Love at First Heist

TWENTY THREE

trigger warning: child abuse, rape.

"Life is full of luck," Shehnaz starts, her eyes lost somewhere else— drifted away, like tears mixed in the rain— while Idris listens quietly.

"Like being dealt with a good hand, or simply being in the right place at the right time. It can happen heroically or by a simple co incidence, but there are those who don't get luck handed to them." She pauses, half a smile; a broken one; before exhaling softly, "Those who end up at the wrong place and at the wrong time, those who don't get saved."

"Do you know," She looks at him, her gaze haunting, "I remember the next day. I remember how my mother looked at me, she was broken for what happened, and she looked at me like.. like, I was incomplete, as if I wasn't whole anymore. An empty shell, that's all, as though everything beneath my tainted flesh was void."

"She saw through, crushing my heart,"

"When I found out my father died, I'd cried. I cried relentlessly, I doubt it was because I missed him, but I cried for myself. I thought he'd finally receive it, the punishment for all the years of abuse I suffered. But no, he— he took his own life. He took that away from, that justice. It tortured me for years, that he didn't live to experience the consequences."

Idris remembers, that was the day he'd meet her the third time— under the rain.

"What do I do now? What do I do now that I know he sacrificed himself for me, paid for my crime? Yet, I have not forgiven him. Am I such a merciless person? Years later, I remember the little girl was molested. The stranger who tore her apart. When she was crying, he went inside. And she was screaming, he slipped inside, she was thrashing, he pushed inside, then he fucked inside, from behind her— tearing the delicate organs of her's and tying it into scaffolds. He was slipping and sliding and grinding, thrusting, nonstop, and her heart stilled," Shehnaz maunders, her voice strong, her eyes wistful and angry, the breath she releases frantic.

"She thought she'd given up but then she.. she took his gun. He was a police officer. Can you imagine? And she shot him, thrice. He was dead the first time, but she couldn't stop. The bullet went through his skull and shattered the mirror. She looked at the mirror and broke, her body curling like a fallen cicada, she'd decayed like a damned vermin over the floor. A part of her died lying on that floor,"

Idris watched her carefully— his eyes unwavering, refusing to avoid her gaze. He wasn't going to be afraid or ashamed of her parts, he wasn't going to be another shadow in her seamless darkness to brace himself. He couldn't turn away from her cataclysmic, terrifying parts and possibly wish to be a light in her life.

"Did she survive?"

Shehnaz looks at him, the words breaking her out of the manic daze. Her bottom lip quivers, as her eyes widen. She opens her mouth to answer, but her voice breaks the instant it comes out, her anguish strangling her throat. The moist in her eyes pool around the brim, finally falling in silence.

"She did."

______________________________________________
NEXT DAY

Shehnaz tightened the bow of the velvet bandana, volumizing her hair further and letting it slip over her shoulders. She wore a net top embellished with pearl handwork, which crawled over the left side of her silhouette, leaving her right collarbone exposed underneath the fabric. A silk underslip attached beneath the top, covering her cleavage. Bending down, she tied the straps of her heels, before she got up again.

She noticed herself in the mirror, and swallowed audibly. Shehnaz parted a section of her hair behind, placing it over the exposed shoulder instead, concealing the bareness. Smoothing the spit ends, she raised her chin, burying her insecurities down in an arcane depth, and replacing it with an expression of nonchalance. Satisfied, she turned on her heels to find Idris across the room, the sudden presence surprising her.