Love Short Story – The Winking Closure
Photo credit: earl53 from morguefile.com
Her mother avoided taking her along whenever she visited them. Now the mother had to leave her with them forever. Anelia had to reside with people she wasn’t introduced to.
The rust clad board outside the graveyard fell as soon as Anelia was placed in the beautifully crafted coffin. Flaunting her white communion frock, she lay with a suspicious smile. The pastor mumbled prayers without the slightest hope of waking her from her slumber. Shrouded in grief, people peeped into her new house. Lullabies of anguish echoed in the cemetery land.
An exhausted watchman looked at the clock hanging on the guard room wall and scowled. Although the visitors carried generous eyes, they hadn’t offered him a meal till now. Hungrily, he started gulping the partially burnt parantha he had been avoiding since morning.
Freezing her eyes on her peacefully lying daughter, Reslin ignored the tears which ran profusely across her cheeks. Numbed by the sight of the lifeless body which she had once borne, she was deprived of sorrow. Battling with a crippled heart, her feverish husband held her tightly. The frail fingers gimmicked pseudo strength, the mind dismissed nothingness.
Choked by tides of morose while reciting the prayers, the clergyman asked for Holy water from his accomplice.
Assimilating the sorrowful atmosphere which clouded the century old graveyard, the birds broke their cooing humbly. Interceding to the force which took her, the crowd sang hymns in supplication.
Once the unusual silence adopted by the people who bookmarked the lifeless teen became suffocative, the authoritative man in white asked the coffin to be closed.
Gasping for his own breathe, the pastor was enslaved by an uncanny hesitance. The hands which were accustomed to being muddied at graveyards showed resistance. Overcoming his undirected emotions, he gathered mud and threw it on the black box. Guided by the cue his accomplice enveloped the box with brownish mud.
****
Engrossed in the utter annoyance his distasteful food offered, the watchman missed the man who ran into the omen filled place at 3 past ten. Shabbily dressed in an overcoat, Jeff felt pinned against the grieving people who insensitively buried Anelia in his absence.
Incapacitated by shudders of anguish, he fell to his knees. Fatigued by his inability to mourn as one who lost his reason to live, Jeff threw his distraught face to the ground, which was home to his beloved.
You’d look funny in your sixties; with that well kept hair parting ways from you, scattered hair as beard and that nose further withdrawing from your face.
She had not even waited for him to turn eighteen. The proximity of their souls seemed to have fallen short of destiny’s whims indelibly. His flesh hadn’t cultivated hair enough to slot him as an adult, yet his heart flickered at the memories thrown uncaringly at him. The fragrance of her loosely left hair still resided in his nose.
Imagine, we sailing in a boat, stranded in the middle of the sea, with food which would suffice for only few days, and little hope of finding shore!
Imaginations are mirages crafted by the mind to distract one from realities of bitter inheritance. Jeff could segregate irony from mockery now. Life lured them to create fantasy, and now conveniently fooled them. What is given is liable to be taken back.
“But not so soon!” he yelled within.
Within minutes of his reaching Anelia’s dwelling, her grandfather, a man of fine integrity, walked towards him. Bursting into tears, he hung at the 16 something guy, oblivious to the pain that pierced into Jeff’s bruised heart.
Each step Jeff took towards the black stone which read ‘Anelia Raymond’ was a mile he had to trudge. Death had been hostile towards him, life the major conspirator. If only she had not boarded that bus! Quelling the huge drops of tears which crippled him seemed unachievable.
The curious fellows who witnessed this queer sight got a subject for discussion for the rest of the evening.
‘’She had been an exuberant girl, who never disappointed Raymond and his wife………so pity that she is …………..”
Although words of sympathy flowing out of the crowd were audible, Jeff wasn’t sane enough to be receptive. Was their secret no longer to be treasured? And how could she abruptly leave him alone? The acceptance of her bereavement spat on him.
Hysterically, Jeff ran to Reslin and screamed ‘’I had told her to hire an auto. How could someone be so ignorant?”
Once I get into theatre, Jeff, you will find it difficult to impress me with such catchy dialogues!
The winter winds gushing past the faithful didn’t deter them from singing cacophonies of consolation. The uneducated birds possessed maturity finer than their inept brains. They sustained silence without the minutest longing for attention.
The ignorance of adults is selectively termed a mistake; when it is perpetuated by us, it becomes disobedience. Are they not burdened by obligations of obedience? What leaves them unblemished?
The gravel pillowed on her new shelter hid her from Jeff. Recalling the promise of eternally peppering her life with his presence pinched him. The sheer cruelty behind this separation couldn’t be come to terms with.
I swear, I can’t bear such untidiness! Why don’t you just clean this wardrobe of yours? I always have the option of leaving you. So, in order to woo me, you need to initiate action from teenage.
Three hours had passed past her burial, but Anelia drove everyone to wait for a miracle. The infuriated eyes of her friend melted the strong men standing there with tied hands.
‘’We’ll have to leave your friend, Jeff. She has left us, and now we need to leave her’’ cried her grandmother in a subdued tone.
Holding his hand with an uncertain rigidity she screamed ‘’your friend ……………..”
Jeff could no longer hear her. A faint familiar voice reverberated in his ears. The words were a part of his memory. And now they hummed disturbingly in his mind.
I guess, holding on to you never tires me. Perhaps, I even heard Alisha rumor about us being together. Fearfully enough let me warn you. You are not talking about us to anyone, at least not till we reach adulthood. Are you listening to me, Jeff? Hey! You idiot…..Are you …….?
__END__
