The Naughty Boy Kills Himself

The Naughty Boy Kills Himself

I wept bitterly digging my face into her lap. I feel her fingers caressing my hair gently as she patted my forehead with the other hand. There was a catharsis as I felt myself purged and washed of a lot of emotions as I wept. The tears had the effect of restoring eggs stolen from a bird’s nest by a  naughty boy. They restored at least some tranquility within me. The sweet scent of feminity wrapped in her clothes also consoled me to some degree. Bad weather and brine had certainly done their best to wreck havoc in my life.

I was overwhelmed by the sequence of events that has unfolded in my life in the past few days. It was an endless and dense fog I’d been struggling against. I wept like a naughty boy who was being spanked for apparent and obvious fault. He had been merely looking down the deep and dark well of his life wondering what mysteries it contained. Apparently, events in his life did not rhyme quite as he thought they would.

She was also in tears. I tingled with selfish satisfaction when the cool drops of her tears dripped from her eyes on my neck. Some found themselves on her lap as well. Apparently, she was as much grieved as I was: her stifled sobs were quite sonorous. We were on the same boat, and the boat was sinking.

Our hearts were sinking too. There was the remorse of a life-long separation. I felt like someone who had missed the last bus home. There wasn’t going to be another bus for a long time to come, and I was to be left stranded on the road. Situations and circumstances in life had forced me to make several compromises with time, but this was one that hurt me the most. Considering my inability to do many things my peers and contemporaries can, I was hardly surprised when her parents vetoed her choice of a life-partner in me. I had been left with a host of physical handicaps owing to a head-injury.

Several questions came to my mind as the initial deluge of emotions subsided. I wanted to ask my fate why I had been introduced to her in the face of so many problems hounding my existence. Why had she been made a part of my life for a couple of years when she was not to be a part of it forever? I wanted to ask my fate why I had been pushed into her company when we  were destined to part. I wanted to ask my fate why I had been dealt with physical handicaps in the first place. I felt like screaming out loud to vent at least some of my frustration. Why did Time choose to destroy the beauty of the moments we spent in each other’s company? Why were  we exposed to these moments in the first place? They were certainly some of the most beautiful moments we had lived. We wanted to preserve their beauty for eternity, but my physical inability to conquer the exigencies of time had brought all our dreams and aspirations to a dead-end. There was simply no way out of the labyrinth. The dreams were not to live beyond the dawn when I  open my eyes.

We did consider the option of staging a rebellion, of running away from our parents and setting up an independent establishment, but the head-injury had left behind some ugly scars all over my life. My physical handicaps had pushed me to depths where I found myself unemployed despite excellent academic credentials. I was unable to earn a living for myself. I had to bank on my parents for a living, but this didn’t deter me from falling in love.

We were in love, but the realization that a union was not possible pushed our  grief to a fresh nadir every single second. The naughty boy had removed the well-cover and was lowering a bucket down the well when he paused for a while. To save himself from tumbling into the  well, he leant against the framework of the well with his forehead and arms, but eventually fell into the shining disk of quivering water located at infinity.