CIGARETTE STORIES - TRAUMA

By Sai Nihar

Before getting to the stories I am going to write, I just wanted to thank Kalakar for his writing competition, these stories I am posting are a work of fiction and took me a lot of time to get into words. It is dark, disturbing and definitely worth a read, I hope it gets the recognition required.

Story 1:

Her mother and brother were crying and she was standing near the ICU, she was looking confused and was sweating, one of the nurses came and told her “ma’am your father will be moved to the room within 15 minutes, you can see him then”. She came out of the hospital and took out her cigarette double mint, lit it and started to smoke and she just dosed into her past. She was wearing a pink colour frock and doing her homework, that’s when her father came inside smoking. He went and sat opposite to her, she looked up and saw her father staring at her with his red eyes and smoke coming out of his mouth.

He then told her” come here sweetheart “and she was sitting there scared, hopeless and didn’t want to go. He raised his voice and she startled and stood up folding her hands. He pulled her close and burnt the cigarette on her hand and she started to cry and yell “dad am begging you please stop this it’s hurting me, why are you doing this to me every day, am not able to go to swimming class because there are marks all over my body, I want to tell it to mom”. Then her father furiously lifted her and threw her down, told her “if you’re going to tell your mom am going to tell her that you stole 50 Rupees from her bag, so come here sweetheart” she still was crying and her father slowly started to undress her...suddenly the phone rang, it was her brother and he told “didi they shifted papa from the ICU”. She threw the cigarette and put it off and went to see her father. Her mother and brother were crying and she stood there looking at her him. The doctor came in and told “we are sorry, we tried our best, he’s got 48 hours”. She started walking close to her father he had his jaw removed and was in pain. She went and put her fingers on his forehead and caressed, bent down and whispered “you deserve this, you piece of scum!”.

By Sai Nihar