House of Ashes [Complete]

45. Gone | چلا گیا

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"You'll get her back if you really love her."

The words fissured through his frenzied head. No, this wasn't true. This couldn't be true. Azlan Shehryar didn't know how to love. Love was a weakness and Azlan Shehryar didn't have any. Sameena was just going paranoid. He tried assuaging himself as he lit another cigarette in the shrouded darkness of his master bedroom, only a dim hue shimmering through the wall sized window serving as light. He leaned back into his recliner as he caged the toxins between his lips. It was almost ironic how that burning poison pacified the one inside him. Killing him slowly. But, tonight, even this wasn't helping. Not even in the slightest.

Heaving a deep sigh, he closed his eyes.

"You fraud!"

Her venomous words, filled with nothing but loathe and sheer disdain, reverberated in his ears and he squeezed his eyes with taut expressions scraped in his face.

"You are disgusting."

He convulsed his head, his hands clenched with full intensity. He was disgusted. Disgusted of himself. He had hurt her...so bad. And in the process he had hurt himself. Maybe even more than her.

"No doubt you are his cousin."

It was the way she had spat "his" which slit through his flesh. She hated him, and this fact wasn't sitting well with him. He just wanted to die, right away, right there. But even death wasn't too kind to come to someone like him.

With heavy breaths, he shot his eyes open - the scarlet streaks of agony not hidden in them. It was the cumulonimbus cloud of pain in his eyes that was a pure testament to how much he regretted all this. But did it even matter now? Now that he had lost everything?

Striking the cigarette on the ashtray, he extinguished it and rose up from the chair, as he ruffled his long and svelte fingers through his already unkempt hair. Even in that unruly condition, he looked nothing short of majestic with his tall stature and perfect angular face.

Suddenly, a sharp pang of pain whooshed through his head as he felt like his head being chopped into tiny fragments so painful, he felt world slipping away from his feet. For a few minutes, he stayed there with his head buried in his hands before retrieving two tablets of Panadol from the drawer and dragging them down his throat.

With small and calculated strides, he moved towards his crown sized bed. Each minute passed with sheer anguish but the night did end and the sun did rise. As always. But the sleep? Oh, even sleep was too hostile to come to him.

After offering the morning-prayer, he finally slipped under the duvet and after endless tossing and turnings, the sleep finally surrendered its guards and took the restless nomad under its protective veil.

For one hour, he stayed in the land of utopia - where everything was perfect, where he had met her and nothing had gone wrong - only to be awakened by the harsh buzzing of his cellphone placed on the side table.

With a groan, he answered the phone.

"Yes?" His voice was hoarse.

"Have you seen Safa?"

At first he could neither get the hang of Arham's words nor his surroundings as they spiraled around his eyes, his head pinning vigorously.