It was midnight. Lucy lay languid in her cosy bed, waiting
for sand man to pour in just that extra grain of sand to make her forget the
harsh truth and slumber once again. The fickle finger of fate had driven her
into this traumatic phase of her life.
The past week, Derek, the love of her life was run over by a truck. On her
wedding day.
Dealing with anguish of losing someone without whom she could never imagine her
life had crippled her mentally. Maybe that was the reason behind those
recurrent dreams…
Or maybe because her mind was too exhausted by dealing with the loss. It was
harder when she revisited old memories, quietly to herself. It was not easy to
bury them, and she couldn’t make them disappear. They were a part of who she
was.
She watched Derek being run over by that truck, a Red Volvo. She watched his
life float away, his blood spewing on her snowy nuptial attire, she watched him
struggling and trying to enunciate words he wanted to say, but his eyes
revealed them for him. She watched him
take his last breath before he closed his eyes forever.
It was equivalent to being pricked by a thousand needles. Only
more painful. Especially because she wanted to help him. She had seen the truck
and she ran after him, calling his name. But she was late. 10 seconds too late.
He lay in the middle of the road and there was nothing she could do about it.
And those indelible stains of his blood –they were there. On her wedding
gown. As if to never let her forget what
had happened.
But why she had those dreams remained a mystery for her. She did everything she
could to run away from what had happened. She did not attend Derek’s funeral.
She couldn’t. She was staying at her parents’ house for a while. But it seemed
like she could never hide from the reality.
That night reaffirmed this. She was asleep, perhaps praying to her subconscious
mind not to encounter any “dreams” that night, but wishes hardly ever come
true…
She saw a figure, presumably that of a young girl, walking towards the altar in
the vacated church where Lucy was to marry Derek. Her vision was foggy and
everything around her seemed hazy. She struggled hard to scan the area around
her; the figure of the little girl walking towards her in the dimly lit church.
It was dark outside and inside wasn’t any better. Everything seemed to swirl
around her, covered in a veil of ambiguity. Finally when the girl emerged out
of the murky darkness and approached her nearer –she gazed at her, flummoxed.
The girl wore a wedding gown and clasped a bunch of white jasmine flowers in
her hand. She remembered how long she had deliberated before settling down to
pick out the flowers for her wedding. There was something pristine about them.
She felt an innate sense of tranquility by the sight of those flowers. Like
nothing could ever go wrong. But everything had changed now.
The girl, about 8
years old, spoke in a gravely severe voice. “Remove
the blood stains, Lucy”.
“They shouldn’t be there. Remove them,
from your wedding gown. You don’t know what lies ahead. If you don’t do it
within these two days, you will be faced with the consequences you’d have to
put up for the rest of your life. Consequences far beyond your imagination.”
She woke up with a startle, aghast. She wanted to know what the dream
signified. What was the reason behind those dreams? The next morning, she
confided about everything in her mother. But she whisked it away. She told her
things that annoyed Lucy.
“Lucy, you’re too caught up with whatever
happened. But it can’t be undone. It is time to let go; to look ahead. Once you
do that, those dreams won’t bother you anymore.”
How could her mother possibly expect her to look ahead? And more importantly,
how could she brush this whole thing off like that? She saw it, that girl,
clutching those flowers that SHE had picked for her wedding day.
Who was that girl? Why did she want the blood stains to be removed? Questions
were weighing her already stressed mind down.
However, the following night passed peacefully. Sans any “dream”. She was
surprised she finally had a peaceful slumber. Maybe her mother was right after
all…
But her thoughts soon contradicted the reality when her mother rushed to her
room, distraught.
Lucy’s mother had that dream. That girl, the church, the flowers –she had the
exact dream which had haunted Lucy all along.
One thing was certain. Those dreams WERE real. Not a
manifestation of Lucy’s imagination. It also implied that it was the only way
out for Lucy was to get rid of Derek’s smeared blood on the wedding gown. And
Lucy did exactly that.
Lucy was frantically washing off those smudges of blood of the person she loved
the most. It was evening, but the
stubborn stains of blood had refused to die. The redness of those stains had
diminished, but not gone. It took her all day but the outcome was futile. Lucy
felt incapable and vulnerable. She found her hands covering the stream of tears
rolling down her face. She did not want to feel this way anymore.
Lucy put the wedding dress back with no intention of trying to remove those red
patches of blood.
“I’m done”, she said to herself. She
couldn’t care about any sort of consequences anymore.
“There could be nothing worse than losing
Derek.”
The following night, she saw her again –that girl, in the dark vacated church.
She warned Lucy that it was the last day to remove those blotches of blood from
her dress.
Lucy woke up with a shudder –terrified. “It was just a dream” she thought, trying
to console herself. It was still dark. Cold beads of sweat ran down the sides
of her face from her forehead. She looked at the luminous alarm clock in her
room. It was 2:50am. She tried to get out of her bed, but was entangled in the
sheets. After struggling for a little while, she carefully got out of bed and slid
her feet into the downy slippers that were neatly placed beside the bed post.
She dragged herself to the bathroom door, whacked it open, and switched on the
light.
She had spent most of her nights curled up in a corner of
that bathroom and crying herself to sleep, in the past week. But this time, she
did not cry. She wiped away the sweat on her forehead with her hands and washed
the smeared mascara that had cracked and settled in the little wrinkles under
her eyes. She noticed the icy terror that had grabbed her heart swirl away as
she unclogged the sink.
She stood there and looked at her reflection in the mirror. She
stared at her eyes. Derek had always admired the way her eyes lit up whenever
they spoke about their wedding; and the way her nose wrinkled when she smiled.
Those almond shaped eyes which once exuded sheer joy now looked mournful.
She knew it was the last day for her to remove those dark
red splodges of blood from her dress which was supposed to be as white as a
freshly washed linen cloth, convinced that it was the only way she could escape
the ”consequences”. But she was too tired to try. She didn’t like the feeling
of being alive in this world without Derek, anyway.
She shut the bathroom light and walked back to her bed. She
despised the darkness…it reminded her of the dream too much. And she was too
exhausted to think about it right now. She dived under the covers and tried to go
back to sleep. But more she tried, the more she found herself falling into a
semi-conscious limbo where the “dream” still haunted her.
________________________
There was a sharp rap on the door. It was only 5 o’clock in
the morning. “Who could it be at this
unusual hour?” Lucy thought. At
first she just assumed that her exhausted mind was making her imagine things.
Perhaps it was those dreams. They had seeped deep in her mind, and in her
heart, blurring the line between reality and illusion. For a minute she thought
she had gone stark raving daft, and ignored the rapping on the door. She pulled
the covers over her head, trying to muffle that bothersome sound. But then she
heard it again. And again. And this time it was followed by a door bell.
“Okay, so one thing is clear now –I’m certainly not imagining things.”
Lucy leaped out of bed. She quietly tip toed her way to the
hallway, lest she woke up her parents who were asleep in the opposite room. She
hesitantly walked towards the door. There was another knock.
Lucy felt a lump welling in her throat.
“Hello?” said Lucy “Who is it?”
There was no answer. But she heard it again –the rapping on
the door. She could feel the hairs on her neck stand and goose-pimples break out
all over her body. The coldness of the brass handle went up her hand and into
her heart. Her heart pounded, trying to free itself from her breast and escape
the horrifying fright that had took over her as she pushed down the handle and
let the door swing open.
Lucy’s jaw dropped. She found the little girl that had been
appearing incessantly in her nightmares standing opposite to her. She held a
bunch of white jasmine flowers in her right hand and the left one behind her.
Lucy felt too incapacitated to speak. Her handicap of expressing what she felt at
that moment made her face look blank, like the pages of an unwritten book. She
knew her end was near, but the little girl seemed too innocent to be carrying a
dagger in her hand. As the girl slowly moved her hand to reveal what she hid
behind her back, all the beautiful memories of Derek flashed before Lucy’s
eyes, making her zingy and terrified at the same time.
The girl revealed to Lucy what she was clutching in her left
hand.
Lucy stared at what the little girl held in her hand,
perplexed, as the little girl said -
“Aise
daag, waise daag, jaise bhi daag ho, Surf Excel hai na. Ab jasmine ki khushbu
mein bhi uplabdh!”
Image Source: www.visualphotos.com
