The Woman in Your Basement

By Yasaswee Yashmin

I hear footsteps upstairs. Was that another set of heels? 

I see you closing the door behind her like you did with me. 

I watch you twirl her around beside the bedroom door and recall the dreadful night when those heels were mine, boring holes in your wooden floor. 

This knife is for in case someone finds out about her.

How foolish of me to never notice the sharp edge of that knife under your pillow was in fact for my throat. How did it never occur to me that what had pierced into your wife’s guts could do so to me as well? Freedom was so close until the darkness of my beloved blind eyes made me throw my cane away in happiness. Black used to be my favourite colour after all.

The coffee I had with your wife every evening never saw this betrayal coming. I regret it every day. I saw the life in her blue eyes fading away that night and watched in silence as if my throat had the same amount of life as her, none. Her hollow eyes that saw me fix her hair with trembling hands before you buried her in your backyard still haunt my bones. But all I heard was you whispering that you loved me. 

Green eyes are the trickier labyrinth for me than blue anyway.

I wish I could miss her, more than I will ever miss you. Because she was real and the you that I had known was a facade. We have a strange ability to miss something that we never had. 

I see you kiss your new target pretending like you mean it. My eyes might be hollow now, staring into space, but I am not blind anymore. I can see your eyes open up and look at her with lust the moment hers close in passion. It was so foolish of me to think that your wife was ever my enemy when she was as much a victim in your eyes as was I, and as the woman in your arms is now. 

Claiming the insurance must have felt rewarding, did it not?

My hands tied behind my back are still bleeding from the rope of your betrayal. The knife smeared with your wife’s blood is now bathed in mine, still halfway through my heart. The pictures I drew in the corner of my diary of a heart pierced with an arrow of Cupid did come true, quite literally, but with a knife of yours instead.

It is funny how this time your plan did not turn out perfect. How she arrived before you could bury me beside your wife, hence adding me to your list, and wipe away every trace of my presence in this cursed house. It is funnier how you do not even realise that her nose is upturned the same way you had said mine was and the labyrinth of her eyes has shelves coloured in the same shades of green as mine. 

It is a relief how you have not yet smelled death in your tea and the new knife on the kitchen counter has not caught your eye. It is bizarre that your screams sound like music to my ears and it is comforting, her dragging my lifeless body out of this cage of a basement with her tears washing away the red off me.

By Yasaswee Yashmin