~ F i v e M o n t h s L a t e r ~

M A N I K

"Rise and shine!"

"Ouch! What the hell?" I glare at Noelle who is standing before my eyes flaunting her huge baby bump.

"Relax, I'm just waking you up, honeypie." She chirps pushing the thick curtains aside brightening up my room with the most unwelcoming sun rays. For a good few seconds, I close my eyes feeling my eyes turn blind.

"By throwing hot water on me? What, is this pregnancy doing wrong to your head now?" I look down at my clothes soaked in warm water and bend over to reach out for my pack of cigarettes but to my disappointment, there isn't a single one in it.

"Damn it! I have burned them all." I throw the pack away, annoyed.

"How long could your stock have existed anyway? To smoke cigarettes, you need to get out of the house and buy them but I'm sorry I forgot that you're in hibernation mode since past 5 months." She lifts her hands in the air dramatically.

Noelle frowns and curses more as she notices my room being the trash it is. The empty pizza boxes that I ordered weeks ago are still at the corner of my room with some other junk food; the ashtray covered till its mouth was spilling over my bedsheet which I didn't care to change for I don't remember how long. Oh and half of my bedsheet is on the bed and rest hanging on the carpet; the carpet which is mostly hidden under painting articles and piles of clothes. The table has all sorts of my drug pipes and syringes and my best friend watches everything mutely rotating her head before suddenly throwing a cushion my way.

"Are you fucking insane?" She yells and I catch the cushion.

"Are you fucking insane?" I shout back. "You know you really have an advantage of this baby right now otherwise you would have been knocked on the floor by now with a bleeding nose." I give her a soft glare placing the cushion behind my neck. Why is every part of my body paining?

"Oh yea? Woo, consider me scared." I roll my eyes at her drama. Drama was her major in high school, by the way. Just saying.

"Can you just get out of my house?" I cover my face with a pillow wanting to go back to sleep and save my bleeding ears from her shrill voice.

Out of the blue, I feel my hand being tugged and I groan, cussing out loud. "What the hell do you want Noelle? Let me be?" I hiss.

If I try, I can apply my full force and block her but she's pregnant and angry which kind of is a bad combination. So, I let her pull me out of the bed.

"I'm not letting you stay in the house anymore. Enough is enough. You have to get out in the sun. C'mon let's get some vitamin D." She yanks.

"What? Go away. Don't irritate me or I swear I'll punch you and your baby in the face." I groan swatting her hand.

Throwing a shirt and denim to my face, she shoves me into the washroom and announces she's not going to unlock the bolt unless I come out dressed. You see the tortures I have been blessed with in the form of women in my life?

"Isn't it a fantastic morning?" She grins keeping her palms wrapped around my forearm which is shoved inside my pocket. I walk lazily without paying an ear to her ramblings in the park where I have not been coming in these past months. I won't say life is bad this way, I mean, I'm comfortable inside my four walls and facing people means trouble so yeah, I'm sort of safe there. I'm an emotionally unavailable sociopath and there is no guilt in me for the ways I torture myself. Guilt? There is no such thing because all there exists is an illusion. Noelle walks a little slow now because of that huge weight in her tummy and I really don't mind until she starts humming some tune. In spite of an earning a displeased look from me, her untuned singing continues.

"God, shut up!" I frown getting already tired of all this walking early in the morning. I'm not that morning person anymore who wakes up early to paint his ex-girlfriend.

"Hey, how about some ice cream?" I don't even want to look at the ridiculous excitement on her face right now.

"Are you crazy, Nandini? Who eats ice cream this earl-" I freeze in my track; totally at loss of words.

"I'm sorry, who?" Noelle frowns aiming to see through me.

I nod awkwardly, "Let's sit. I'm losing my breath already."

She rests the topic allowing me to be and takes me to sit on a bench which instantly strikes a dagger through my memory. This is that same bench. Seeing my hesitation a bit, she questions if I'm okay and I nod, tongue-tied. Noelle leaves my side to pick a little boy's ball which he lost while playing and I sit quietly looking around. Listening to the quiet murmurs of the morning breeze and sweet nothings, I stop my mind from going back into anything returning from which would cost me a lot. 

'Hey, thinking of me?'

Although its summer here, my body freezes as I restrain myself a thousand times to look at my side. Hardening my jaw and rationalising my mind like a zillion times also fail the urge in me. And, I see her. An overwhelming sensation rushes through my body when I realise all my light is suddenly revolving her. Like, she is the beginning to my ending.

"Go away, Nandini." I murmur looking at the grass beneath my feet. She scoots a little closer and my mind runs crazy as my grip on the edge of the bench solidifies.

'Will my going away help you believe that you were just now not thinking of me?' She smiles slightly raising her eyebrow.

I stare at her like I have missed the Sun, "This is not real. Even you know that."

Half-hearted, closing my eyes I hope she vanishes like she did all the other times in the span of these five months but she doesn't. She still sits enjoying me suffer.

'You said goodbye but why does it seem like your heart is still holding onto seeing me run around in this park?' She looks into my eyes and my throat dries.

My voice chokes, "I don't, okay? You don't know a thing about it. Just leave."

"Hey, are you all right?" Noelle's touch on my shoulder startles me and breathlessly as I search my side, Nandini's gone like all the other times. Biting my inner cheeks, I fix my stare at the grasses not knowing exactly what to feel.

"I saw you talking to yourself." She sits beside me, concerned, tucking a strand behind her ear.

"Yeah I'm-I just..." Closing my eyes, I breathe in. "I'm good."

"Good. Then, let's go to the Church." She gets up.

"How do you have so much of energy early in the morning?" I shrug as she touches me to again drag.

"I'll tell you that on our way, c'mon?" I know this Church thing is purely an excuse for me to breathe in the pure oxygen or whatever for some more time but I want to run into my dark room the soonest I can. The air outside is suffocating me. When I'm looking at the happy faces of everyone around, that is making me nervous and there is a part of me screaming that I don't fit in here.

At separation, I just turn back to the bench knowing very well that Nandini's nothing but my hallucination yet, I have to have a glance. As the history repeated itself, the bench is empty. Didn't I already know this? Perhaps. Then, why does it bother? I would be lying if I say I haven't glanced around the park and realisation hit me like a truck that because of me she has stopped coming here. Well, that makes the two of us.

Noelle and I walk between trees bending over our heads as if they are urging a kiss and everything here looks soaked in greenery. It's like the first kiss of the nature where everything which once was white has now turned green. Happy green. My trembling hand tries to hide inside my pocket but Noelle interlaces her fingers without even looking my way and assures with her grip that I'm gonna be safe.

"Do you know you have always been a jerk to me?" I cringe my eyebrows at her but she looks straight ahead.

"But that doesn't stop you from being a pain in my everywhere. I guess, I need to roughen the game." She scoffs but I maintain my annoyed face.

"If that seven year old bratty Manik who tied my braid to his cycle couldn't shoo me away, then do you think your being a jerk 2.0 will?" I listen to her in silence. Sometimes, it's good just to listen and feel nothing. My friend keeps talking and laughing without expecting a reaction out of me and I kind of like it.

'Your friend really seems great.' 

My breath gets stuck in the middle of my throat as I again hear her walk by my side. My hollow chest starts to feel overwhelmed hearing music coming out of her pink blush lips in the form of words. She is wearing a light pink dress with hair open on her shoulders and although every last thread of my sanity tells me to not repeat this in my head, like a loser I do, that she's beautiful. Beautiful and so unreal.

"You are not even real." I close my eyes momentarily hoping she'd vanish.

'Have you told your friend that yet?' She teases and I look away ahead into the road.

"Told what?" My eyes flicker here and there.

'That you have been hallucinating me all winter, spring and now summer?' Her smile says how much she is enjoying this.

"Listen ju-"

"Okay, we are taking you to some Doctor now." Noelle tugs my hand bringing my attention to her. "I mean, have you had your brain fried or anything of that sort or are you possessed by an evil spirit?"

Embarrassment heats up my cheeks and I decide to ignore her snarky laughter. "I'm..not crazy."

"Of course not, except a little insane who talks to an invisible friend." She laughs again.

'She makes you happy.'

"You must be having a lot of fun. Why don't you leave my head?" I whisper yell leaning over to Nandini's side.

"Okay, now I'm jealous." Noelle pulls my hand back with a slight force. "Who is this mysterious friend now who's not ready to leave my friend to myself even for a walk?"

I exhale in frustration not knowing what exactly to do or say. I'm torn in between my ugly reality and serene hallucinations. When I look at her side, Nandini seems happy walking beside me and sweet Jesus, in my imagination too she seems so vivid like I really want to lift my hand and brush her skin with my fingertips once.

We are now standing outside the same Church where Nandini and I prayed on Kiara's birthday. Oh, it was her dog's death anniversary too. Can it get worse? I mean, the first day after all this time I leave my apartment and all the places I go to are the same ones which scream about her from my yesterdays.  When I refuse to walk inside, Noelle gives in without a fight not wanting to push me further. She leaves saying she'll go and do her prayers and I don't quite mind.

Outside on the road, few teenagers are riding bicycles, chatting and giggling; having the time of their lives. One aged couple is walking down the street holding hands and groups of adults walking past me to light a scented candle. Digging fingers in my pockets, I walk aimlessly counting minutes in my head. Minutes when she's not messing with my head.

'Something tells me scented candles are Christ's favourite.'

"Jesus!" I turn the other side, gasping. "You gotta stop doing that, all right? It's getting to a point that it's creeping the shit out of me now."

'Guilty. Not guilty. You realise that I'm only the creation of your brain, right? Still you are yelling at me?'  She pouts.

I hold the sides of my forehead closing my eyes. "I think I'm losing it."

'Attaboy!' She exclaims grinning sarcastically. 'You want me to get out of your head but how am I supposed to do that when you are the one bringing me into it?'

I glare. "I bade you goodbye. You were supposed to leave and not bloody haunt me."

'It's you, Manik. It's you who loses his mind the second I leave.'

I take a step back, "You are turning me into something I don't wanna be."

She takes a step closer. 'Too late now. How are you gonna explain it to the gawkers right now that you are actually not insane but it is me who is hogging your thinking process?'

Listening to her, I turn around to find astonished people staring at me, wide-eyed. Damn it.

She takes a round around me. 'Tsk! Have you thought it this way that maybe, like in the slightest of possibilities, you are not running away from me but running towards me? Mhm?'

"God, I'm so done with this!" Breathing in deeply, I whisper making my way towards the backyard.

It's early in the morning and I'm already fucked up. Is it true what she said that it is me who keeps inviting her into my head? I have stopped talking to normal people and the only words I exchange are the bickering with her in my imagination. There was a point in this five months when I decided to give up on this insanity and hence, I stopped doing drugs. But then what? The isolation ate me like maggots in my body and crying to myself, I pricked the needle into my vein to get her again talking to me. She would always be there when I'm high on weeds too and I fail to differentiate whether I'm high on weeds, drugs or high on Nandini Murthy. Maybe, she's just an escape to me. Or, wait, she could be my prison too?

Looking at my shoulders, I realise it's starting to drizzle while I'm sat on this rusty bench at the backyard of the Church under this oak tree. There are several initials of peoples carved into the bench with a particular year on it and rolling my eyes as I decide to get my lazy ass up, I spot her. I really really spot her. 

The sky is all grey with rain droplets the earth underneath a sluggish look. She is my very imagination and I'm aware of that and that is why my legs are frozen at the place. She is in a black dress reaching her knees with a head facing the grasses and body, if I'm not wrong, shivering. My life is so strange, eh? A weird concoction of absurd hallucinations and sucking reality. One of the most toxic things I've ever done is to let her invade my head and reign it like a queen. I choose to watch her in silence because in silence, she will get no rejection from me and I choose to save her for my hallucinations, because in my head, in my imaginations, she sees no one else but me. 

Standing up, I hold one of the branches of the oak tree above my head while I'm decently soaked in the rain. My shirt is weirdly stuck to my body and the sound of the rainfall is the only thing standing in between the ocean of she and I. After all this time, I still am completely baffled by her presence and it's like the little baby leaves being born in spring washing the mundane whiteness on the branches. It's fresh. Weirdly fresh. The clouds strangely warmed by heart with their cold touch as I'm stuck here watching the figment of my insane dream fearing to inch a little closer.

Confused, I pinch my eyebrows seeing a middle aged woman arrive her. The reason for me being confused here is, all this time, it was Nandini alone in my hallucinations but yet, I refuse to tear my gaze away. Nandini is sat on a bench far far distant from me and the lady now joins her. Tucking few wet strands of hair behind her ear, she smiles nodding in assurance to the lady but I can see through her smile that it's a fake one. The lady squeezes her tiny shoulder and gets up to offer flowers on a grave which I can say is new because of the fresh soil covering it. Toeing high, the name reads Ayan Murthy.

There were so many other people dressed in black for this funeral who were leaving the cemetery and after the lady gets done with offering peace to the soul, she too proceeds to leave kissing Nandini's forehead. Soon as the lady departs, Nandini's straight face starts losing each shade of strength and wears a colour of vulnerability before she covers her forehead with her tiny palm and cries some more. The rainfall deepens turning into a merciless shower washing away all the flowers put on the grave but she is still sitting intact hiding her face and I'm still intact standing under this oak tree silently watching the protagonist of my imagination bawl her eyes out.

I am finding her in all the hues of the sun and the clouds. Like a cocktail of greenery and honey gold. I'm seeing her in everything and probably which is why, I'm worshipping her from distance like the sunflowers worship the sun. But, it's a cloudy day, after all.