The Secret Within

As I was preparing to go to bed that night and switched off the light, I saw a quick flicker and a crackle of light on the terrace of the house on the opposite side of the street. The darkness around that place was punctuated with small glimmers of light from a glass jar that softly buzzed through the blackened air - they were fireflies. I was enchanted, and imagined to have discovered a hideaway of a great magician at the middle of the night.

The next morning, I found an envelop inside the letter box mounted at the gate of my house - it was a white envelop with nothing written on it. Inside it was a piece of white paper as blank as the envelop. I was baffled and scared at the same time and for that entire day and next couple of days, it preoccupied my thoughts frequently trying to decipher who, why and what. With butterflies in my stomach and my head buzzing with random possibilities, an icy discomfort blossomed in and inflated my breaths. And a few days later, just when my breaths began to show signs of deflation, I received them again in my letterbox.

This time, in rage more than being fearful, I turned into an insomniac for the next couple of nights and stood near the window determined to solve the mystery. There were no sparkle of fireflies in those nights and in absence of it, the night appeared to be a spaceless prison. There was nothing in my letter box in the following mornings. On the third night when I battled to be an insomniac and struggled to carry the weight of my eyelashes, at around 01:30 AM, I saw a lady coming out from the gate of the same house whose terrace kindled with fireflies earlier and dropped something at the letter box of my house. I had frozen for a moment and my thoughts paralyzed. As I regained consciousness, I rushed for it and found, inside the letter box, the same white envelop with a blank white piece of paper inside. I came back to my room and saw that the terrace of the house kindled with the sparkle of fireflies.

As I met that lady and talked about it, she spoke - "My universe began and ended with him. I could have ran forever, searched forever, but in the end, every path led right back to his heart and soul. When I saw him, it was as if space and time became the finest point imaginable, as if time collapsed into one tiny speck and exploded at light speed. We were the protectors of one another, confidants and true friends. The trust we gave to each other, is what kept us safe in this world, in this life. But weeks before he left this place, we had a fierce fight and we stopped talking to each other. However we had an unspoken agreement between us - whenever we stopped talking to each other out of a fight, either of us, whose heart melted away first, would drop a blank white piece of paper inside a blank white envelop to other's letter box. The blank piece of paper was used to scribble the anger and then drop to other's letter box.

"The last fight didn't melt either of our hearts. I peeped into my letter box as the first thing every morning and at nights a lingering haze of sleep sat somewhere at the back of my mind but too far away to reach, floating somewhere in a pool of thousand anticipations. On one evening, the blue porch light didn't lit and I discovered that the entire house was submerged into a deep darkness. And it was only on one of the night last week, when I was on my terrace that I saw light in the house. I thought he came back but since the porch was still not blue in the evenings, I kept melting away my heart."

Over the time she spoke candidly about her relationship with the earlier resident of the house in which I was living. The more she talked, the more she sounded a disillusioned person who kept oscillating between two time warps - one was the nostalgia for her relation and the other was the search of answers for her thoughts.

Once when I went to her place, I discovered jars of dead fireflies and a few write-ups in one of the chest of drawer in her living room writen by someone else. I used to read them whenever I visited her place.

"On the nights when the moon is full, it's light is a diffuse ocean above you that lessened your inkiness and in the distance I am a frozen silhouette from an unseen ballet of love,  against the deep velvety sky. On the nights that are dark, you are a frozen firework explosion on this earth when I look at you through a heady swarm of green light and I am a lunacy in the dying embers, somewhere at an unknown corner of the earth, enlivened by the sprinkles of allure and pearly hues of love."

Each of her write-ups portrayed her feelings as someone who stays in a hideaway and only expresses herself in the hour when no one watches and listens to this earth. She perceived him in as many shades as her thoughts could sketch and imagined herself as an emotion of an endless wait lying somewhere unknown to the world. She built up a soliloquy of her connect with him around all these and discovered it as unrequited. She expressed a deep sense of satisfaction in being the solitary dreamer of the relationship and wished to stay it the same forever. She described herself being in a space where she breathed in comfort and felt a tranquility in her nerves.

She said that she found these write-ups on her terrace, kept under a stone, when she shifted to this place and found them so mesmerizing that she kept them with her and read them when she felt like.

I didn't quiet believe her as those papers didn't show signs of ageing. Although she claimed to be staying alone in the house yet her place gave me a creepy sensation of presence of another someone hiding at some corner of the house, another shadow lurking around somewhere.

On one of the days she was at my place and we were sitting in my patio at the dusk sipping Darjeeling tea. She finished her last sip, kept down the cup on the table and drifted her eyes to the molten, fiery orange horizon. She then looked at me and said - "I never had any relationship with any of the previous resident of this house, neither I have any past behind those blank envelops and papers I sent to you. The only truth in my story was my longing of the sight of the blue porch light of this house - it was my abstract companion of solitude.

"I return late from work. On my way to home every street I pass through is lit with warm orange glow and every house that I look at has it's entrance in darkness. This house was no different until one evening I found it's porch lit with blue color - that evening I kept looking at it for few minutes without blinking. The next evening I looked at it and smiled. And since then every evening I stopped before entering my house to look at this blue porch, blink a few times and smile. 

"You became a habit - one to which I was drawn to in oblivion. There was something about you and I that matched, each half loving the other so fully that a life alone was meaningless. You were a welcome change in my otherwise mundane life. But one evening when I didn't find you, my heart sank into darkness but I had not let the spark of hope become extinguished; I knew you were out there somewhere because someone as good as you just don't disappear. Every evening I stopped at my gate longer than earlier and on nights I was on my terrace counting every moment looking at the empty dark space with the hope that the next moment you would miraculously appear there from nowhere. But I started missing you and eventually missing you also became a habit as was seeing you every evening. You became a silhouette, as if you walked away from a photograph and left behind a blackness."

She stopped with expression on her face of someone waking up from a monologue and appeared a little embarrassed. She cleared her throat and resumed in conscious way - "I was ecstatic when I saw light in this house and from thereon I started counting days thinking it will just be a matter of day when you will start switching on the porch light daily evening. But seeing it's not happening, I wanted to meet the new resident of the house this time that I did not earlier. Dropping those blank pages inside blank envelops in your letter box and the story behind it were nothing more than an attempt of a beautiful mind to meet you."

I was so engrossed in listening to her that I heaved a sigh after she finished feeling that I didn't breath since ages. When I asked her about the fireflies, she appeared to be in fear and surprise. She seemed hesitant to talk on it but finally said - "I sought solace in the warm glow of fireflies -  they were a secret bundle of joy on the nights when I felt tired of waiting."

After she left my place, I decided to return her envelopes and papers and also a jar of fireflies that I stole from her place. At around 01:00 AM that night, I went to her place and found the door of her house open. As I entered inside, I saw her lying on the floor in a pool of blood trickling down her throat - even under the illumination of thousand fireflies it glinted red turning the room into a dip of neon scarlet. In front of me, on a couch at a distance, sat a lady looking the blood dripping from her hands with utmost serenity as if absorbed in examining it carefully and completely unaware of her surroundings.

Under the glimmer of fireflies, when I saw her I was baffled and terrified to find she resembled exactly her as if she was a clone of her with charcoal black complexion, deepest ebony skin and her eyes dazzling with the feeling of the fatality. The adrenaline flew over my veins like a carp through the river, but I couldn’t move a single muscle, not even to scream. The absolute horror completely paralyzed me and the more I thought about running away or simply moving a bit, the more I felt discouraged and utterly terrified.

But upon discovering my presence, she ran away from there in a flash. And only after she disappeared that I could gather myself up and found a note on the table, written by the same person who wrote the ones that I found in one of the chest of drawer at her place -

"I have known you since the time you started missing him. I still remember your words - 'In him I found someone whose waits for me to reach home and staying awake on those nights when I am sleepless were so pristine. A distinct attachment unfolded for him.' As I knew you more, I realized that you didn't miss him, you missed yourself to be in that space where your reality was shaped by the imagination of your wishes. I savored accompanying you on the terrace at nights to listen to his reminiscences in your talks and grew fond of them - they were like turning the pages of a memoir of an unrequited love.

"I don't remember now when was the first time I went to the terrace at night without you - on the night I kept looking at the darkness and emptiness that time had left at the place where you found him; I loved it like the ancients loved the night sky. Gradually the escapades became a habit and I began to endear them like nascent leaves of spring love warmth. An attachment for the incompleteness unfolded in me and I discovered a world of my own, beyond the shadow of yours, where I began to live the memoir in which the darkness became my beloved and it's grandeur was something I fell for. And one night when I saw him surrounded by a swarm of specks of green lights, I perceived his grandeur in a new shade and captivated me more than the sight of the winter sun above the pristine snow capped mountain. I trapped fireflies in jars so that I could watch him through it whenever the usual he become mundane.

"He evolved into a habit for me - I wanted to hold on to every bit of my connect with him forever, wished I could just stop moving forward and exist in that moment with him, not thinking, not breathing, just not apart. And you became a secret listener of my expressions beneath. But everything fell apart and broken into a million shards the night the house was lit. And when I discovered your pursuit, all my world collapsed in that moment - what I once treasured became memories at once and a shadow lingered in the depths of my mind. It was the extinguishing of a dream, of a way of life.

"Since that day my eyes cast a mournful gaze to his disappearance and beheld a frozen fury for you. We will be forever yet finite within each span - each incarnation with only so many days to bask in my love. Perhaps we have had our run this time, may be not - it could be just a siesta with a warm afternoon just ahead.

"He will always both far and eternal and you are now near and forgiven ! I could not make yours but may my last moments be peaceful wrapped in my love !"