INSANE LANE

13

'Before I hunt you down'

.

How to keep wanting without ever getting.

She flickered her hair to the side and combed them into a tight bun at her back. She looked upon in the mirror for a necessary amount of time tucking in any fly always, and turning her attention back to her plain dress. Where she called it sober, Haya begged to differ, for her it was straight up boring.

Ayat's eyes fell on a picture frame on her side table. She had adorned it with small beads and little crispy paper, she was eleven when she designed this piece. She smiled whole heartedly. she was standing with both her brother, she had painted their faces making one a dog and the other a panda. When she turned 15 she'd spend a long time in front of the mirror eyeing her own beauty which at the age of 17 she thought was pretty non existent. And now she didn't even like seeing herself much.

Her eyes fell to her wrist watch next. She was on time, which meant she could possibly spend some time with her family before going out to the hospital.

 A young and successful doctor, and so she was showered with proposals from around the family and family friends even neighbors, she ended up rejecting each one of them, and after what happened with her last engagement, she couldn't fathom what he would do to the next if she dared try, she would be impossibly single. 

After she found out Maaz's real self, he vanished, he never contacted her like he claimed to when he said he was obsessed with her, she still rolled her eyes, what kind of sick obsession was it? That he couldn't see her move on, and the worst thing was, she didn't even know where he was.

As she climbed down her last step she was thrown a stuffed play ball towards her, hitting it on her shoulder. "Hey!"

Arsalan, as they called him the king of brood, changed his entire personality around her, just so he could fish for the old Ayat somewhere in this uptight women who claimed to be his sister. He tried to cheer her up, revive her, everybody did.

"Really?" She spoke. "Don't you have anything better to do?"

"It isn't better than teasing my little sister," Arsalan pointed out. Ayat laughed it off, another failed attempt. Ahsan's two year old two bunny teethed kid squeaked, there were few words that little child could speak. His name was Mehmad. 

"Your Khala called when the picture was confirmed false," Her mother told her one day.

"Why didn't you tell me?" She had gotten excited. "What did she say?"

"She was asking to take you back," Her mother had answered in seriousness.

"What did you say?" Asked Ayat.

"I can't trust them with you anymore," She answered. Her eyes filled with tears that day but now she understood better, her parents were right. Those people had called her unimaginable names, pointed out so many fingers at her character, when they had enough Ahsan shoved the engagement ring in Aman's hand and sent them off to their merry way. 

After Maaz left, it felt like a crash from a high came, she fell into depression, his lies, and his cloaked personality did a number on her, each night a concoction of her biggest fear and her deepest desire presented itself. His whispers and the gun shots mixed themselves in her brain, keeping her awake infinitely or ruining her sleep with horrific nightmares, she had shared everything with Mirha and Haya, but that was all, everyone else was in the dark, they stood by while Ayat went into a phase of self destruction. She was too young to witness all that, too young for his intensity, and too young to have been through a man who presented himself like an angel in disguise, it shattered her, until one day, in her pits of depression, she decided to torture herself some more and decided to marry Aman Ahmed, the well known play boy, everybody kept telling her he wasn't a good man but she didn't listen, she was hell bent, she wanted to quell the ache Maaz had left in her. That murderer, he'd ruined her.