The Dark Room

Annie furiously scribbled on her notepad.

Remorse is a dark room you enter only to develop the negatives of the photographs you shot on that great voyage through life where you inadvertently injured someone badly.

Regret is the chocolate you never ate, even though it was delicious and right in front of your eyes, within your budget, but you didn't buy it.

Guilt is like the troublesome insect you killed for constantly bothering you; once squatted, it can be squatted without hesitation again.

Annie’s life was devoid of these emotions she jotted down in her notepad.

She felt no remorse for killing her husband in cold blood. She never regretted the decision to abandon her child. And guilt was a troublesome insect that she squashed every time it tried to spread its wings.

You need to forgive yourself, Annie. It’s natural to feel vengeful when someone has hurt you and wronged you, her best friend and psychiatrist advised her.

Annie’s relationship with her deceased husband was far from normal. Within two years of marriage, she realised it would never be normal, but she endured the abuse for five years, before poisoning his food.

Before quietly performing his last rites, with no attendance there as she didn’t inform any of his family, she took the sharpest knife from the kitchen cabinet and stabbed him many times in the chest, killing a dead man even more. She stabbed his heart repeatedly until her entire gown was soaked in blood.

She left her child in an orphanage, as she felt no love for a child born of rape. As she walked away from the gate, she didn’t turn around to see her daughter staring after her—lost and puzzled.

If she had surrendered, she could have made a case of self-defence and got exonerated by the courts and bought her freedom, but how would she be free from the odd stares of neighbours, which would remind her every day of the crime she committed, and even worse, the crime he committed behind closed doors every day for five years?

Her daughter had the same eyes as him. Annie couldn’t bear to look at her without being reminded of him. How could she not think of him when she looked at her face? She felt the urge to slap the child thinking she was slapping him hard. What would people say if they saw her beating her child because she hated her eyes? They’d label her an atrocious mother, and her exoneration by the courts would have no bearing on the incarceration she’d face in their looks.

What she did was her only alternative.

She changed her name, her passport, and illegally lived under an assumed identity in a foreign country, where no one recognised her or asked her any questions. She had to evade the immigration authorities for some time but eventually they stopped hounding her.

She was a cleaner for two hours in the morning, a shop assistant for two hours in the afternoon, a librarian for an hour in the evening, and a self-proclaimed author for the rest of the night.

She was starting her first book and trying to frame its opening sentence.

Freedom is like a baby bird learning to open its wings to take the flight that will set its spirit free from the shackles that have bound it.

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It was Annie’s big award night. She was being awarded an honour for the contributions to literature in the country of her current residence. Her entire life’s struggles were being acknowledged and compensated for at this award night.

She knew she would steal these moments away from the hours she spent brooding in the dark haloes of her imagination, afraid to come out into the light.

It had been 30 years since she left her country. But she could never escape the desolate past, which reared its ugly head in the dark themes of all her writings, refusing to go away. Changing one’s identity does not kill the demons usually. She’d reconciled that she’d never find closure in this life.

She never looked back nor cared. It wasn’t easy being on her own in a foreign land for she decided never to marry or have another relationship. All she did for 30 years was scribble away on her notepad, crystallizing the carbon of her mind to diamond, and here she was—sporting a tiara made of those diamonds. She was receiving one of the most prestigious awards for her literary talents.

The host of the evening blared her name into the microphone, breaking her reverie. She summoned the courage to rise up—as they put the spotlight on her—and walk onto the stage to collect the award from a promising writer from her native country, who had previously won the Young Writers Award.

As she reached closer to the podium, the writer holding her citation smiled at her. Annie looked at her and froze. She started turning pale, as the darkness grew darker. Before she fainted, she felt those familiar pair of eyes stab the centre of her heart and rip through to her soul.