Does The Wall Have a Soul?

By Sakshi Aggarwal

  I stood there in front of him. Never leaving his eyes. Pleading. My legs betraying me. Step by step. The left fell first for it was closer to the heart. The floor unforgiving and hard. My eyes fixated on him. I kept moving back until I felt the cold of the cement against my spine. My hands went to the cement and my fingers started scratching, so as to punish it for being on his side. A little of cement came out and the digging got faster, but this time the cement was not so giving. I screamed at it, but it just stood there. Silent. Watching. Helping him. 

With his shadow on the wall towering over me, the boundaries moving up to the ceiling and the stick in his hand made even bold and I asked if the wall had a soul and it was just choosing to hurt me. The difference between my abuser and his shadow was now gone and I couldn't make out which made the first hit. And suddenly, I was in a garden, lying on the grass. With my eyes fixated on the sky asking for help, I could feel the ground rotating. I grabbed the grass with my hands and pressed my body against the ground underneath; demanding, requesting, pleading and hoping for the earth to burst open and taking me into the abyss. A sickening, hot pain bloomed in my side with my heart pounding so hard and everything started to fade away. And now the cement didn’t feel so cold. 

 At that moment, I realised how the universe doesn't care. It just stays there. Vast. Infinite. Moving. Watching but never helping. For it was supposed to be this way. Everyone suffers differently. Mine was this. Laying on the floor, he pulled down my pants. And this time, it was I who was the spectator. Seeing it all happen. While the body lays lifeless and the eyes look into nothingness. The mouth making a croaking sound with every thrust. My body was no longer mine. And I too became the silent spectator, watching but never helping.

And then there it was, a cold feel of the metal. A pin on the floor. And slowly the mind came back. And maybe the universe is not so uncaring afterall. I took the pin and gently slit my wrist, from right to left, deep enough to take the pain away. My whole body collapsing, the blood was the first to come out, like even it needed escape. My hands and legs falling in separate directions but the eyes were still fixated on the ceiling. It felt as if life was secretly leaving through the mouth, slowly, taking its time. 

He slowly pulled himself out of my dying body with my mouth making the last croaking sound. And my eyes again met his but this time he seemed to look the other way. His eyes held the same fear that had once filled mine. His body was sweating profusely and the eyes darted from left to right. In rush, he buttoned his pants with the belt left undone. The shadow now matched his height. Not big, not small. Just as it was. The light was dimming and slowly the shadow on the wall started to fade away, erasing all the marks of the sins uncovered in the room. The wall didn’t seem so evil now. It became what it was, a wall. Just..a Wall. He hurriedly left the room with my body laying lifeless on the floor with its mouth open and my body was finally mine.

By Sakshi Aggarwal