neelwrites/flash/fiction/shortstory/04/07/2019

WRITTEN FOR

Photo Challenge #270

https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2019/07/02/photo-challenge-270/

July 2019 Writing Prompts

July 2019 Writing Prompts

WHAT YOU SEE IS NOT SOME SEA 

By Neel Anil Panicker

Lisa stares hard and long at the bleak, black fog-ridden horizon that looms large like albatross’ wings as far as the eye can see.

It’s been three tortuous nights since Harris did the disappearing act; yet, again.

Today’s the dawn of the fourth day; still, her mind’s stuck in the dark dungeons of utter depressive despair.

A pair of sea gulls hover above her before taking off in a trajectory. In the distance the sea roars its angst as froth filled waves higher than the rows of beachside shacks smash against glistening black boulders and die instant deaths.

The words of her mother smash through her benumbed skull.

“Baby, be careful. Men are cheats. They want only one thing, and when they get it they throw you off a cliff”.

She was right, her mother. Or, was she right, really?

Another line, this time from the man she had given her all ravages the inner arteries of her heart.

“Baby, I love you. I love you to death. I love  you to eternity”.

A smile(or, is was that a scowl?) creases her otherwise beautiful face now lathered in salt and grime.

Funny, she reminiscences.

Two people, both purporting to love her; both promising unconditional love and allegiance. One, the woman who brought her into the world, the woman who raised her singlehandedly after the man she had given her all to, married against all opposition, ran off with her best friend leaving her high and dry, clutching a week old baby, a woman forced to hit the streets days and nights hawking her body in order keep body and soul together. A woman who’s now so filled with venom and spite for the male species that she would gladly throttle the first man who ever laid her eyes on her precious wealth___an eighteen year old dream of a girl with golden locks and a face so angelic even the Gods would be envious of.

And the other, the man who knelt on his knees; took her hands in his and swore on his mother, father, siblings, ancestors and what have you that he would never ever leave her; that he would make her his bride and shower her with all the world’s joys.

And in a some kind of Greek tragi-comedy, he too called her his ‘Baby’.

It’s been a week since she’s heard either of them call her that.

Baby, that is

One of them she’ll never be able to hear from.

Her mother died a before, thankfully in sleep. Free from the heart wrenching body shattering mind numbing cycle of shame, and poverty and deprivation and despair and desolation and lovelessness.

The other, is missing. Incommunicado.

The waves begin their fresh onslaught.

As a tear drops from her eye, Lisa squints her eyes, and stares into the brackish waters.

Her caterwaul echoes all around, splits wide open the fractured skies.

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