A/N - As promised, here's the mid week update for you all.
Along with the song 1000 Times by Hamilton Leithauser + Rostam, a song probably depicting Norberto's state of mind. Enjoy with the chapter that's going to leave many hearts and eyes, probably, bleeding...
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By the time I returned to the living room, Norberto had already left. I had taken my time to dress up and then additional fifteen minutes, fidgeting with my mobile so that they didn't feel pressured. The situation was already awkward enough and I didn't want to add to its peculiarity.
When I heard the main door close with a loud thud, I went back to room only to find Albert all alone. He was still shirt-less, sitting on my couch, his chin resting on his joined hands and his elbows resting on his thighs.
The brooding look discouraged me from asking any question, but I couldn't resist. He was too serious for my comfort. I asked him if he was alright to which he just nodded. I sat next to him on the couch and placed my head on his shoulder.
We sat like that in silence for long time. I knew this meeting was not easy for him, especially considering the circumstances. He was deep in thoughts for a long time.
Finally, it seemed he came up with a decision to the thoughts in his mind and turned to me. "Can I ask you something?"
"You know you can ask me anything. You are the one person who knows me more than any other person in this world, May be more than even me," I replied immediately to rest the struggle going on in his mind.
He took a deep breath and said, "You are right. I need not ask anything."
"What is it? Ask me," I urged again.
"Nothing. Forget I said it. It's all mixed up, up here," he said pointing to his head.
"I am sorry," I said sincerely.
"Don't be. None of this is your fault," he said in a tone, closing it from further discussion.
I knew that was not it. There was something that he was not telling me. I didn't want to intrude. I didn't want to cause more trouble between the two of them than what had already happened. So instead, I just said.
"It's not your fault either."
He thought about it for a long time before saying, "In a sense, it's good we had this meeting. I don't think I would have ever been able to come up with a way to break our relationship to Norberto. Now that it's done, I feel lighter."
Then standing up, he pulled me off the couch and said, "Let us go. Between the two of us, it is time to let go of the past and think of our future."
That was the end of discussion on Norberto. Or so I thought.
Norberto felt otherwise.
I never came to know what happened between the two of them in my absence, but it obviously did nothing to calm Norberto. He was a walking piece of insanity wrapped in a life-less human body. Such was the state of his raging mind, he was hell-bent on drowning himself to death by drinking non-stop. Every second of every minute he spent sober, he could feel the world tearing off his limbs from his body.
If only death was kind enough to have him.
The Gods had cursed him. They had dumped him down the darkest alleys of burning hell, to suffer for the rest of his life. He was not afraid of the Gods. He had been living in hell for years. For him, hell was more of a home for him than any other place.
But the irony was even the deities who ruled hell thought he betrayed them by falling for a stupid girl. Darkness which had welcomed him since he was a small kid and had embraced his soul, drinking from it sip by sip, felt his blood was corrupted.
Corrupted by love.
There was no room for love in the darkness. There was no room for love in hell. And so, the dark Gods had banished him too. They no longer had a place for him.
There was no place for him in the whole fucking world.
He was a lonely man falling off the cracks in between the world. An unknown abyss so deep, he would never be able to crawl his way out. He had no one to call his own. He had no place where he belonged. The heaven, the earth and the hell, didn't have an inch to spare to him. He was fucked up in the most fucked up sense.
How could a girl drive him to insanity?
Norberto laughed loudly like a mad man. His laughter roared through the echoes in the empty mansion. He never asked for her. He never asked for any of it. Then why was he shown the glimpses of what love could be only to have it all snatched away from him?
He hated his parents for not loving him enough, for not understanding him, for leaving him alone, for being selfish people that they were with not a care in the world for him. He had felt lonely those early nights when he had still not come to terms with their selfishness. He would cry himself to bed as a young boy many nights.
But even then, he never felt this empty. This hollow. The pain had given rise to anger which had given rise to developing a wall around him just like steel grey eyes. He had found a way to handle their lack of love. He had learned not to expect anything from them and moved on with his own selfish, self-centred life.
Then why couldn't he do it now?
He had not slept for years. Since the day she disappeared from his life, he lost his ability to lie down, shut off his brain and sleep. He guzzled down gallons of alcohol only so that he could lose consciousness. Even that didn't bring him total oblivion.
He had to find her. Even when all his efforts had yielded no results, he had continued to look out for her. Deep down his heart, he had hoped, he had prayed, he had begged to be with her again.
Finally, the forces above had heard him, and she came back. But she came back with a vengeance. She came back to make him suffer and writhe in pain for every day of his life. He wanted to lash out at her, he wanted to drag her back to his house, lock her inside and make her stay with him forever. But he held himself back. He held back because he didn't want her to run away again. He didn't want her to leave him again.
Even in that pain, he had been thankful to know she was there. Even in her revenge he had rejoiced at the fact that he was still connected with her. In that pain, he had felt linked to her. In her hatred, he had loved her.
But she burned that connection as well. Even before he could truly experience being in love, she grew out of her hatred for him. She killed even that bitter bridge with him.
She found another man. A man who was supposed to be his best friend. His only friend.
The news of her being with Albert was like the last nail in his coffin. He felt empty. He was empty. Just a structure of blood and bones with no life. A carcass of burned emotions, ruined expectations and damaged dreams.
Love knocked on his door only to ruin him. To leave him to rot in nothingness, among nothingness to nothingness.
The sun and the moon and stars and all the celestial bodies had huddled together against him. It looked the whole universe wanted him out.
But he'd be damned if he let that happen. Damned before he gave in!
He would show all the powers in the universe, the kind Gods above and the dark Gods in hell below, that he cannot be taken. He will not be defeated. He will rise against all and everyone who wanted him destroyed and done. He would fight all who wanted him crushed and annihilated.
He would make them reverse their decision. He would turn back the wheel of time. He would do what no one thought possible. He would do the impossible.
He would bend the supreme power to his will. He would deal his soul with the devil. He would die, if that's what it takes, to make Melanie his.
"Mela belongs to me! She is only mine!"
Norberto's screams thundered through the Fritz Mansion. They reverberated through the windows to the winds outside. Blew through the city, the mountains and the rivers and reached the Gods abode up in the sky. They flew through the ground to the gulf below. Sunk through ravines to the chasms in the earth and seeped in through the darkness to the dark Gods below.
His cries floated through the eternal space to all the celestial existences and reached out to all the powers and forces in the cosmos, known and unknown to the human kind.
He made them all hear.
Melanie was his.
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I woke up in the middle of the night with sweat breaking off my forehead. I was in the comfort of my luxurious, air-conditioned bedroom, in the security of my home but still I was too terrified.
I had a dream. A dream which seemed so real, I had goose bumps all over my skin. My eyes were focussed on the distant image and my ears could still hear the voices.
"Mela belongs to me! She is only mine!"
Was it really a dream? Then why am I shaking?
I couldn't lie down again. I got off the bed and went to the washroom to wash off my face. More than that, I needed to come back to reality. I needed an assurance that it was only a dream and it was over.
Turning the faucet to it max, I splashed water on my face multiple times. I couldn't care less that my nightie was getting wet with water splashing all over. Multiple attempts later, when my breathing seemed to return to normal, I looked up at my reflection in the mirror in front.
I saw a frightened me but even before I could react, the reflection quickly turned darker, turning into something unimaginable. I saw inside the mirror, only to see a dark night with just a pale moonlight around. I strained my eyes to look through the dark and saw a man standing in front of a large ocean. He had his back turned to me and was concealed in darkness but instinctively I knew who he was.
I winced at the realization, but before I could really fathom what was going on, suddenly there were lightening in the sky. Blazes with thunders, roared through the skies brightening up the entire landscape, making me shrink with fear.
A thunder hit the man right across and his hands spread up in the air. His head fell back, and his legs parted in opposite direction. The sky was full of his cries, echoing through the air and filling up the washroom. It was no longer just an image in the mirror any more.
I was transported to that beach through the mirror and could see it all happening in front of me. I stood just few feet behind the man and saw him struggling. He screamed in agony as I saw thunder and lightning pulling off his limbs from his body.
My eyes flew wide open and my ear drums vibrated with the screams filling up the skies and me. My heart swelled up in my chest and my breath got caught in my throat. My hands wanted to reach out and embrace the man and ease out his anguish, but my legs seem to be rooted to the ground.
He still had his back to me, and I couldn't see his face but everything thing else yelled at my face to do something about the lightning before they kill him.
Pushing every other thought out of my mind, I spread out my hands to act immediately but my horrors multiplied when I couldn't move an inch. Looking down at my feet, I saw the sand all around me turn dark and starting to climb up my legs. I was caught in the murky soil eating me up alive.
The man continued to scream but he was not alone. His distraught cries were mixed with my own cries. As I shriveled up in horror waiting for our end, the man in front of me yelled in his highest roars,
"Mela belongs to me! She is only mine!"
As his words rumbled across the atmosphere. I saw the earth rip apart, saw the sky crack up and the ocean split up. There were loud crashing sounds, the whole place started trembling violently with everything started tearing apart. There was a huge lightening ready to devour everything in its path and just as it struck me, everything blanked out and got sucked into the mirror again.
I opened my eyes to find myself shivering on the wet ground in my washroom. The tap was running wild in the sink above. There was no ocean, no lightening, no thunders and no man. I was back in my home, but I knew I wasn't.
This was a repeat of my terrible dream but much more intense, much more horrifying and much more real. I saw the vision while being awake, while being conscious and to top of it all, this time I saw myself in the vision along with him.
What was it?
What did it mean?
Why did I see him?
Why was he in such agonizing pain?
These questions and many more kept raking my brains all throughout the night. Sleep never returned to me. Neither came the answers to any of my questions.
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Dear Lovely Readers,
I don't know about you guys, but this chapter is one of the most difficult chapters of WLAHC. And may be for that reason, one of the closest ones to my heart too. I really tried to pour my heart and soul into this one. It wasn't easy and I am not sure if I was able to do justice to the characters but I have tried my best. There are so many things that I would still like to improve in it and make better in it, but I decided to move on, or else, I may never be able to finish this book.
Let me know how you found the chapter.
Norberto is how he is. This chapter was not to justify or glorify any of the shitty things he has done in life, in general and to Melanie specifically. But despite being a douche, he does feel pain. He does bleed. He does hurt.
And what happens when such a man drops off the final cliff of life? When he loses his last sense of existence, his only reason for living gone?
Can it get any darker than this?
Wait till you get the next update.
And don't forget to let me know you love me. Your love is like elixir to my writer's soul. Keep it coming babe!
Love,
Anna