The Midnight Crisis - (An excerpt) Page ***

CHAPTER XI

(FALLING FOR LOVE, WAITING FOR HONESTY)

"I feel like a baby who longed for Moon, and when he got there, he couldn't breathe, he was alone and scared. And everyone on earth was laughing on the silly choice he had made." I exclaimed.

"You had the option Raphael, you got selfish, you thought you were making a sacrifice, now get through yourself, don't cry, you are not a baby anymore." Valeria's voice trembled in the noise of passing by train but I couldn't decide whether it vibrated due to noise or was she sentimental. What she said was not new to me and I knew she was right. But it did not hurt me this time as it always had before.

"You've got strong Raphael,you have everything now, why do you not thank God for that, you're a well settled rich man now." Was she getting apologetic for what she said earlier but without any surprise she was even bitterer this time.

"It makes me remember all the artificial things I bought with money; love, understanding, satisfaction and pleasure? Huh!" Her bitterness made me astringent too but she reciprocated with silence.

"How is your job going?" I tried to change the topic which I dreadfully failed.

She turned to me with a face and the words that were quite opposite to each other, blank and emotional. "Why did you let me go so easily?" She was expressionless with a “deafening question” and I wondered, how could a human be so profound. But so was she. I felt myself swirled in a blizzard and my body freeze and torn down by the chilling wind. I almost shouted, "What are you saying Valeria? You just asked me to stop. You didn't ask me to stop for you."

She smiled, "Why would I have taken the blame Raphael, you could’ve stopped for yourself, I might’ve left everything for you. Were you so unsure of me? Did you need any reason to love? Were you such an idiot? You weren't. You were selfish." The title was not new to me. Maybe she was right. Maybe I was an idiot selfish. But maybe I was really an idiot.

"I am still confused." I grunted. I felt uneasy, for the first time, on that steel chair, I had been sitting, since last 6 hours.

"I wish you were. Confusion is the best expression of honesty." She was firm, annoyingly, as ever.

"I couldn't stop then. And I can't return now. It's like when I look back, I get hurt and when I look around me, I find myself alone and this scares me. And in this fear I again look back so that I could change something to make present better, then I realize, it is impossible, and it kills me." I tried to explain.

"You always think of yourself. Good for you." Saying this she got up. "I got to go, you need to clear your mind."

I stared at her while she was leaving. I kept on staring the trail she followed and the corner where she disappeared for a long time. Another train passed by. I felt it passing over my heart breaking it into pieces. I tried to collect all the pieces but just then, I found blood on my hands, my hands were cut and this dawned upon me that although my heart was fragile but it was made up of crystalline stone, hard and un-weathered.

(...To be continued)