His Smile

I looked around and realised, everything has gone terribly wrong. When I looked down, I thought to myself, it wasn't supposed to end like this. It wasn't supposed to be happening in the first place. And then, I saw him. Standing there. Surrounded in the eerie velvety atramentous blanket of gloom. A wide meaningful grin enhancing his odious features. Arms outstretched to greet me, embrace me.

I broke down and dropped to my knees. It felt as if the last breath had been sucked out of my lungs. I held the palms of the person that laid still in front of me. The warm hands that once promised me a companionship for an eternity and were a giver of perpetual bliss, were now as cold as ice, screaming the departure of those heartful vows and elation, departure of love, departure of my own. The only remaining string that kept me sane had been snapped. I felt shattered. Every breath felt hollow in my chest. I felt lost.

In that moment of loss, my whole world crumbled down. And he stood there, watching me. Unaffected. A smile playing on his lips. His penetrating gaze conveyed something. Something dark and menacing, yet veracious. But all I knew was that he loved me. And I loved the lifeless person sprawled in front of me. Yet, he was there, standing in the shadows, watching me carefully with the same sombre smile plastered on his face.

Love. A simple four letter word. A complex, mysterious feeling that binds people together with the strings of trust, selflessness and passion. Giving rise to a beautiful bond which is often perceived under the labels of friends, siblings, lovers and others. Each form has its own essence in which that relation sprouts and gets nurtured, thus evolving into something unadulterated and pure. Something that these pale, cold palms guaranteed. Something that he might never recognise. And yet, he claimed that he loved me. 

He isn't kind. Who knows him better than me. He is not bound by the ideals of morality. He doesn't discriminate between right and wrong, nor between young and old. He doesn't seem to have patterns. He is straightforward, merciless and doesn't pretend to care. He is not affected by prayers, nor moved by pleas. He is inescapable. Every single individual he takes a fancy to, have to embrace him, willingly or unwillingly. His love is a sort of departure. His mere touch transforms souls, lives and relations into nothingness and turns minds and hearts into moist icy cold voids of morbid emptiness. His sharp gaze sends a shiver down the spine, yet everyone has to embrace him. And just like every other being he loved, he loves me. He loves me in his own odious ways.

I remember the first time I saw him. The first time his icy-cold piercing eyes bore into mine. I was numbed. He was standing there, lurking in the shadows, staring at me, as I tried to wake Lucy up. Lucy, she was my fluffy pet, who then laid in a pool of blood. She was hit by a truck when she was chasing the stick with which we were playing. I frantically looked for someone who might help me wake her up. And then I saw him. He was veiled by the dark shadows that surrounded him. I knew he could help me. I knew he could wake Lucy up. But he didn't. He just stood there watching me watching him with wide eyes which were overflowing with tears. Yet, he did nothing but smiled. From then onwards, I saw him everywhere. I saw him at the funeral of my grandmother. He stood there, near a huge tree, as my father carried out the funeral rites. I pleaded him to bring her back and he did nothing but smiled. He stood there, in the velvety night sky, surrounded by twinkling orbs of light, smiling, when the structure I shared with my best friend, the structure of friendship, collapsed, because the foundation of trust was not firm enough. Everytime I saw him, I pleaded him to help me. But he did nothing. He just smiled. Everytime I saw his smile, my hatred for him increased. Yet, it didn't affect him. He smiled. But there was nothing sinister about his smile. It was veracious, sinless and authentic. His astute eyes always implicated something. Something he wanted me to comprehend. And all I understood was that he loved me. But I loathed him. He was never stirred by my pleadings. He never cared about me. All he wanted to do, was to reach me, encage me in his tight clutches. And that was the reason he didn't help me. He took them away. Piece by piece he was making me his. And today, he ripped away the most important part of my life. The most loved part of me. But, as always, I couldn't do anything. 

I wanted to stop him. I wanted to show him that he wasn't inescapable. And therefore, I did everything I could to save others from his menacing grasp. But he was far more powerful and ineluctable than I was. I often got glimpses of him, sneaking around the ruins of broken trusts, faiths and relations. His outstretched arms enveloping the happiness and serenity, leaving behind nothing but despair. I saw him at the hospital I worked. I knew that this place was the one where I can defeat him, where I can show him the power of love, of faith, of trust. I knew that this was the place I could finally show him what love really meant, show him how different his connotations of love was from mine, show him that the thing he called love, wasn't love at all. But I was wrong. I was wrong to assume that he could be subjugated because this was the place where I saw him the most, where I experienced his form of love. I saw his vile and faceless silhouette skulking around in the shadows of gloom as he ignored the prayers and pleas of people surrounding their loved ones, who once laughed, loved and lived. They begged him, just like I did. But he, on the other hand, just stood there casting a meaningful gaze on them, the same sincere smile enhancing his attributes. A deep telling curve that conveyed something significant. Something that I didn't care to know. All I knew that he was slowly making his way towards me. To encircle me into his warm doting embrace.

And today, he won. I had accepted my defeat. Nothing remained of me now. I was ready. Ready to give into him, ready to embrace his love, to embrace him. I stretched my arms welcoming him, telling him I accepted him. And he stood there, smiling down at me. His earnest gaze met mine, trying to tell me something. Something that he wanted to tell me since our first encounter. Something that laid in plain sight, but I didn't even dared to spare a single glance at it. 

He smiled at me in understanding. He knew that I had finally understood what he wanted to me to understand. I understood his kind of love, understood the true meaning of love. The pure and selfless kind of love. Whereas, I was being selfish. Selfish to incarcerate my loved ones in the hutches of perpetuity, to bind them in the chains of eternity. Ignoring that love was interwoven with him. Because accepting him was the only way to love. Because love wasn't encaged within the cell of morality. Love wasn't ephemeral. It was beyond the corporeal restrictions. And a loss of a loved one, or that of a relation never really inferred the loss of love. And when you accept that, when you really accept him, that's when you truly love. The pure, selfless kind of love which is beyond the boundaries of corporality, beyond any type of labels, beyond any kind of expectancy, beyond him. The altruistic and compassionate kind of love.

And now I knew. I knew why he was here. Not because he loved me. But to let me know the real meaning of love. To know that he and love were inseparable. To know that the gateway to love someone truly was through him. And now, I wanted to embrace him. I wanted him to know that I accept him. I wanted to leave with him. I craved for him. But he was still standing there, smiling, nodding in disagreement, telling me that I still had a long way to go.

And just like that, he left. The appalling darkness that surrounded him, now held out its arms in order to enfold me and I leaned into its touch. Not knowing what to do next, I held my arms out to embrace back the darkness and then, I was out like a light.