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MEMOIRS OF DEATH
FICTION BY YUSRA HANIF KHAN
DEATH 1: PAIN
If pain were an object, she would have thrown it away with the maximum
force she could generate and made sure it crushed to million colorless
pieces.
If it were a human, she’d loathe it for wrecking her life.
This undeniable excruciating pain that buds somewhere in the veiled
corner of heart and slowly spreads to engulf the entire universe.
This unstoppable grief that flickers innocently and soon turns her
entire life to ashes by its venom-like flames.
This deep sense of loss and this feeling of worthlessness that keeps
on stabbing her in chest like a sword until she falls down on her
knees…
Her armor all torn in pieces….her clothes all soiled with mud and
blood….and a poignant smell of defeat that stains her soul but is
invisible……
She falls like an overpowered knight who spent an entire life trying
to fight gallantly…to get up after every blow and look again in the
eyes of pain…and tell it with a smirk that the war has not yet ended.
Like a knight whose hopes and desires were secretly being maligned
until he finally succumbed, giving up the desire to fight back.
She lays there on ground…taking her last breaths of what people
thought was life-but for her, an unbearable torture!
DEATH II: MISUNDERSTOOD
When I write, I bleed.
The blood gushes out on paper taking the form of alphabets that string
together in abstract words forming incoherent phrases.
And my tears smudge the writing…
I keep on writing like a maniac and the blood keeps on flowing out…I
fill papers and papers….all blemished by tears that I had kept inside
for ages…
I then gather all these papers and step outside in the vicious world….
I show them to everybody and nobody seems to comprehend. I stand on
the crossroad of life and people pass by in hurry- too busy to show
empathy…too preoccupied to care. Some eye me suspiciously doubting my
mental state. For them, I am a lunatic standing with stacks of paper
with vague red markings…not readable.
My eyes cloud….there must be someone who can understand…I run around
in despair …in agonized hurry!
Someone has to decipher what I wrote…why I bled! The desperation
mounts.
I find no one.
I start running.....poignant and heart-broken.
I come back home….I come back to myself as I am my home…and I start
writing again.
Like a maniac…like an obsession.
My blood gradually slows flowing out and the oceans of my eyes dry
up…the ink concentrates and my last drop of blood trickles out as I
finish the last line “All I wish for is interminable escape!”…the drop
marks the dot of the exclamation mark and the pen falls out of my
hand.
I sit there with my head lying on the table…in a comfortable manner to
greet death…..to denounce my right to simply exist…and slowly go to
sleep my eternal sleep…
The cold pitiless gush of wind forces in through half-opened windows
blowing and scattering my stacks of papers.
I sit there lifeless…with my eyes closed in timeless peace as the
papers fall all around me…
Finally, I need no one to understand them…
Or to understand me…
DEATH III: INSIDE THE MIND OF A SCHIZOPHRENIC
There is no greater infirmity in the world than to suffer ruthless
cruel mental conditions that brutally suck all the happiness and hope
out of your soul, leaving it barren and sore-aching with pain.
There is no greater irony in life but to be haunted by the demons of
one’s very own mind. They devour you with pleasure sneering
maliciously. What can be more demeaning than to be a slave to a mind
that once belonged to you but now, after setting flames to your soul,
watches laughing heartlessly?.
What do you do when you become your very own enemy? When you become
desperate to escape the cages of your very own mind?
And this all...was happening to him.
The voices in his head haunt him till he wants to shriek. He covers
his ears trying to deny their presence; he shakes his head vehemently
comforting himself that they will soon leave him in peace…but they
keep following him everywhere.
They keep recurring….the images dance in front of his eyes, tempting
him to scream…challenging him to resist…
He stands there in unspeakable agony…
Pleading loudly for them to leave him….and then a bizarre thought
drifts by…who are you pleading to? Your very own mind?
The confusion is intolerable and the last reserves of sanity exhausts.
With all the remaining ounce of strength he can muster, he screams out
piercingly and then slumps down defeated on the ground…
The demons dance wildly bathed in the euphoria of victory..
Tears streak down as he stares ahead in the bleak despondence of death
that envelopes him eagerly.
He lost.
And his mind won.
This has to be the strangest of the battle mankind ever fought.
Yusra Hanif Khan, age 22, contact: yusra86@hotmail.com
Copyright 2008 Yusra Hanif Khan
Reviews and comments requested
Posted 02/07/2009
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