Mere Three Seconds - 3

PART THREE

She couldn't help but recall the salient murmurs and whispers of the crowd that had fenced her and the audible clicks of cameras that were all focused on the twists and turns that wrecked through her while she kept bellowing out loud as the acid kept clawing and nibbling on her flesh, brutally ravaging every inch of her soul. She couldn't help but recall the ache that never for once forsaken her rather kept paving its way to every inch of her body while the faith and compassion that she had always harboured for humanity kept withering away bit by bit just like her skin that kept melting away from the side of her face while none of those umpteen masses filled with several races of human came forth to rescue her.

A bitter cry escaped from the cage of her sealed lips as she stared down at those scars of burns that now were embellished to her arms and wrists too. Her eyes darted to every wall that surrounded her as if mocking and laughing at the way she had lost that small world of hers to the hands of the cruel reality that laid undeniably translucent in front of her every time those fragments of the past replayed through her head. Closing those eyes of hers, her mind ran back to the bits of the past that had crumbled her world into pieces that she never managed to find anymore.

She was reminded of those horribly white painted walls and stench of bleach to which her eyes had cracked open while laying on that white bed with wires digging into her body and machines persistently beeping around her. She was reminded of the numbness that soaked up her insides in the entirety while a pit of dread and apprehension swallowed her whole as bucket after bucket of cold water continually plunged upon those remnants of acid that still burned ferociously on her flesh. She was reminded of the way her mother had barged through the tinted doors of the hospital with her father trailing behind her - and with that one glimpse of theirs, she had seen the world that she once created with years of love and happiness devastating to nothingness. She was reminded of how she never once blinked while her world kept falling apart every time her parents failed to look past those scars of hers. She was reminded of the mirror that had caught her eyes and causing her to yearn for that reflection of hers despite the numerous discreet attempts of her mother to make her look away perhaps only to shield her from the reality that clung to her like a leech. And there, she was once again reminded of the moment when she saw everything fading away and dissolving far away from her when she had seen the bruised and battered side of her face - despite the perpetual efforts of others to conceal it from those longing and meandering eyes of hers. And how could she never be reminded of those accursed three seconds that made her lose every tad of the being that she once used to be before becoming the hollow nutshell of the girl she once was?

Rubbing her palms across the aching temples of her head, she rested her shoulders against the cold headboard of the bed while her mind relentlessly swirled from every snippet of the past that kept unfolding behind those lids of her eyes. Her head kept banging against the skull as those three seconds and every moment that they held iterated yet again to make her ruminate how she no longer believed in what people cleped as love. And there, she could see it again - that face of the man who had held the bottle of acid in his hands only to deem it as a way of vengeance. She could once again see that face of the man who had his fingers curled around that bottle triumphantly before throwing its contents right at her face only because he lacked the strength to endure rejection. She could see once again - the curve of wickedness that had erupted on that man's mouth upon leaving her scarred for the rest of her life only because she couldn't reciprocate the love that he once had claimed to hold dearly for her.