The city was quieter than ever before. The Sundays had become lazier and the work consistency for Shalini had gone up the roof. She had a small cosy apartment. She spent most of her morning trying to call her mom. She swept the entire apartment and did her laundry for the week. Had instant noodles for lunch and decided to take a nap in the shadowy comfort of her room. She woke up at 4. With her hair messed up, wiping her drool off her cheeks, she walked out of the room. The windows brought in the golden light from the mellow evening in her apartment. The rays hit all the pillars, sofas, ottomans, tables and her seven succulents perfectly to cast deep shadows, as if it were the glare of medusa capturing everything in its vision and making it completely still. The dark corners almost had a life. She got to the living room. On the coffee table, sat a used, teal cup of tea, with an unnatural yellow glow around it. With the stain ring on the table and the teabag hanging out. She made a note to put it in the sink. Right after, she sat at her desk, located in her home office, which was just the corner of her living room with multiple plug points and a bookshelf at the back. She started reading the documents and making the charts which obviously made her drowsy. She woke up wide as she hit the keyboard. It was late in the evening now. She needed dinner. As she was walking to the kitchen she saw the teal tea cup, giving out an aura, with the tea bag in it, with its stain ring on the still around it, on the sofa armrest. She must have forgotten to keep it in the sink earlier. She picked it up and put it back in the sink. She made some more instant noodles for herself and took the bowl to the hall, put her tv on and started watching Supernatural. the intense music made the room seem smaller. Although it was night the outside seemed surprisingly brighter, bright enough to make shadows. But it’s just Mumbai. It’s always lit up. She looked in the kitchen corner, the dark corners of her house seemed to be watching Supernatural with her. She kept watching episodes after episodes until it was finally time to work again. Walking towards her kitchen sink she saw her bedroom door open. She went ahead to close it, but there it was again, basking in a light unknown, the teal tea cup. On her side table. This time, it worried her. She clearly remembered putting the cup in the sink. Throwing the teabag away. Cleaning the stain ring. But there it was again. She slowly walked towards it. Took it in her hands, for the third time this day. She thought of putting it back in the sink, but this time her emotions ranged from a variety of scared, angry, cautious and dauntlessness and she threw the cup right out her window.
She woke up in her bed. She looked around for the cup but it was nowhere around. She took a deep breath of relief.
“It didn’t actually happen!”
It was a lazy Sunday but she had work on her mind. She decided to crawl into her living room throw (a smaller blanket) and work while being absolutely pedantic about her office presentation next morning. The light was brighter today. Or were the shadows darker. As afternoon set in she noticed the teal cup one the bookshelf. Had it been there all morning? It was just like her dream though, teal cup of tea, with the stain ring at the bottom and the teabag hanging out. She was flooded with an incongruous emotion. If it were possible to see emotions her living room would filled with paranoia as the gardens in Holland are with tulips. She took it to the sink, again and started making her instant noodles. The sun was right over head at this hour. Although it was at no angle to possibly cast shadows, the corners of the house were shady and the windows were burning yellow. Her post lunch nap was longer than she anticipated it to be. Had to be, her mind was exhausting her. The cup, the god forsaken, sinner, doubtful, unfaithful, wretchedly cursed TEA CUP. She came back to her living room, oh how bright it was. She rubbed her eyes while walking to her home office. But there it was again.
No. No. It can’t be. It was just a dream. Dreams coming to life is too clichéd. This can’t be happening.
She ran to it. Stabbed her toe on the hall bottom and bruised herself. Shalini grabbed the teal cup tight and headed to the balcony. It was the same golden light as in the dream. This was preposterous. She stared at the cup. Looked at the cup as one would look at the love of their, who went on war and were presumed dead and are now standing right in front of them as if there was no history, no heartbreak, no suffering, no desperation, no fear. This was unreal. She had to snap out of it. Without thinking twice Shalini threw the cup out of the window yet again.
She woke up with the sun hitting her eyes from the east window, warmer and saturated. She rushed out to her kitchen to check for her teal cup. Her toe was hurting.
How could an injury from a nightmare hurt in real life, not like it was an emotional hurt.
She was now sure that this wasn’t a dream, because if it was then she would have snapped out of it by now. Shalini opened her kitchen cabinets to search for the cup and confirm her hold on reality. The absence of the teal cup and the abundance of instant noodles threw her off her grip on life. She searched for the cup all morning. Her apartment was ransacked. It was Sunday and she had to get her work done for tomorrow but in this situation of utter agitation, she couldn’t possibly be working. She suspected a self-diagnosed PPD. She ran to her door to get out of the house but it wouldn’t for the last strand of strength in her was curled around the teal cup. The hunt for the cup continued. She entered the bathroom and there it was, sitting on the rim of her basin. Next to her cosmetics and under the mirror, lay the cup of agony. She smashed it in the floor, leaving it in pieces, scattered on the yellow marbled floor. With slight relief she went out. In desperation of wanting to break her dream routine, or whatever it was that was happening, she decided to step out with the excuse of buying something other than instant noodles packets. She went to her room, the golden light from the outside made her room look like it was right out of Narnia or a Tolkien Fiction. Either the outside was brighter or her insides were getting darker. She wanted to take a picture of it, beauty knows no time, but as Shalini pointed the camera it showed nothing but a very bright glow and not the beauty that she could see.
Never mind.
She grabbed her wallet from the room and headed to the front door through the narrow passage that led to it. She walked through the light and shadows of her house feeling surrounded by what she assumed, were her thoughts. On her desk she saw it, she saw it again, after it was smashed. After it was turned into pieces, after it was nothing but trash. It was in its original form, teal, stain and teabag. But she noticed something different this time. After it having appeared to her so many places in all the different times of the day, this time she noticed one difference. It was now sitting in shadow, unlike all the other times when it was in the golden light. She grabbed a knife from the kitchen for now she was well aware of her not being alone in her apartment. Fear took control and she stumbled across the room, knowing off everything was in her way, hurting her and causing negligible scars, physical ones. As she reached for the cup, time seemed to stand still. She took it in her left hand while the right one held onto the knife tightly as one holds on to their life. She took it in her hand as a superhero would grab on to the dying breath of their enemy. She opened her apartment door.
And for the first time it opened.
It opened, not leading to a road or a hallway or any form of land for that matter. All there was outside the door was total and complete emptiness and mind you it wasn’t a dark pit of animosity. It was just a bright yellow light, with no end in sight in any direction. It was as if her apartment was standing still on a triple axis grid. Afloat. In abyss. Panic ran down her veins. Shalini had no idea about what to make out of such an ominous series of events. Her only reflex and the only solution she saw to problem was dropping that cup into the infinite fall.
As she let go of the teal tea cup, she ruffled through all the events that had led to this, her waking up to the exact same day every time, her having to do all the chores over and over again, the cup haunting her, how there was nothing captured in the camera, how she never stepped out before and how she always woke up to a new start of the same day every time she unknowingly threw the cup in the abyss.
The cycle had to stop.
Maybe saving the cup could save her from the imprisonment. Maybe, just maybe the dream would end, that is if it is a dream. Realising that saving the cup is her only way to an alternate end, she dived in with the cup, out the door, into the nothingness. She knew nothing of what this trap was, who set it or even of the now doubtful fact that she might not even be alive.
Falling down she looked back up, to her apartment door, something appeared to be moving, but now standing still at the door, watching her fall and enjoying it. It was not a person, it was not a creature, it was just a shadow. Only a shadow. It had limbs, holding the door open to watch her nullify. It had eyes, to see her pain. It had a smile, that enjoyed the torture. Things were almost making sense to Shalini now.
There was never light in her apartment. The existence of this creature, if not creatures, made illusion of light. It grew darker everyday as it took in all her paranoia and her doubt and her fear. There was never light. There was only darkness.
Back in the apartment the shadow looked down on Shalini as she suffered the infinite fall. It was consuming the fear, the torment and the paranoia from the apartment. The insanity that rose in Shalini gave it life. Soon Shalini disappeared in the fall. The shadow turned around to face its companions in the room, the dark room with contrasting patches of the light from the abyss. The fallen Shalini had re appeared on her hall floor, unconscious. One of them carried her to her room, two of them cleaned her messed up apartment to look like nothing had happened there and another one refilled her cabinet with instant noodles. They all went back to their corners behind the pillars, under the couch and in places the light would never reach. They were the shadows after all. Shalini was now on her bed, no knife in her hand not one scratch on her body. it stretched its hand out the window, grabbed another cup, another teal tea cup, and put it on the coffee table. All the shadows were in place. One last thing to do, they all whispered,
“ w a k e u p …“
In her purgatory.