In Flames

The wooden door banged against the cold, ceramic tiles as he rushed into the bathroom. The tap gushed with icy cold water as he splashed it onto his face. His shoulders heaved as he panted, trying to catch his breath.

He opened the mirrored shelf above the basin and grabbed at the tiny yellow glass bottle. It squeaked as he opened it and emptied it off the last two tablets. He swallowed them. As he finally returned to normal, he looked at himself in the mirror.

He saw his grey eyes, now red. He noticed his wrinkles, a new addition to his face. He scrutinized each pore on his face, and the size of his hooked nose.

He looked so old. A good ten years more than his present thirty-five. He stood there for another ten minutes, with a blank expression on his face. And then he walked out.

He undressed to go to bed. He wouldn’t be excused from work tomorrow. He switched off his lights, and lay down on his hard bed, the blanket only just protecting him from the harsh cold of winter.  He couldn’t sleep. It should’ve been easy for him, considering how tired he was. Physically and mentally. But he lay there, motionless, eyes wide open, staring at the moon rays filtering gently through the blinds.

He remembered a night somewhat like this one, thirty years ago. He’d been crying, a little boy who had just been bullied by a neighbor. He was always a lonely kid. He never made any friends. His parents thought he was just shy, and that he would get over that phase.

But he wasn’t shy. He was just…just a ‘freak’. Like the other kids called him. They hated him, the weird boy who liked squishing insects and setting them on fire. They were afraid of him. But they dared not tell their parents. They thought that maybe he would harm them if they did.

And so he was left all alone in the garden, stared at by the kids, whispering little secrets to each other. And so he went back to his little playthings, the insects.

He found more and more ways to play with them, until his parents discovered their kid’s secret fetish, after he started safekeeping the mutilated bodies of the tiny bugs he’d worked on. He was eight then.

They tried every possible way to get him out of his fancy, for they didn’t want to be known as bad parents. They were scared that the church would turn against them, and that they won’t have any friends if anyone found out.

So they took him to a psychologist, who tried making perfect sense to an eight year old who knew nothing apart from school and insects. They tried grounding him, confiscating his insect collection, and spraying pesticide all over the house and the garden, but he always found his playmates.

It was when the insect fetish started turning towards kittens that his parents decided to take drastic steps. Out of desperation, his father began hitting him. It started off with a slap on the cheek that turned his face purple for days. It went on to belt whips, bleeding lips and broken teeth.  And then to broken limbs.

He watched the cold, intent look in his mother’s eyes as his father trashed him everyday, waiting for her to say something. It was later that he realized that it was their only solution to a normal social life.

Finally, after his thirteenth birthday, he gradually curbed his inner desires, only out of fear of dying at his father’s bare hands. He gave up every natural instinct and tried to live like a normal human being.

At fifteen, he was diagnosed with clinical depression. He had been taking those pills from yellow glass bottles for twenty years now.

He was exhausted.

Not that it ever helped much. He still had panic attacks, fits of rage and breathlessness. The pills only helped calm those down, but they never stopped.  Sometimes it felt like it was the pills that actually kept him in a depressed state, waiting for something to lean on.

His parents were long gone.

He had forgotten about killing insects. He knew he’d never go back to that.

So he decided that tonight’s pills would be his last. He would never depend on them again. He would be happy. He got out of bed, a new enthusiasm filling him. He decided to celebrate the start of a new life. And he knew exactly how to.

He went to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of wine. Then he got dressed and went down to his basement. He walked past twenty burlap sacks till he found a huge one marked ‘X’. He dragged it upstairs and out of his house.

Light snow was falling as he opened it. He noticed the glittering elegance of white that filled his garden, and the streets. He smiled at the irony of blue liquid on the shimmering white snow at his feet.

And with the strike of a match, he laughed openly, loudly and uncontrollably for the first time in his life, as the bodies of his parents went up in smoke, and down in flames.