The Corporate Monster ✅

D E C E A S E D

Krithi watched as her mother fell to the floor. Eyes wide in shock, and barely breathing she shook Krithika by her shoulders. Her mother's eyes were closed, and her heartbeat went down by the second. "Ma!" Krithi yelled, trying to shake her awake. "Ma!"

Her beating heart almost stopped when her mother's heart gave up. She sobbed on her mother, growled at the sky for mercy, and cursed god for her troubles.

But her mother still didn't move. No amount of begging, screaming, or yelling can bring her mother back.

She had killed her mother.

She stabbed her with words and wounded her with her tone. Krithika had died because of her stupidity. How could she have blamed everything on her mother?

Why couldn't she face her defeat like always? Her pride had to get in the way and ruin everything. Just when happiness was peaking around the corner, she had ruined it by creating more drama. Why couldn't she apologized like she had planned?

So stupid, she thought, slapping herself as she sobbed.

For two whole hours, she laid on top of her dead mother, sobbing, crying and whimpering.

"Ma." She breathed again. "Don't leave me." She said, but in the darkest corner of her heart, she knew she was lying on top of a corpse.

"Krithi?" A voice came, and her husband strode towards her with concern. He had never seen his wife sob.

Aniket saw his mother-in-law's lifeless body, and gasped.

Two hours later, the joyous mood vanished in the mansion, replacing it with a dreary mood among their guests. Krithi saw her father sit calmly against the wall, staring into the distance as if he had been slapped by a ghost. She clutched onto her mother as her relatives came for the body.

The lifeless woman was pried away from her daughter, and washed, and wrapped haphazardly with plush sarees. A few layers of it lined her mother's wrinkled skin and Krithi kept thinking it was a nightmare; one she will wake up from in a moment. She pinched herself, but nothing happened.

She continued to do the traditions as her relatives told her robotically; she poured milk into her mother's mouth, and washed her feet with sandalwood and turmeric.

She saw her mother placed in the palanquin, and carried by the men of her family. "It's alright." Aniket kept repeating, rubbing her back soothingly. She cried in his arms, sobbing until she had no tears left.

Once they arrived at the graveyard, her father was given a lit stick to light her mother's corpse. But she grabbed the stick from his hands. "She would want me to do it." Krithi said, setting fire to the mound, even though woman were not to traditionally light the fire.

Sixteen days later, the somber mood in the household resided. Her family, the ones she didn't even know about, came to comfort her. They stayed in her house, and offered to take care of her children while she mourned over her dead mother.

"No, I'm fine." She kept repeating.

She was not. Her heart was hyperventilating, telling her she was missing something, a part of her was grappled from her grasp.

Her mother was gone.

The woman who had housed her small body in her womb and fed her, loved her, shown her the world— she was gone.

She was a doctor. She could've done something—anything.

Nothing.

She had done nothing.

She had watched as her mother drew her last breath and did nothing.

The only person who came close to truly understanding was Aniket. He saw her walk about the house as if nothing had occurred, and knew what his wife was going through.