Uninvited

Uninvited

Posted by Seema Ramnarayan on Wednesday October 18, @08:05AM

The most morbid tale my mind has ever conjured up!!

If there’s one thing I can’t stand its a secret I am not privy to. The quickest way to irritate me is to tell me “I’ve got a secret but I can’t tell you”. Now, that really drives me up the wall. Maybe that’s why I am telling you all this. Now I’ve got a secret too but I don’t mind telling you.

I am not really the sort of person who was expected to do too well at anything in life. I like to think it’s not been like that all the time. That I showed promise to begin with at least. But it’s been like this since as far back as I can remember.

I guess I was never one of those squeaky clean kids with shining braces, a nauseatingly sweet smile and a row of photographs and medals arranged neatly on top of my bookshelf. This description is what comes to mind when I think of all the kids my folks invited to my 12th birthday bash.

That must have been around the time I discovered P. P with her long tresses (now contrast that to my straw-like apology of a haircut) and her beaming smile was every parents” dream come true. She was smart and intelligent and had a good handwriting. She was a popular girl, P was. She always smelt like fresh fruit and could always make people laugh. That’s why I never let mom and dad meet her. She was a swell girl and I liked her but it would not be good for me for my parents to meet her. Besides they may like her more than they like me. In some ways one can say that it was P who made me begin smoking. She had this nasty habit of turning up at the most inappropriate moments and lecturing me in the “miss goody two shoes” tone of voice. That always made me mad and gave me a headache besides. A cigarette helped to dull if not numb the senses and alleviate the trauma. One thing led to the other and in a few days I was accustomed to chemicals of different sorts forming colourful pictures in my head as P’s voice turned into a rapidly diminishing monotone. When I would break out of my reverie, she would be gone.

I don’t really remember when it was that P started getting on my nerves. She had never been the sort of person I normally liked instantly (I am yet to discover what kind of person that would be) but I had grown used to her the way one does to a bad haircut or ugly paint colour. There’s not much you can do about it so you just try hard not to notice it too much. But suddenly one day she began to evoke feelings of strong annoyance in me. Not the minor irritation one can shrug away with a smoke but the violent sort of anger that makes one want to scream. At first I did not do much. I thought she will notice she isn’t wanted and one day suddenly just go away. When she didn’t show any signs of making herself less conspicuous for months on end, my patience just gave way. I started by hurting her bit by bit and scratching her deep so it would hurt her bad. My dad always said I had nails like a cat (and a disposition to match but that’s another story). The scratching didn’t really help shut her up but at least it was a distraction. One thing led to the other and in a few days I was using every pointed object I could find to make her bleed. I loved seeing her grimace in pain as I jabbed her like one would do while punching holes on cardboard! That’s when they started to take notice of all the blood spots in my clothes. They were furious at first. They thought I was doing it to scare them. I mean, why did it matter to them so much? It was P I was hurting and they didn’t even know P. Why were they making such a big deal out of it all? Whatever was happening was between me and P as far as I was concerned. I would often wake up in the night in deep pain and scream. The wounds from the fights with P hurt more at night. Then mom insisted I go to a doc. That was when I met the quack with the grin that never got wiped off. I am sure he is a wife-beater for only someone like that could look so happy all the time. He always spoke in a voice that sounded like one of those television presenters; completely fake and nauseous. I hated him at sight almost as much as I hated P. The only difference was I did not have to put up with him for a long stretch of time ever. He would let me go away within an hour of us meeting. Then one day the whole thing just got to me. I hurled my mom’s favourite vase outside the window and made huge slits on P’s wrist with the knife I robbed from the cook. There was blood all over the carpet and mom freaked. The quack insisted I get admitted to the hospital and that’s why I am here. The nurse has fallen asleep and I can go back to hurting P. It’s not my fault. She should never have entered my brain in the first place. Now I’m back where I started, hurting P and hurting me.