Just Another Story

I had once thought I would never need to write again, rather I wished so, yet here I was writing in the middle of the night, a bit too drunk.
I write stories or so I make it look. Stories mostly about her, stories that I leave unexplained, stories that end on a sad note, stories that are more than stories to me. However this is not one of them.
She had once asked why I wrote about things that were so real and that too about us, sorry change that to “about me and her” (there never was any “us”). I wanted to always tell her it was because if you can't get what you want, you end up doing something else, just to get some relief, just to keep from going crazy, because when you're sad enough, you look for ways to fill you up and I guess my stories did just that.

I gulped down a little more of the whiskey. It tasted horrible. But nevertheless the alcohol was doing its job. I felt happy in a long time, even though I didn’t have any reason too. Perhaps it was the alcohol, or the fact that I was drinking up all I that I had been saving for her birthday, nonetheless a strange euphoria gripped me as if nothing could go wrong. I wondered why I hadn’t thought of this before. Temporary, fictional, induced happiness beats down the harsh realities of life any day.

Was I bitter? Absolutely. Hurt? You bet your sweet ass I was hurt. Who doesn't feel a part of their heart break when you lose on someone? You ask yourself every question you can think of, what, why, how come, and then your sadness turns to anger. And that's my favorite part. It drives me, feeds me, and makes one hell of a story. So here I was, seizing the moment. Without further ado I started on my story:

“Yes. Now Bye”, she said and hanged up and he was left clutching the phone, his face impossible to read.
A yes from a girl generally excites up people and is usually the beginning of what is popularly known as an happily ever after. It could have been a yes to, “Do you love me?”, or going a little mild considering his age, “Do you like me?”, or it could have been a yes to a proposal like, “Will you be my girlfriend?”
However the very next second his jet black eyes shut themselves up, he gave a hysterical smile and a tear ran across cross his cheeks and fell on the floor with a thud that was immensely loud, louder than the honking of cars, louder than the rumbling of trees, louder than the laugh of people, loudest among all the voices in the universe, yet strangely no one heard it.
Between the moments when he had asked that question and that when she replied, every inch of his being prayed for a no. This was strange considering the fact that he didn’t believe in god. However being an opportunist with god doesn’t do the trick .That very moment something broke inside him, he heard it distinctly and all he could do was stand there, feeling shattered.
Let’s turn time a few minutes back to trace how he had come into such a convoluted solution. After all, the question he asked is not a standard question that a guy props in front of a girl. He had asked her something just fifteen minutes ago before this question, something which generally spells doom for most of us guys. It’s a forbidden question that you never ask, never ever. Not that it’s vulgar or imploding, but when you ask it to most girls you are generally slapped or shouted at. Thankfully he was on phone. However being slapped or shouted at is still better than what he was told to do, or to be accurate what he was approved.
“What was between you and Devesh?” six words that changed our protagonist’s life for worse. I told you he had asked a very formidable question, you see you never ask a girl about her personal past, especially in an interrogative tone. He wished he had known this, just five minutes ago.
So after a heated discussion, in which as usual the girl went from defensive, to aggressive, to what girls are best at, being snobbish.  Amidst this he tried to maintain his silence, a silence in which he spoke a thousand words. She couldn’t even hear one.
Then being the sentimental fool he was, he popped “the” question. No, her yes had been to a very strange question, “Do you want me to get out of your life? “
And she answered it with indifference, unaware of what all was at stake.
He went to his roo…….

I went and threw up. I had been drinking way too fast. Half the bottle of whiskey was already over. I threw up a little more; I hadn’t eaten anything since lunch. As I retched, my eyes swelled with tears. I looked into the mirror, and mentally thanked her, for putting me where I was. I felt lousy to what I had been reduced to, to sit, to drink and to write. Yet it was better than waking into a nightmare. I returned to my laptop and continued:

He went to his room and just slept. On that day his whole world went black. Air looked black. Sun looked black. He lay up in bed and stared at the black walls of his house….Took four days before he even looked out the window, see the world still there. He was surprised to see the world didn’t stop.

And as he lay drenched in self-inflicted loneliness, he finally understood what has bewildered guys since time immemorial. Girls can’t be understood. You hide something from them, you are in trouble. They hide something from you, you are in even bigger trouble. So after three days, he had an extremely unshaven look, eyes that were redder than the reddest thing on earth, and a wound on the back of his left hand. A wound that would eventually scar, but for now it was bloody and oddly resembled a word, six letters long. Thanks to the effect of cliché Bollywood movies. He had picked up his phone countless times and every time he would only dial till the 9th digit of her number, and when he finally did call her, she didn’t pick up. He realized the finality of the matter, with regret.

On the fourth day he got up, took a bath and as he stood in front of the mirror, and then looking at her name on his hand, he unmistakably realized something. He was out of Smri……

I paused and thought whether I should write her name or not. Something inside told me it wouldn’t matter. Backspace. Backspace. Backspace. Backspace. Instead I ended it with:
He was out of her life; though she would never get out of his.”

It was three in the night.  The whiskey was over, so was another story. I titled it “Out”, and wrote what I usually write above all my stories,
“The story below is completely a work of fiction and resemblance of any character to any person living or dead is purely coincidental “

It wished it was. Of course, unless some curious reader would come and lift my left sleeve and find the harsh engraving of reality, until then this would remain just another story…….