You Are Most Welcome Alpha

ll੩੧ll ...In Ceremonial White...

The shabads were spinning my head, mindlessly going through one ear and out another. They've been playing for the past few days now from the speakers in our spare bedroom down the hall and would keep on playing until the people from the gurudwara were here to play it live in our living room.

"Mani?" Aria called softly from outside my parent's old bedroom before opening it. "Manpreet?"

"I'm alive still," I sniffle, pushing away the sheets and getting myself upright on the bed tiredly since I hadn't slept.

Well, at least not properly since the day I came back to this city and went straight to the hospital's morgue. I could still remember being folded into the arms of the staff, once my mother's friends and coworkers, as soon as I stepped foot through the automatic doors. Being dressed in an white salwar suit before coming, my glittering red bangles caught a lot of attention unsurprisingly. There was evident shock written on their faces, by the way they had all frozen upon seeing me, probably since I had decided to get married during my disappearance.

Or more likely because my entire family, parents and younger sister, had just died, supposedly on the day I was married, and I was meant to be mourning in white. The time of death confirmed it within hours. I felt dirty.

The bangles were an abomination I couldn't take off for next few months, if not a year. I had wanted them to stay for a year but not so much anymore, especially after seeing the disgust on many faces. Once I heard Greysan picking a fight with the people living behind us, over the fence, cause apparently they were insulting my character in English.

"She's a disgrace to this city and to her dead parents. Why, they'd be turning in their graves to see she finally came back. Most likely for the money she'd inherit after the deaths, if you ask me."

"Tsk. I'd rather own a snake than her for a daughter."

"Only god knows what values her parents gave her. She probably ensnared her boyfriend with some time of rouse."

"Aye, what if they planned the murder together? Girls these days I'll tell you, especially those who can't speak her own language from what I heard, can't be trusted."

"Uh huh. They play around ruining our boys, and then get pregnant and do abortions."

Their bedroom was the untouched though; I had simply came back from the hospital after identifying the corpses and decided to give in to tears against the bedsheet. The bed where they had once slept, I now spent most of my time in.

"Manpreet?" I was only ever called that when my attention was needed.

"Hmmm?"

"You've been crying more," Sengara stood by the doorway with a worried frown while Divyjot and Aria came in to sit besides me on the Queen sized bed.

I was still in the plain white suit, the lengthened tunic crumbled and chunni somewhere on the ground. White was for funerals, a symbol for purity. Rubbing my eyes, I knew they were red and puffy without looking at the wall with sliding mirror doors to the closet. I was drained of colour both physically and emotionally and didn't need to see it to know, even as they made me drink some orange juice. Except for the brightness of my choora, which I was starting to really despise.

Aria and Divyjot both helped me out of bed and into the washroom down the hall. I was so mindless I hadn't know I was changing in front of them. Because of my once hairy condition, they had never seen me undressed until we came here almost a week ago. They didn't as much as blinked, staring at my movements to make sure I wasn't going to collapse again. I had at the hospital, after seeing the paled, bloodless faces to my father, mother and sister.