Silent Whispers

Chapter 12: Hammered

She watched her mother slowly slide to the floor, her light pink salwar kameez staining horribly with blood. She watched her brother running into the room a few minutes later, yelling at her to go inside, away from the gruesome sight in front of her. She watched the ambulance rush to their small house and carry away a then limp Garima on a stretcher. She watched her brother frantically beg the neighbors to babysit her, while he went to the hospital.

She watched it all in utter silence.

When she went to bed that night, all hunger vanished, her eyes  didn't see the darkness that meant sleep. Instead she saw her pale  mother, lying like a broken doll.

And that's when the nightmares began.

Khushi woke up with a start, her face sweating with fear. She was  once again the ten-year-old girl, who witnessed her mother commit  suicide. The same girl who had braced herself to never see her mother  again... and also considered following her, should that ever be the case.

It was the worst memory she ever had, and it was a scar that refused to fade.

She learned years later the reasons behind her mother's actions. The doctors proudly claimed it was clinical depression, but her brother offered different reasons that night:

"Maa is sick," he had said. "Very sick... so, she wasn't herself. It was all a big mistake. But Meeti? Promise me something, okay? Promise me you will never do that. Promise me you will never get sick like that. Do you understand?"

She promised him, simply because she didn't want to talk about it. She didn't want her brother to watch over her like a hawk, knowing what her mind said even before she processed it herself.

But she was never the same from that day on.

She enjoyed staying alone. She looked for ways to be locked up in her room. She avoided any plans Shyam made, even turning down trips to her favourite ice cream parlour down the street. And the biggest change of all was that she never looked back at her mother.

Call it resentment, anger or plain sadness... whatever it was, Khushi didn't want to look at the woman who abandoned her, the woman who became the living representation of her nightmares.

To the ten-year-old Khushi, Garima's sucide had brought guilt. She didn't understand why her mom would decide to leave forever – was she, her Meeti, that bad of a child? Had she unknowingly committed a crime that drove not only her father, but her mother away as well? These endless questions haunted her.

But by the time she reached her teens, guilt turned into contempt. And no matter how much she yelled at her mother, she just couldn't wipe away the feeling of helplessness that caged her in the kitchen that night. It was as if her heart had squeezed itself into a bag that was clearly too small for it.

Khushi took deep breaths, trying to rid her head of all thoughts. She didn't want to think about those days... she didn't relish the taste of alcohol for the high it carried, but rather for the mind-numbing peace it brought. For some odd reason, it didn't seem to work this time around.

It was then that she suddenly realized the warmth of the bed was not  hers. She blindly looked around and realized she was in a hotel room.  The soft bed, the elegant furniture and the promotional cards all  screamed elegance.

But how did she end up there?

Khushi tried to retrace her steps as her hands automatically began searching for her phone. She saw it lying innocently on the table next to the bed, underneath a folded piece of paper that said only one thing: