REMARKABLE

25

5575 words! I think it's a record!

You have been warned! 😂😂

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Yahya Firas flipped his lighter open with one hand and held it close to the tip of the cigarette between his chapped lips, he cupped the flame to keep the wind out as the light breeze picked up around him, ruffling his already tousled hair. He took a slow, deep drag and relished the feeling that wrapped around his lungs- killing him as he stood against the thick trunk under the shadow of a neem tree. He didn't blink for several seconds, remained motionless, unmoving as he stared ahead into oblivion.

His phone's ringtone disturbed the haunting lull of the graveyard and broke away at Yahya Firas's all too consuming thoughts.

'Hello.' His monotone voice reached his best friend's ears, his eyes taking in the rows and rows of graves.

'It's me.' He heard his best friend.

'I know it's you.' Yahya Firas muttered, looking down at the wet soil beneath him, the water must have seeped into the graves- into his parents graves. Would they have felt something? The bones if there were left any after all these years.

'Yahya.' Ahsan's voice reached his ears, slowly pulling him out of the dark abyss he had found himself in, once again.

'I am here.' He uttered, deflated as his shoulders sagged and his chest heaved.

'How are you?'

Yahya Firas pondered about that question for a few moments and Ahsan waited as he always had, gave him the time to string his words together so Ahsan could take them as they came. Raw.

'It's a good question, Ahsan but I don't think I have the answer.'

'Tell me.'Ahsan insisted.

'I am fine, perhaps. I am thinking that.' Yahya Firas said, inhaling the smoke. He didn't take it in, all the way. His cheeks puffed as he contained it in his mouth and exhaled through his nose.

'Where are you, right now?'

'I am where I am on every 28th October.' Yahya Firas took another drag, trying to kill, himself.

'I know.'

'Why waste your breath and ask, then?' Yahya First asked and blew out the smoke, this time he had taken it into his lungs without regretting.

'I don't know.' Yahya Firas only heard silence for a few moments after,'In hopes that someday you'll go back to Uncle Adam and Auntie Hajra after reciting the Kuls. After greeting, return to the your parents who are still living instead of mourning- hating on those who died years ago.'

'Why would I stop? What reason do I have to stop? I want to express my grief, my discontent them. I want to share my pain with them. I'll keep on coming, here. They betrayed me, they need to hear what happened to me after they left me. Broke their promises. I won't leave them, alone and I won't rest until then.'

'Why do you torture yourself, like this? Move on, Yahya. Try to live, there's more to life than taking revenge on dead.'

It's too easy to say, Yahya Firas thought as he pressed his foot to the stub on the ground.

'Ahsan...' Yahya Firas said,'all the difference lies in the time after their death. The difference is-is my life. Time passes by but there is not a single day that I don't carry them in my heart. The day they died, it isn't only a date in the calendar, Ahsan. It was the day my very existence changed, forever.' And Ahsan didn't understand the implications of his words, blissfully unaware of the hell his best friend spent his days and nights in.