Broken and Lost

Chapter 4

Winter had come, days were becoming shorter and nights were lengthening and so was Sara's agitation. Something was bothering her but she was unable to put a finger on it. Her focus in her office work was clearly lacking. At night she was unable to sleep properly not only because of nightmares but due to indefinite uneasiness too. Her sixth sense was telling her that some unfortunate event was about to occur. She was going through all of this alone because she was now not used to discussing and sharing her feelings with anyone.

One cloudy morning during breakfast a parcel arrived that was addressed to her. Last night Irum had informed her that a new assignment had come and it was related to someone who owned a construction company. As Sara was involved in the field of construction so this time it was her job to do the required investigation. On hearing about the assignment she thought that it might help her in clearing her mind. She planned to open the parcel in the evening and asked Khan Baba to put the parcel in her room since she was getting late for office.

Her day at the office was as usual hectic for it was a Friday and tomorrow was weekend. At the office she completely forgot about her assignment due to the day's work load. When she came back home she was too tired to have dinner so without meeting anyone she went straight to her bed and immediately fell asleep.

There was a beautiful valley with a hut near the lake. The lake water was so clear that one could see the bottom of the lake. The day was sunny and the Sun's rays were being reflected by the surface of the water. A woman was standing near the entrance of the hut, her back was towards Sara. She seemed really familiar to her. She called her to know who she was. But the woman did not respond. She started walking towards her saying things like, "Hey! Who are you?", "What are you doing here?" and, "Whose place is this?" She did not get any response as she reached the door. Suddenly she started feeling uneasy. It brought back all the discomfort she had been feeling these days. She turned the woman towards her and was dumbstruck. The person in front of her was none other than her own self. She must be seeing delusions was the first thought that came to her mind. It was until she saw the dress her delusion was wearing was blood stained all over. Now the woman or Sara's delusion grabbed her by the arms and said in a low and thick voice "It's all your fault. How could you do this?" She started trembling and blabbering "NO. NO. I did not do this. It's not my fault. I did not do anything. Believe me. Please. Please." Her jabbering was becoming louder and louder and intense. The woman was saying something else too but Sara was not listening instead she was just trembling with fear, crying due to bleakness and saying the same words again and again.

She woke up with a jerk and sat on the bed. Her body was drenched in sweat and her breathing was heavy. She removed the comforter as she was feeling hot and looked at the clock. It was 2 o' clock in the morning. She stood up from the bed, drank water and started pacing in the room to calm her nerves. After about half an hour she was much calmer and was able to think properly. Such nightmares visited her almost every night. She had been trying to run and avoid them as much as possible. Initially she had taken medications and some counseling too. But the core problem was that in order to cure herself she needed to tell the truth to the counselor and that was out of the question for her. She thought by killing someone she could get rid of her thoughts about her past. It was one of the many reasons that she was at peace with being a killer at least that was what she believed. It was a way for her to cool down her anger, rage, fury, guilt and regrets that she had in her life.

While sitting on the bed, her eyes landed on the parcel that was lying on her side table. She picked it up and the strange feeling came back. On opening the parcel she took out the documents and her eyebrows raised on reading the name of the assignment. She immediately searched for the picture in the documents and on seeing the picture of the man who was enlisted to be dead soon by her, her world stopped. She again read the name to confirm that she was not imagining things but the truth was there stating "Aryan Sikander" along with his picture. There was no doubt that the person in the picture was him. She could never mistake him for anyone else.