Love isn't always butterflies and pounding hearts. Love can also lie, deceive and betray.
Her way of seeing the world was a lot different from his. She was broken with open wounds, standing high on her throne and giving no damn to the world. A stron...
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Her life took a drastic turn when she walked into the news of his death. She didn't blink. Ayat Wajdani didn't bring herself to react adversely to it. She laughed thinking Asher was pulling a prank on her. She laughed when they told her that her to-be husband lost his life to a paragliding mishap. She laughed and giggled, thinking he was hiding somewhere inside her house, planning a prank on her with bibi jaan. She called out for him- again and again until her vocal cords were about to rip off. Her mind never for a single second registered the happenings around her. To her, she was just a bride waiting for her groom to return from his adventurous trip so they could marry and start a new life ahead.
Her world came crashing down on her head with pieces sinking deeper when Zohaib Alamgir walked into her place, dressed in white kurta, his eyes twitched down in heavy sadness. She was doing her work- still in denial- her eyes gleaming as brightly as the ring in her finger. The ring- their engagement ring. The ring- his dead mother's wedding ring. The gesture shook her, sweeping the ground off her feet. But then her eyes were glued to Zohaib Alamgir who stood at a few metres distance. His crestfallen face- his eyes confiding tears, his complexion darker than his usual.
He stood her up and told her that his son passed away in the accident. He told her that they couldn't find his body. He told her he was holding a funeral for him. He told her that he was digging a grave in his son's memory. Her mind couldn't register a word after that as she could hear Asher call her from far. His voice distant and bouncing. Her world crashed somewhere along with him. The purpose of living a life instead of just surviving it had left when her parents flew away after putting her to sleep, Asher returned it back to her only to take it away with him.
She saw him, she heard him like her mother saw and heard monsters of a different existence. She saw him at nights- coming down to put her to sleep, to coax her, to soothe her ache. She heard him singing lullaby so she would sleep. She heard him laugh as he called her name. His faint touches that grazed on the top of forehead felt too real, now even. She was hallucinating- imagining him alive for which she was sent to therapist only to have the other call her insane. That a mother's gene followed just right. That's when she flipped. Ayat snapped at someone after three years. The Ayat that she was becoming for her love began to fade away and the cruel woman slipped into her body.
"Ayah," She looked at him. He was unreal. A man, who was declared dead, stood in front of her with a soft smile playing in her lips.
Telling her that he never made it to the paragliding park, that he was shot by the robbers as he was leaving and that someone else took his ride and had died in his place. Asher showed her the right side of scalp where an old surgery cleft disseminated across his ear, rupturing the growth of new hair. He drank a sip of water like he hadn't just told her about the coma and the amnesia that followed briefly. The bullet had only luckily grazed his brain that put him in a coma for six years and for two years and eight months he had to roam around the country without an identity. He didn't know who he was. He didn't know what his name was. He survived with whatever lie he could muster and sell to different people.
