Thursday, February 27, 2014

Stillborn Story

Posted by at 6:25 PM
Ever since the fateful incident occurred, she was continuously in a state of shock and sadness. Hopelessness would mix with immense frustration as she would try to fight herself out of her misery. She missed him, especially during these times.

Her relatives and family members tried hard to make her get moving with her life, without succeeding much in doing so. Some of them even started wondering if she was beyond any cure now. 

She walked towards the mirror nearby and looked into her image. Slowly, she started patting her belly, as tears trickled down her wrinkled cheeks. "Come, my sweet child, we are all waiting for you..." she murmured. Memories started flooding her mind as she tried hard not to remember the past.

The day the news got confirmed, she wanted Peter to know about it the first. Ever since he died, her world had changed, but she tried to keep herself busy. Her in-laws were supportive as well. They would always keep her pampered, in a way, accompanying her everywhere and granting every wish she wished for. The regular visits to the clinic spoke of the affirmative health of the baby. Then came one day, when things started getting a bit more serious. 

She observed that her friends, family members and her doctors were being a little alert around her. But whenever she tried to know what the problem was, they would always respond very gleefully, assuring her that nothing was there that she should worry about. But somehow, she sensed, there was something not quite right. 

Soon they got an attendant to take care of her all the time. The nurse would look into every single activity of her day- from making sure she ate the right food to controlling the doses of the medicines she took- the nurse had been forced into her life, making her feel like a toddler. 

As the date of the delivery started approaching, the strictness in the air grew coarser. One day, all of a sudden, she was informed that she would have to go under the knife immediately, weeks ahead of her scheduled delivery date. "Else there could complications." They said. She remembered how fast things moved that day.

She gave birth to a stillborn. 

She looked up into the mirror, her eyes filled with absolute horror as she returned back to her present. She started sobbing mildly. Her friends and family members stayed for some time with her, before they decided that it would be best if she were left on her own for some time. They left the room quietly. She saw them leave through the reflection on the mirror. 

Her curled up lips slowly turned up to a wry smile and went back to the previous state of grief again. She started mumbling:
"... you, you let Peter die.. you couldn't take care of him well enough!"
"Peter never loved you, he loved me. He proposed me, it was I who had agreed to marry him."
"...you manipulated him..she always had his eyes set on me..you stole him..away from me.."


Outside her room, her team of doctors and psychiatrists joined her family members. One of them started speaking after ensuring that they were out of her hearing range.

"You all have to understand and be with us. We know it's a difficult time for you all, but please try to understand the complications of the case we are dealing with here. It's hard to digest, but we request you to be patient. "

Her psychiatrist began: " Ever since Peter died of lung cancer, Amy had been in a state of mental dilemma and shock. She encountered a state of frustration that kept seeping into her head, clouding her thoughts. We have looked into her medical history. We realize and understand that she used to fight with her inner self, blaming herself for the demise of her husband. You can say that she was at times overpowered by her inner thoughts, which made it extremely difficult for her to differentiate between the complexities of her life. She is very sick, and you all have to digest this fact, no matter how difficult it is for you. She was diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder when she was a teenager. Two persons are living in her mind, one is the Amy we know, and the other is the Amy whom we never noticed."

Pausing briefly to allow the words to sink in, he continued:

"She was an only child to her parents. She had a sibling rivalry, a normal phenomenon among teenagers. But she had the rivalry with her inner self, the 'other' Amy. Over time, the other Amy started becoming stronger and more prominent in Amy's life. Our guess is that the rivalry never died between the two personalities."

"The sudden decline of the fetus' condition inside her womb raised the alarm, but by then it was too late to save it. Amy's attendant had found a half-empty bottle of  Mifepristone pills in her closet. It's a drug used very frequently for medical abortion, and she had started consuming it when she was 8 weeks pregnant. Our theory, upon our thorough examination, is that Amy's conflict with the other Amy extended beyond her, or rather, the conflict extended onto  'their' love for Peter. It's quite clear now that the other Amy could never withstand the fact that she wasn't chosen by Peter, and she couldn't allow Amy to associate with him. She blamed her for his death. It was only a matter of time before she would take steps to ensure that Amy doesn't give birth to his child."

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

An Uncertain Ending

Posted by at 2:21 AM
This post is featured in BlogAdda's Spicy Saturday Picks (Feb-15, 2014). Check out the entire list of selections here.



The closer he looked into the mirror, the more he realized that he was getting weaker by every passing second. The world seemed to come crashing around him,  with the saddest of the songs playing live for his passing. He knew that he didn't have much time, yet something in his mind still said that he could still touch a million lives, put a dent in the cliched dreams of the people of the world, and do something that would make him immensely popular, even after his death.

He suddenly had an idea.  He found a pen and a notebook and started drafting words on the pages.  He kept going,  on and on, for the next few weeks-between the routine visits to the doctor and back home, between the chemotherapy sessions and sleeping for small durations - whenever he found time, he would just scribble. He had picked a particularly massive notebook,  and he was using new refills for his pen everyday. He went on writing, and one day, he realized he was done writing an 800-page long book. Satisfied, he started mailing excerpts from his book to the reputed publishing houses of the country. He got promising responses from them, and soon enough, he agreed to sign an agreement for his book with one of the reputed publishers.
When he went to sign the agreement, he had put forth only one condition- they would receive  the last chapter and the title of the book only after his death. The publisher initially refused to comply,  but seeing the plot he wrote being so incredible that it had the potential to become a national bestseller, they reluctantly agreed.
He died two weeks later.  The publishing house received a mail from his mailing id, apparently sent by his friends as he had arranged.  They opened the document.
The first page was titled- 'The final chapter'
The text that followed was as under: "...and thus, the terminally ill Marcus locked himself in his room,  and hang himself from the ceiling fan to death. The end. "
They were flabbergasted as they were not expecting such a shocking ending. Moreover, the demise of the protagonist of the novel, left the story on a cliffhanger. Such was the intensity of the text that when they reconnected the dots from the beginning of the novel to the end, they realized that they had read a masterpiece which will get a cult following in the country for many decades to come. They gasped and sighed for the passing of the author,  for they knew that he would not be there to see the success of his creation , and also,  when the readers of the book will cry their lungs out demanding a sequel (because the plot was a cliffhanger) , they would simply be at loss of not getting to read any further installments of the story.
The next page contained the title of the book. Goosebumps ran through their bodies as they read it. 
"The Planned Suicide" 
 
They had heard from his friends that he had committed suicide the day he died. It did not take the publishers much time to realize why he had intentionally and notoriously left the plot of his novel unfinished.

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