Dark Horse Arts and Sciences

The cycle continues over and over again like that of a mouse trapped inside the wheel that runs all the time. Wake up. Clean the house and the floors. Wash the dishes. Do some yoga to remain slim and fit so that your husband doesn’t get ashamed of you for being fat and chubby; so that you don’t get those extra fat and carbs emerging out of your side stomach through your saree. Also take care of your skin so that you can post those insta-reels or whatever. Then make breakfast for your dear husband who will go to some school to teach or something; no idea whether he goes to teach there or just to escape from me and flirt with his colleagues who must be ten or more years younger than him; fresh flesh what he calls. Then what am I? Old flesh! Bullshit. You know what I have kind of adapted to the philosophy of stoicism these days. I don’t care a straw for him anymore these days. What he does; what he doesn’t; I don’t give a shit. It was not like that at all. We were so close and wild; but all of a sudden, out of nowhere; everything vanished into thin air. What the reason was; I have got no clue. But I remember it was something that happened that night that changed everything for us. It changed the course of our relationship completely. Yes, upon a lot of reflection and thinking, I have come to realize that it was that night that caused everything that is happening today.

We were on our beds; my hand on his bare chest and his on mine. We were in deep slumber at the dead of the night. I got already transpired into the world of dreams. But it wasn’t that normal regular dream of yours where you would be running away from something or jumping from the high tower, but not fall on the ground. It was a really strange one; the type of dream that feels so vivid and real that you can barely distinguish between something that is so absurd and something that is real. But the strangest thing was I was not me in the dream. I was him. And he was standing in front of me as “me”. He had become “I” and I had become “He”. Maybe both of us were having the same dream. Maybe both of us had entered into each other’s dreams, but our personalities were exchanged. I had no fucking clue what was going on; but I knew one thing for sure; I possessed his mind now and I could enter into his mind; or my mind and know everything that he had inside his tiny skull. What he thought about me; what he did outside home; who he was talking to or flirting with in school; who he was sleeping with except me; what other addictions he had been into lately; everything I could now know as I was captured in his body. And I tried hard and there I saw it. Everything flashed before my eyes like a black and white movie. And at that exact moment, I realized what a fucked up and messed up person I got married to. I realized at that exact moment that my marriage was nothing but a lie; a lie written especially by God, if there is any, so that my life got shattered into little fragments, nowhere to be found after that. 

And then I woke up and removed my hand from his bare chest. I wanted to wash my hand with some sanitizer as that chest must be some resting place for so many other women. 

Maybe he was also experiencing the same dream; but from my perspective. Now he will realize how loyal and faithful I have been as a wife to him. But what I am being rewarded in return; nothing but fucking lies. 

I can see his sudden eye movements. He must be experiencing that black and white movie experience right now; seeing all the scenes where I was devoted and dedicated to him and to him only; not any other man out there; but him. But I know eventually he will blame me; blame me for being a miserable and impotent wife. It won’t be for the first time that he would blame me for anything; he has made me appear as the reason for everything bad that has occurred in his life. 

But one day, he transcended all the limits when he blamed me for not being able to bear a child. He called me an impotent woman. How dare he talk to me like that?

But he did and as usual I couldn’t do a thing about it. We both knew who was the reason for us not being able to have a baby. He knew it to his heart and soul, but he wouldn’t just accept it. Why, I don’t know. What is it with men when it comes to their manhood? I have no fucking clue whatsoever. He was blaming me to just provide himself a sense of distorted reality; a reality that wasn’t real or true in any form or shape; a reality that he couldn’t grasp inside his own mind and now keeps blaming me for. 

And there he wakes up, sitting on the bed with eyes full of amazement and utter shock. He begins looking at me with eyes filled with utmost fright and horror; as if I were some ghost appearing in front of me putting on some white saree at the dead of the night.

He keeps staring at me, but doesn’t utter a word. Then he gets out of the bed and walks towards me and then stops again. 

Then he walks towards the drawer from which he brings out a rope. What’s he gonna do? I ask myself. Then he ties the rope in a round shape and throws one end of it to one blade of the ceiling fan.

Then he goes over the bed with a chair on his hand, and tie the knot of the rope around his neck and stands on the chair and looks around for some time and pushes the chair beneath his feet. For some time, his body trembles a bit, specially his legs and then nothing; a complete stillness arrives to his body. Maybe it’s over for him now. 

Well, maybe he saw in the dream what he needed to see; the truth that he was running away from for all these days. He must have seen everything from my perspective and finally realized what an egocentric psychopath he had been all along. How miserable and messed up he had become; how he had made not only his but also my life full of misery, pain and suffering. He must have gone through those memories of mine where he would be abusing me all the time; beating me with his leather belt, shoes, and his stick that he only brought to beat me. He must have experienced everything from the viewpoint of a woman being abused physically and emotionally by her husband who she had only loved and devoted all her life. Maybe he couldn’t bear it anymore; maybe he realized how awful he was to me.

Finally he would have seen how he beat me to death until I bled my last drop of blood and then disposed my body in the ocean; how he would force me to have sex with him without my consent and if I opposed, he would beat me at places you just couldn’t imagine; how he would suffocate me by covering my face with a polythene bag and made me utter words that he would like to hear. 

So, we may have gone to the other world, but we are still stuck here, in an endless cycle of monotony and mundanity. We wake up everyday, in our world, and act like we are still a couple. 

And the cycle continues over and over again like that of a mouse trapped inside the wheel that runs all the time. Wake up. Clean the house and the floors. Wash the dishes as if it’s all real and as if we are in this world, but we aren’t. Or maybe we are. Or maybe not. Who knows anyway.