Louisa's little hand clutched her father's index finger. It was raining. Her five year old brain couldn't quite grasp at what was going on. Why were all the people wearing black? Why was the whole place grey? Where was her mother? And what was this fu...fun...'funeral' thing? The questions swarmed inside her mind, yet she couldn't get them out. Instead, she asked- "Why do all the people wear black at fu...funerals, daddy?" David Blank stared down at her daughter's cute small face. He vowed that he would never lose her as he lost his wife. The rashness...the bloody knife...the soundless scream...he remembered it all vividly. He knelt down. "Because, dear, black is the most vibrant colour in the universe." He vaguely remembered the science class he had as a kid. Black absorbs all light; no colour is reflected back. "Black contains every colour you can imagine. Your mom wouldn't want you all colourless and sad when she is gone, right?" "Where is she gone, dad?" "To a place far better than ours." His vision blurred. He finally let his tears flow.

It has been twenty years since her mother was dead. Louisa got it all now. All, as she sat in the local "Starbucks" café with a diary in her hand. "The colours..." she sighed. All she saw now was red. So deep and life-like. The colour of blood. And what she finally understood was far deeper than the diary conveyed. The diary spoke what her father thought. Yet the pages and ink told a completely different story. Her soul spoke out to her. It said- Dear Louisa, the people are not as we see them. The lies they tell are actually true. Their forgiveness and mercy is the anger burning inside them. Their memories are so washed with pain and secrets that even they can't tell what they convey. The humans are gone. Their humanity will never come back. She pushed these thoughts out of her mind. She reached for the last page of the diary. The words seemed to be written in a hurry...

Breathe in the senses Lizzie...the fragrance in the flames...

The mortal wounds and the unforgiving souls...

That's when you realise that you are whole, complete,

Full of breath. And lastly, breathless.

Goodbye Louisa.

Tears welled up in her eyes. She knew who had written this. Her father- David Blank. The pain in her heart couldn't stand it anymore. She turned the pages.

It's dark when I stand in front of the mirror. The person I see in there is ruined. His brown eyes are sewn into a fabric of pain with threads of misery. He looks at his hands. They are red. Her blood. I hold my head in my hands and turn away. As I walk away, I feel someone grab my shoulder. I turn back and see familiar eyes staring into mine. It was the man from the mirror. He spoke five words. His voice dripping with mockery. "You can't escape the guilt"

David was a player with words and no one knew it better than Louisa. Had these pages led to the events that controlled her father's life? 'What is this thing with words?' She questioned herself. Words can make people alive. Words can kill them. Words can make them fall in love and these are the words which break relationships. Actions speak louder than words, but in the end, these are the words which control the actions. Her father's diary wasn't really written like a diary. David had written his afterlife in those pages. Clara, Louisa's mom was his life. He wrote these after the death of Clara-afterlife. And people's afterlives aren't written in a stupid diary format. Life is all flowers, sunshine and fun. Afterlife is cacti, dusk and torture. Torture leads people to do all sorts of things. Things like inflicting so much pain upon themselves that they can't feel any pain anymore-in other words, people kill themselves.

Idiots. Cowards. Afraid of life. Cowards again.

That's what Louisa thought about them.

She recalled the events that had taken place a few nights ago...

Friday night. Back from another stressful day at work. Louisa was thinking of relaxing at the couch, maybe watching a movie with her father. As she drove her Chevrolet through the snow glazed roads of the countryside, she noticed the sky. It was like dark washed velvet, with a million shades of black. Moonless and perfect. To her, moonlight, though beautiful, seemed to destroy the enchanting aura that darkness held. The winds that blew through the open car window were pacifying. She was happy to forget what was in the past. Happy not to assume what the future would bring. Happy. Yet she knew not that every beginning has an end and sometimes the gap between the both is less than the distance between her office and her home. She drove on.

She had reached her single storey home in a small, lesser known locality. She rung the bell yet no one answered. She took out a spare key and opened the door. She stepped inside. Her eyes focused on something-a body lying on the floor. She moved closer...her heart beating faster. She fell down on her knees ...her eyes blurred. She reached out and stoked the face of the body. She felt chills. So cold...so lifeless. She was starting to go numb. 'Not him'...she thought. Yet it was him. Louisa backed away from the dead body of David Blank.

Her father had had a single deep red wound just above his heart. The slice seemed to be made by a knife. Her heart beat faster than the tears that rolled down her cheeks. Beside David's body, there was a worn red book with a note stuck on top- 'Don't call the police Lizzie. Bury me, make up a story...although not many would come to hear...do anything but don't call the police. There are some things the police can't fix. Read the book; take the box.' She could make out her father's handwriting. Not hurried, but unruffled as always. She could tell it was not a murder. Her father had committed suicide.

Beside the book, there was a small rectangular box. She took the diary and box in hand. Tears streaming down her face, she ran out of the house. She would gladly have accepted the moonlight by now, yet the night mocked her. The stars started to fade and the ground started spinning. She fainted.

She vaguely remembered the funeral next morning. No grey sky, no rain. The sun shone down at her and the mid-October cold melted along with her heart. Her father was dead. He killed himself. The truth hit Louisa so hard that she was about to pass out again. Yet she stood firm. A mere handful of people had attended the funeral. The police were not called. David's suicide was altered as a heart stroke and inexplicably, no one had questioned about the knife wound. All the while, Louisa had the diary clutched between her armpits and the box held in her hands. Strangely, the tears didn't come for a second time. All were wearing black again. Black- the most vibrant colour in the universe. Louisa's laugh didn't come...

***

The fragrance of coffee beans had finally brought Louisa to her senses. She decided she would read the diary later. She put the box on the table and opened it. Inside lay a blood stained knife and a note-

'Read page 41 of the book, Louisa. It's the same knife.'

She sighed as she opened the book with the red cover. The words swam in front of her eyes.

I was drunk. I was depressed. I was stressed and so I was angry.

So much work upon my shoulders. Problems with my wife. Worst possible salary and a short tempered boss.

And so I was drunk. Unimaginably angry.

I reached home. Rung the damn bell. My wife answered. Clara reads me like a true psychic. "Whatever happened to you Dav?" "Nothing..." I grumbled, irritated. Why couldn't she just shut up for a while? Why couldn't she mind her own stupid business? "I can see something is wrong David." She pushed on. "Eyes lie." I replied as I sat down at the dinner table. "Are you drunk?" she inquired quietly. I lost my temper.

So angry...

"JUST SHUT UP!" I screamed. Blindly, I grabbed the closest thing I could reach for and before I could process what was happening, I threw it at her. It struck in the chest and stuck there. My eyes had lost focus and all I saw was blurry red. I shook my head to clear my vision.

I was angry.

I was drunk.

The object I had thrown was a knife. The pointed side lodged in her chest.

I was angry and I was drunk as my heart shattered. How could I? "No..." I spoke quietly. Clara hadn't even screamed. "No..." a little louder. I ran towards her and picked her fallen body in my arms. Her blood spreading over my palm. "No..." The world wasn't blowing up. Why? I was drenched in tears and sweat. I didn't even know when the tears came. A few of them dropped on Clara's face. She wasn't dead yet. Last few breaths. The knife was just above her heart. She managed her final words..."It's okay...Dav...take care...Louisa...love...you." Her eyes rolled up her head as my heart broke.

I sat down at the dinner table, wetting it with tears. How could I? I thought as I banged my head on the firm wood. Again and again. Till I felt blood flow.

I was angry. I was drunk.

I killed her...my life.

Louisa, who's sleeping in her bed is the only one left to me.

I can't let her go. Won't...She is motherless.

Let her grow up. And then...

I'll go to Clara.

I'll kill myself.

I banged my head on the table once more.

Louisa felt like banging hers on the table too. Yet, she didn't. She felt like crying but she didn't do that too. The blood stained knife that had killed both of her parents lay in front of her. She was afraid that others in the café will notice it, so she wrapped it up with her blue silk scarf. It was mid-October, just like the time of her father's funeral. Only one difference. It was snowing. The snow, cascading down in tiny plumes of frozen water. The snowflakes seemed gnostic to her. It also seemed to be gouged out from her heart. Her cold, frozen, numbed heart. She felt inchoate, looking at the diary and the scarf covered knife. She sighed for the umpteenth time.

She looked at the knife. She looked into her soul. She removed the scarf she put moments before and the knife seemed to reach out her. Speak out to her. It said the conceivable- 'Come...join me dear...be one with me like your parents did. Be free...from the cold thoughts and the gnomic words of the chaotic people all around you. The world is being destroyed Louisa. You don't need to be a part of it. Come with me. You won't regret.' She picked up the knife. It seemed logical.

And put it down again. It also seemed absolutely stupid.

Why would she do this to herself? Why would she kill herself? She would face it. She put the scarf on the knife again, put her handbag on the table and ordered for an espresso. She eased her shoulders and stared out of the window till her coffee came. She was thinking. As she always did.

What did her parents expect her to do now? Kill herself with the same knife that had claimed two lives?

The knife said yes. But her soul said no. and she always followed her soul. People all around are giving up so easily. Clara wouldn't have wanted David to die. You can't just say 'I quit' so straightforwardly...she begrudged suicide.

Life is a game. Everyone has heard that. A competing, callous, perceptive, rewarding, often disparaging game. But whatever maybe the outcome, giving up? No. It means that you lose. It means that the stupid, inanimate 'life' has played better than you, played beyond you, and given you the choice to let go. And what do most people do? They fall to life's trick and give up.

Life and death walk hand in hand. Each fuels the other. They are always at a tie in the race. And the awesome fact is that both in our control. You let life win, death captures you. You let death go, you don't give a damn about what controls you. It's all up to us.

That's what Louisa thought and that's what Louisa believed.

You aren't facing physical torture, right? Just mental torture leads to suicide. But we can control mental pain. All we have to do is stop thinking.

Life is getting better of you? You just need to keep saying 'I'm not done with you, idiot' and face it like a true human. Bring on the pain. Go numb. Laugh. Just don't kill yourself.

That's what Louisa thought and that's what Louisa believed.

She was gonna fight. Fight the pain tearing her heart. All she needed to do that was laugh. Could she?

She covered the knife with the scarf again.

Her parents were dead. Her mother, killed by her father and her father killed by himself. Her skull was ready to burst. She had a bloody knife and a diary full of words. Words of blood. Yes. Those wrenched bloody words, which had led to all this. Red, red bloody pain. All this and she was waiting to laugh. Seriously? She must be kidding herself. And this, made her smile. The smile crept to a laugh and subsequently, her heart grew lighter. The past was in the past and she let go of her grief. She laughed as the people stared at her. She wasn't gonna die. No one should commit suicide. Let death come to you naturally. Let death beg to you to come with it. She laughed as the world beyond broke into chaos again. And yet, she laughed. The outsiders saw a woman laughing like a maniac all by herself. They wondered 'How can this lady be so happy?' They cursed under their breaths and walked on.

But Louisa,

She sat in the Starbucks café, sipping her coffee and staring out of the window. The blood stained knife lay next to her handbag, covered with her blue silk scarf.