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Have you ever halted in the middle of street,
Stopping, and pausing even your heartbeat,
All because you heard a voice,
A voice with your name cradled in it.

You might have turned around then,
Searched and found no familiar faced friend,
Then you might have walked on again,
Telling yourself it was all in your head.


If you're to be believed.  
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But if you had ever followed that sound,
You would have very well found,
A world apart from yours,
Where magic reigns and physics holds no doubt.

A place of wonder and awe,
Beauty, the likes of which you never saw,
Beautiful in nature and its creatures,
A place without limits or laws.

A garden of gold, silver and platinum,
Where beautiful bodied angels lightly hum,
And sing of music and knowledge and all that is to admire,
Where every sorrow, every pain is lost in the depth of a harped strum.

If you ever followed the voice you might find a world that is,
Much more than you ever saw or dreamed,
But only if you have the courage to follow,
That Voice to This World and let it swallow you whole.


And That's what they would like you to believe.
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But No! I'm here to tell you to flee,
The song of these sirens points to no paradise free,
They call out the names of those that they thirst for,
When your crimson blood calls out to their very being.

They don't discriminate between a man or woman,
Fair or dark, animal or human,
But there's one life they spare,
A child with more innocence than they can bear.

So when a child tells you of an invisible companion,
Know that the little one is not lying,
Know the danger is closer to home than you think,
There's destruction coming, one beyond comparison.

There's more threat in that one harmless, faceless voice,
Than eerie laughter in the night of no noise,
More death resides in that one unsolicited call,
Than in the blackness of the darkest voids.

Do you know the terrors of the seven hells?
Then you better be listening to me well,
Because if they call you and you do look back,
They will find you and rejoice at the agony in your yells.

They are sharpening their teeth,
In anticipation they are waiting to eat,
And even as we quietly whisper about this abomination,
All they want is a few human tears and a little human meat.




Well that is, if I am to be believed.
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Somedays, when the voices around him plunged into a violent chaos, he would get up from where he lay. Wordlessly he'd walk out of the door, every step seemed to pass right through the flooring. Such a silent yet determined gait, he held. While the insides of his house painted themselves red with the blood of broken words and hearts, he doggedly kept his stride in synchronization with the silence in his heart.
The caresses of the wind that once he held so dear, felt like a wasteful largess now. It swept bittersweet memories into his eyes, like a battering ram through all his defences. He reminded me of the teetering top in that moment, right on the edge of falling. But as vertigo captured him, he became aware of the fall that loomed before him.
Sighing, he set to work picking up the pieces, before the cursed wind swept it out of his control once again.
And there it happened, where it always did, like an unlearned mistake. Before the moment completed itself, he was submerged under the weight of his overbearing sorrow once again. Like a schoolyard bully, it tossed him around.
And as his heart finally came to terms with the inevitability of its hopelessness., he embraced the pain. Holding it close to his heart like a returning lover.

No longer barred, the tears finally flow, steady and slow.

Finding you was easy,
The squirrel that finds an acorn,
One that it is happily surprised to see.

Making a place for you in me was a little harder, you see,
It digs steadily, small paws boring into the ground,
Reconsider, a safer place for you is deeper, farther in.

Losing you is harder still,
Winter's coming,
And I haven't had my fill.

Losing someone before being found,
It may not be profound,
But even the squirrel will tell you now,.
Deeper does not mean any safer than above.

Do you hear those screams, piercing the night? It’s a little annoying sometimes, just when I’m trying to sleep, a shriek tears that delicate fabric of silence, and jolts me awake, once again. I’m not scared of those screams, but there’s something familiar about them, something, about that voice, that dread that cripples my heart-That voice. It belongs to me.                        Sweat rolls down my tiny face, like on a warm summer night, except now every part of me shivers from the cold, on the inside and the outside.

And slowly I start to remember why; why I scream.

The reminder, the memory- It comes. Silently, like a thief tiptoeing into my room. I bear witness unable to move, Still as a rock, I’m smothered by the weight of it, unable to breathe.“Go away”, I try to scream under the weight of a disobedient voice. But it’s no use, the naustalgia is unstoppable.           The coming nightmare whispers silently into my terrified ears, “Shush, enjoy that pain, they say everyone likes it.”And it comes, the pain so painful that death is sweeter. I can’t embrace it, I never will.

 And I’m taken to the past. To the day it all went downhill.

“So many colours!”, I said, as I gaped at the garishly painted wall that I tried to grasp with my gnarly little digits. I was never bored here at the kindergarten, unlike some other muskrats who only bestowed their presence to show off their capabilities to produce saltwater from their eyes and dolphin mating calls from their blackhole-like mouths. Some talent.

It was a sunny summer day and the only thing I didn’t like about it was that every adult complained about the heat -all the time- my mum, my dad and my teachers, everyone. I remember thinking that all these grown-ups were absurd. Sure it was a little hot, but winter was always coming, so it was only fair. Change was constant, but it was such a bright day, why complain at all? I felt exceptionally happy, the whole day was a treat to my imagination laden senses.

Pity, it was such a good day to eat chocolates too.

Another thing I remember about that day was that pesky little boy, who didn't strike me as obnoxious back then, but now I’m retrospect he was really quite a block in the chimney stack. He’d entered class yesterday with the Doraemon pencil that recited generic phrases from the popular kids show, stuffed proudly in his chest pocket. And as he walked to his seat, the sound of his footsteps were punctuated by tiny “oooh’s” and “aaah’s”, as adoring little preschoolers watched the invaluable speaking object reverently. Unable to deal with the sudden adoration prudently, he got ahead of himself as his world fed that ancient balloon- The male ego. He started teaching "art" forms such as scribbling and scratching. And because I was the one sitting next to him, he felt the need to bestow upon me his vast knowledge of the subject. I didn’t really mind this condescension only because the implement he used to teach me was so exquisite. I sat there listening to him till I got bored of him talking about his Daddy and his money.

Then that little bird had started to sing so beautifully, humming at the trees as it sat on our windowsill. Every shrill note out of its little beak sent the "historic" words of that boy deeper and deeper into the dark recesses of my tiny mind. The effect of that simple melody was immediate. I stood up and started to sway slowly to the windowsill. (Even though the things I remember about this make no sense to me now, they are quite an accurate representation of my state of mind at that point.) I loved the little sound that the little birdie made, the memory of it still makes me want to jump and dance. I cooed back to her, “Coo coo(I’m happy too I tried to chirp to her)”. She looked at me quite a while, cocked her head a little to the side and cooed once more before flying off.

She replied!

She understood what I told her and she replied in kind. My wonder making mind went into a mad frenzy. So all the cartoons were true, you could really speak to animals. How I wished, I had a poké-ball! I marched to the teacher in small short joyous steps as she wrote on blackboard and clutched on to the end of her Churidar because my little hands could only go so far.          “Teacher, Teacher”, I squealed in ecstasy, “That birdie spoke to me”          “I’m sure she did, sweetie, now go back to your seat.”, she replied.

Deflated but happy nonetheless, I skipped back to my chair merrily, thinking of little birdies and a magical Pokémon. I remember, I loved how that know-it-all pencilbigmouth kept asking me to tell him what the birdie told me. Even if I hadn’t loved to see him beg,(which I did) it was my little secret, how could I tell him? How would he even start to understand? (Yeah I was being quite the drama queen in my head back then, blame the TV.)

 

 

Here I break apart from my rapture into the past and find that in my subconscious, the memory gets blurry somehow, like the radio running between stations on daddy’s phone, I get snippets of thoughts and feelings as the memory fractures into a thousand pieces.

“Mumma must understand what the birdie said.”
"Pokémon exist."
“Oh! Chocolates! Yay.”
“There’s more, if you want some.”, a gruff voice resounds in my heart.
"More yay."
“Why is he removing his clothes?”
Then suddenly,  I remember the pain- searing hot and burning through me-as clearly as sunlight through trees. Crying and screaming, I tried to escape, but to no avail. There was a big man in front of me now. His lust-crazy eyes, ******* out every piece of my existence. Somehow he was inside me and it hurt, it hurt.

How was he inside me?

Why did it pain so much?

Didn’t he hear my cry?

Stop it.

I couldn’t move, I could do nothing but scream.                                                  He touched me in my softest parts, painfully, pinching me and tearing my skin apart. It was a sea of agony and I was drowning. As I struggled to breathe, the blackness finally took me under. That unconsciousness had saved me and cradled me, lulling me to sleep in its darkness.

It felt like death but crueler, because it let me live.

Looking back I realize, the sun wasn’t bright because it was happy, it was warning me. The day wasn’t bright, it was becoming hotter in foreboding. The bird didn’t tell me it was happy, it told me to fly away, far away.

 

Why are you still making me cry? After all these years, even when you’re asleep behind iron bars. Why are you still here, holding me down in your death clasp.?

Stop it. It hurts.                                                           ­                                                 It hurts.                                                           ­                                                                 ­  I can’t breathe, I’m choking,                                                         ­                          I’m dying.

I’m dyi…..

 

Calm down, I yell at my panicked heart. Slowly inhaling and exhaling, trying to fall back into my dysfunctional sleep, I lay back into my sweat soaked bed and close my eyes. And as the blackness of sleep slowly washes me down under its waves once again, I hear it again, somewhere over the dark horizon.

Stop it! I like this darkness, stop screaming. I sit up once again. I tell myself I’m not afraid of these screams anymore. I ignore the shrieks and the unease growing in me and close my eyes once more. Then I realize that the cries of terror that resound in my ears like a half-forgotten memory, they belong to me.

And once again I start to remember why, why I scream,

And once again the memory comes.