A House Of Despair

It was all dark and hushed , as if I was the only one left on this planet. Before me, there was this colossal yellow house that my pupils couldn't stand; It took them a while to adjust and see clearly. The moment my sight was clear, the doorway to the house was wide open. I could see a shadow  wearing a big round 80s glasses, sitting on a big blood-red throne. Right next to the shadow, is a human figure drenched in red and accompanying them was a  girl colouring her book. All of a sudden, flour and blood splashed all over her book and she was terrified by it. All these figures bear a striking resemblance. It all feels like a Déjà vu, but I couldn’t pin down where I have seen this before .The girl moved her neck and looked at me and then everyone of them started to see me. They got up in sync as if they were some kind of robots or ghosts. I took some steps back then they all opened their mouth and screamed at me. My heart was pounding like it was about to tear my ribcage flesh and come out. I could feel the pulses in my throat. I retreated faster and fell after hitting a rock And there I was in my grey bed. I couldn't understand why I keep seeing my childhood house in dreams.

It's been ages since we moved out of there. Remembering that house is like tasting a tamarind, it has sweet and sour memories. It was quite a big house, as I recall correctly or perhaps I was so petite that the house looked bigger to me back then. It was an eastern oriented government resident, coated with bright yellow, made for the village's nurse. As I have been told, my mum was posted there in a remote village of Marwar junction  named "Pandava" right after her marriage. I'm sure she dreamed of a perfect home as much as anyone else on this planet. Little did she knew that the house was a devil who feeds on hopes and happiness of people.

I first opened my eyes in that house. That place was everything I knew back then. A small world of my own ,a world of illusions of “perfect home” which was going to leave scars on every lives that visited it.
A small garden on the left side of the house ,where me and two of my best friends played a lot and I still remember the point where my eyes were dazzled, when the sun was on my head and I couldn’t tell if my house was brighter or the sun.

There was a small clinic standing right adjacent to the house. It was weaker than the yellow ones. Every time I walked into that room each brick of it smelled like medicines. The inside walls were ‘off white ‘with cracks as deep as the cuts on our souls. These cracks sang songs of the stories of despair and trauma it witnessed, mocking us on our situation reminding us that we have nowhere to go. The cuts grew deeper and the songs that were once like fading sounds, were now playing in our head every second.

After a narrow path which was about 10 steps from the clinic was a staircase which led to the terrace. Some parts of it were filled with grains for birds and the other half had mattresses one of which was of my dad, it had some smudgy  brownish-red and some fresh red stains ,which were screaming out for help and in no time every mattress was covered with those stains. I remember sleeping beneath the starry blanket staring at it all night, filling up my lungs with the air which was abundant in earthy smell of the terrace (because of the water we used to sprinkle on it to keep it cold) with a tinge of freshness of the new night . It caused a dopamine rush in my brain. I don't remember if he patted my head while sleeping but I will pretend that he did, like I was her princess and he loved me more than anything else.
The kitchen was of L shaped with hues of green. I remember sitting on the floor with my books in the afternoons. And in front of me was my mum cooking food. There was a small hook attached to the left wall on which she hanged her big golden hoops and one of them was crooked. In front of her was a window which had the view of pond which was appearing  golden in lucent sunlight. She sang some raag of some classical bhajan. It was the only time I could hear a song other than those from the cracks. The silence between the notes was filled with the despair and pain which was clearly audible to me.

One such afternoon, I was colouring my book. suddenly flour got splashed all over my book. When I looked up a man with round glasses was grabbing her hand in which my mum was holding the plate of flour and the other hand was on her neck. I got up and clinged to his pants crying and begging him to leave her but he didn't. I felt like I was invisible to both of them. 

The next room was the living room with a sofa , table and a window which was coated in the sand of the desert. There was this big red chair with black armrests, the seat was curved, my father sat there a lot. Usually in the evening, when my mum was in the kitchen, I used to sit in the middle of the kitchen and the entrance of the living room like a middle weight of gravesand's apparatus which was holding my mum and her marriage together, but I knew “I" and “voices like once you're married its your duty to make it work”, “you can't break it that's not a choice” were weighing her down. In the living room my dad used to sit in his chair wearing his glasses while reading his magazines and checking on me if I was doing my homework or not, that was the only place I remember him noticing me. As days passed by we all became stagnant in our positions. My mum never came out of the kitchen, all I could see was bruises on her back which was spreading day by day through her body like a wildfire. slowly dad could not care to look at me but I have never ceased to see him each passing day he was growing pale he spew blood on the chair and in every corner of the house. I saw his growing toxic relationship with the bottle. I saw him drowning in the river of despair. All I could do was sit in the middle with that drawing book which was smeared with flour and blood. 

We lost him to the house and to a toxic relationship which he loved more than us. Parts of us was also lost in that house and we were left with cuts which can never be healed.