from it. He took her hand into his, turning it to reveal her wrist. No fresh cuts, just the scars from the previous. Ayaan stroked the tender skin over the skin and brought it close to his lips, kissing her scars. Even then she didn't stir. The bloody, sleeping pills.

His throat suddenly felt heavy and so did his heart. If there was one thing that he really wanted in his life, it was being with her. But it didn't matter anymore. All he wanted now was to let go of the fear surrounding his soul.

And for that, he had to let her go.