"I got a call from your teacher today." Zaheer entered his son's room, interrupting his homework.

"What did he say?" Riaz asked, his voice still hoarse. He cleared his throat, knowing full well it wouldn't ease the irritation.

"He said you just walked out of the class in the middle of the lesson. Why?" He asked carefully, softly.

"I don't know." How could Riaz explain the reason knowing his father would scoff at it.

"You don't know? What do you mean you don't know?" Riaz could feel the sweat pooling at the base of his back. He didn't even realise that he still had his pen poised over his book, his shaking hands leaving dots all over the page.

"I'm sorry, dad. I don't know why." He looked down at the spotless cream carpet, waiting for his father's reaction.

"I didn't raise you to behave like a rubbish off the street. I raised you to behave like a man. Was your behaviour befitting that of a man?" He stepped forward, knowing he was intimidating his son.

"No dad." Riaz's voice had dropped to barely a whisper.

"Speak up." He tilted Riaz's chin up with his finger so that he could look at him.

"No dad. It was not." Riaz tried to speak appropriately.

"No, it was not. Every action has consequences Riaz. You know that, right?" He spoke as if discussing business over the supper table but Riaz knew that his father was at his angriest when he behaved this way.

"Yes."

"Yes, what?" Zaheer asked.

"Yes dad." Riaz wasn't sure how it was that he hadn't stuttered.

"Do your actions deserve consequences?"

"Yes dad." Riaz could feel his knee bouncing up and down, knowing what was to come.

"I think I'll take these for a week." Zaheer easily lifted Riaz's glasses from the bridge of his nose and stowed it away in his front pocket before turning around.

"No don't..." Riaz blurted out before he could stop himself. He gasped quietly, noticing his father's leg jerk.

Zaheer turned around slowly, observing Riaz. "What did you just say?"

Riaz could feel his breath begin to deepen. His chest swelled almost painfully with each laboured breath and his hands had curled into tightened fists around his pants leg. "I'm sorry, dad." He tried to pacify his father.

"I don't think you really understand the fact that you aren't entitled to use that word in my house." Zaheer bent down so that he could look Riaz in his eyes as he tightened his hand around the back of Riaz's neck. "You need to learn this and learn it fast, my boy." He jerked Riaz's head forward before walking out the door.

Riaz knew what was coming and bounded to the pedestal besides his bed. He scrambled and shuffled through its contents almost frantically while he still had the time. Zaheer had closed the door and Riaz could hear him trying to fit the key into the lock. Finally, Riaz wrapped his hand around the little box of matches that was always kept in his draw before laying his head on his knees to wait...

Zaheer switched Riaz's light off from the outside and walked away.

"Please switch on the light," he whispered into the darkness. "Please." But he knew his dad would not come back. Zaheer knew what Riaz was afraid off and he would use it against him at every opportunity.

Riaz lit the first match and watched it, uselessly hoping that it would take longer than a few seconds to burn out.

Then he lit a second match, then a third, then a fourth...

And as each match burnt out, Riaz could feel the terror seep in as the darkness closed around him. He could feel the box get lighter and lighter as more matches surrounded him. He could feel himself tensing as the inevitable arrived, his body rocking back and forth as he whispered the same thing over and over.

Finally, the darkness came.

"Please switch on the light. Please"

...

Eyes wide open, staring in front. A hand, gripping hers, slowly slipping away as pained cries echoed around her. "Stop... Stop... Stop..."

Tears pouring down, never ending, never stopping, only flowing.

Forever flowing.

"Stop... Stop... Stop..."

Tasting the saltwater that dripped into her mouth, unable to brush it away. Frozen, completely frozen.

"Stop... Stop... Stop..." Whispers crying out around her, echoing, deafening, breaking.

She looked up and saw his eyes wide open,

Watching her,

Smiling.

"Stop... Stop... Stop."

Tasneem gasped awake.

He was there, watching her. Her door was open as he stood, leaning against the frame.

Watching her.

"Go away." She whispered, knowing he could hear her. She wouldn't dare risk talking any louder knowing who was in the room next to hers. "Please, go." She said, firmer still.

Finally, after a painstaking few minutes of him just watching her, he turned around and walked away.

She was able to breathe again. Her chest cried in welcome as she allowed air back into her lungs. She got out of bed and padded to the door before shutting it. Her mother never allowed her to lock her door and would hear no excuses from Tasneem's mouth. She walked back to her bed, feeling her knees shake beneath her. She could feel the sweat seep through her pyjamas as she sat on the edge of the bed, too afraid to get back in knowing what dreams lay ahead of her. She dropped her head to lie in her hands and allowed herself the luxury of thinking about the boy that sat next to her.

She would rather think of him then think about what had woken her from her dream.

It was far less terrifying.

...

Riaz could feel the nausea in the pit of his stomach. His father was a very smart man and knew that taking away his glasses would do more than just blind Riaz. He knew it because he was the cause of it. He tried to concentrate on the board in front of him but the feeling in his head, as if he were falling out of a dream, kept him from trying too hard. He closed his eyes, knowing that blinking would hardly solve any problems. He tried to block out all other sounds as he concentrated on the feeling in his stomach, trying hard to will it away.

He knew it wouldn't work.

He needed his glasses.

He opened his eyes and rubbed it, furiously.

A futile action. It would do him no good.

Yet he continued, reveling in the burning sensation of his finger scratching against his eye.

"Please copy this down from the board. You won' t find it in your textbooks and you need it for tomorrow." The sound of his English teacher's voice broke him out of his pointless behaviour.

Shit.

What the hell was he supposed to do now? He couldn't even think about straining his eyes to look at the board and he knew that Mr. Walker was keeping a close eye on him.

He opened his book, took a peek at the board before writing neatly in his book. He could damn well pretend; he was good at that. Mr. Walker was too old to walk around the class so Riaz knew he would be safe for a while.

He continued easily. No one knew that he could not see what it was that he was supposed to be writing.

Till the door was banged open, his nerves already frayed from the night before, forcing him to jerk back allowing his book to fall on the floor.

He closed his eyes, allowing himself to breathe.

"Here." His eyes shot open as the voice from the day before broke him out of his reverie. He looked to his left, and sure enough, there she was with her arm outstretched towards him. She looked at him curiously before he snatched his book out of her hand. He hoped she had not read what he had written.

He didn't want her to know that he could not see.

Tasneem glanced at the boy out of the corner of her eyes. When she had seen him that morning she had been blown away. Never before had she seen him without his glasses. His freckles were even more prominent against his skin and she was worried he might catch her watching him. She would never, ever have guessed that he was not wearing any contacts till she had caught a glimpse at his English book.

His handwriting was beautiful. She had never seen such remarkable penmanship and she was amazed that it could be produced by him. What fascinated her even more were the contents on the page.

...As though he had absconded from a troupe of mimes, enthusiastic, fabulous. His very existence was improbable, inexplicable and altogether bewildering. He was an insoluble problem. It was inconceivable how he had existed, how he had succeeded in getting so far, how he had managed to remain- why he did not instantly disappear.

He had rewritten, word for word, a passage out of their set-work novel yet there was no sign of the book anywhere.

Heart of Darkness.

She almost scoffed at the title.

How was her mother so blinded by him? How was it that he had poisoned her? Or was it she who had poisoned him? There were times in Tasneem's life when she had thought her mother would be satisfied with just one child instead of three. Tasneem knew she looked far too much like her father for her to ever gain the full love of her mother. It was her eyes, her nose, her lips. They all reminded her of her father. She even behaved like him. She was calm and rational, unlike her mother. Irrational, tempestuous, passionate... All the things Tasneem had come to despise living under her mother's roof.

The bell rang loudly through Tasneem's ear. It always seemed to ring louder to her as the periods went by. 

It mocked at her. That's what it did. It knew how terrified she was of her home. How stifled and choked she felt and so it rang louder and louder letting her know that she had to go.

She stared down at her book, cursing under her breath. She would have to come back after class to complete her work. In twenty minutes, she had only bothered to write two words. She shook her head in disgust as she picked up her book and packed it away.

Go away.

...

"Hey, mum." His mother was sitting at her dressing table, smiling at the perfume bottle in her hand.

"Your father bought this for me." She turned to him, pride evident in her voice.

"Really, mum? When?" Riaz could feel the sickness at the pit of his stomach.

"He bought it for me." She smiled again before she turned around and uncapped the bottle. He could hear her humming as she sprayed a bit on both her wrists and rubbed them softly against her neck.

"That's wonderful, mum." But he had said it too softly for her to hear. She was too busy marvelling over her perfume.

Riaz staggered into his room, closing his door softly. He sat heavily on his bed, his heart breaking for his mother. He knew why she treasured that bottle. Her life had been normal when she had received it. She had been normal. Everything that was in that perfume bottle had tied her to a previous life. A life where she knew the difference between normal and depraved.

She was beautiful when she had met his father. She was orphaned at the age of 5 and had yearned for a family since then. All she dreamed of was a family. And when her dreams were fulfilled, they morphed into a living nightmare that she could never escape.

It was a nightmare that resonated within her and around her at every moment of every day.

And that perfume bottle was her only token of a beautiful dream that she still dreamed as her eyes closed every night.

Her perfume bottle had been empty for 11 years yet she could never see it.

A/N- The passage Riaz writes down is from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.