The Swing : Final Episode

My name is Maithili. I am back home. My home; this is not where I had grown up. But this is my home now. It will be a lie if I tell you that I want to return home. I miss my mother a lot. But I like living in the hostel. I like to watch the sunsets and walk to college every morning. This city is good.

But it has been two months since I came back. This lock down hurts me. I feel so cut off from life. I am not enjoying my life being online. I try to maintain myself. Both physically and mentally. I go for walks and watch movies. And I watch the sky. Every day it is the same yet different. I feel the blue and white sheet over my head differently every time. Yesterday, I thought the sky is in a blue color that I have never seen before. It was in the bright blue like the flower prints of my father's T-shirt, like the blue of the ocean but one that evenly shaded throughout the sky. No transparent spots glittering and no water beds showing. I loved it the most yesterday. It soothed me like nothing else ever has.

Today, I have come again to the terrace to watch the sky. The sky is light blue, and the clouds are grey. A lot of them dusted brown. It all looks stupid. Lightless, beautiful but stupid. It is way past evening, but it is not night yet. The sun has gone, but the night is reluctant to spread. The blue does not want to go, and the black does not want to come.

I am tired. For the first time, I feel tired of looking at the sky. It makes me restless. I think of going for a walk. But it is cloudy, and hence it might rain before I return. I am not sure of it. Still, I decide to go for a walk. I am new to this city, and that tempts me to walk around. Walking has become an addiction. I feel like going for a walk in any mood, especially when I want to escape from anything or everything.

There is a huge building right in front of my home. I think it has got more than twenty floors. It is huge. Tall, but not fat. Not big on the ground. I wonder what it would be like to climb all the stairs up to the terrace. I am doubtful if it will be worth the sky that one can see from there. But it is very tall, like a tall vanilla cake with broad stripes of strawberry pink. It is large. I imagine the people living there would be ant-sized. One can easily laugh and hate me for my fantasies. I walk past the building. It has been an hour now since I have begun the walk. It has started getting dark. I feel relieved and finally, decide to return home.

I almost reach near my house when I suddenly feel great exhaustion. I can feel my eyes revolting. Strangely, my eyes seem to be more tired than my body. I believe that moving away from the screen would relax and revive tiring eyes. But close to the end of my physical exertion, I am more bothered by my eyes than my calves. I pass by a lane behind the tall building when I suddenly see a huge house. It is pentagonal, and the entrance to the house is diagonal to the main gate. It is small and cozy, with a balcony above it. It looks too old but habited. I can see the touch of living humans on the walls, doors, and windows, even though there is no visible modern-day renovation at any part. It is beautiful. It also looks like a cake, an old-style English cake with satin drapes, pearls, and fine embroidery. I smile to myself and walk away.

On my return, I experience a strange feeling entering my house, though a positive strangeness. I am happy, but I am not here. And my mind is so blank; I do not realize where I am. I feel funny. I laugh inside my head. I feel vulnerable, without understanding what the strange feeling is. It remains for the rest of the evening. I coldly take my dinner, and I later go to sleep. But, I am unable to sleep immediately. I feel the presence of two different persons inside me, the one who feels strange and blank and then the one who watches the other one like an observer. Really, where am I?

I realize this is a situation to panic however I am unable even to do so.

I sleep, but I do not. I sleep, dead, muted, and paralyzed. I sleep, I breathe, I suffocate, my brain suffocates. I cannot feel my neck. I am not sure if my head is connected to me anymore. I see it swinging disconnected from my body. Just my head, with my eyes open and stuck, hanging in the air, removed from everything it has been connected to before. It swings with great force now. It takes full rounds. Complete swings. Where am I? Really, where am I?

Bang! Thump, thump, thump…I feel weird and dissociated. I am sure who I am without understanding where I am, but I am alive. The moment I sleep, I escape. Everything seized.

I walk up the stairs to the terrace to spend some minutes in the chill of the post-rain breeze. I like it, but it is not good for me. There is a different energy in me today. I could run and jump and scream ceaselessly. But rain restricts it, the cold restricts it, and the danger of slipping around and breaking my muscles restricts it. Quickly I control my urge. I do not want to get sick. When climbing down the stairs to my home, I see a woman standing at the door of her house. She lives in an apartment just above ours. But I have never seen her before. I have never really seen anyone from the building as we are still new here. This aged lady is standing at her door with eyes closed, breathing the chill air blowing in her face and barging into her house. She is wearing thin garments, white or pink-colored maxi. I cannot help but smile. People who love life always look beautiful; smile-worthy.The moment I turn, I hear her call me, "Hey, you!"

I turn towards her. She is standing there, hands on her hips, elbows pointing to opposite directions. But what is extraordinary is her eyes. I see her big black eyes, stark black. They are so much attractive. I walked towards her and stood right in front of her. She says some pleasantries and invites me inside. I walk in behind her. I have lost command over myself, and I understand this.

Her house looks larger than ours. She is still talking. What is she saying? Why do I get into these weird worlds, where I lose control of my body, and I walk myself as an observer into strange, dream-like places? How do I do this? Fog filled up the place. Not white, but black, a dark smoke, has filled the room. It does not suffocate me but invites me in like someone patting gently on my shoulders to welcome me into their home. As I walk in, the lady is still talking, walks with me into a room with big huge windows, the walls colored with rainbow stripes, and the floor carpeted with fur. It is a room for children. The lady, still talking, points to the pictures on the wall, a beautiful little girl. It is her room.

In the west corner of the room, there is a small swing. A petit, plastic swing of blue color. A swing for a little girl. I do not see the wall or the carpet or the lady anymore. All I see is the swing. It is very small for my grown-up body. As I move closer towards it, the urge to sit on it grows too but never the swing. But somehow, I fit in it, dangling my feet and swinging in it. The swing squeezes me. The chains that I hold with my hands grow around them now, seize me. The seat grows on my lap locks me. I can see the old lady now, smiling at me with her big black eyes. Her eyes are not black. They change colors. Her eyes change color, from black to brown to transparent glass. The change is sudden and rapid. The eyes take a dozen colors. Now the eyes are blue-grey, and her lips stretch and extend to her ears. The old lady is the little girl.

She opens her mouth wider and wider. She clutches her jaws, tears her skin, and blue saliva-like blood drips all over the fur carpet. She rips up her face and her hands and strips her body like a garment. She throws it aside. The thick robe of skin covered in blue blood lies in a corner near the door of the room. The little girl walks towards me slowly, with the same big eyes and a long smile.

I recollect the past. At first, I met the girl in the park, then on the terrace. She is a part of me now. She knows me, also I know her. She comes and sits on my lap. We swing fiercely.

I was once playing on a swing with a friend of mine. We were kids back then. There was a strange, blue swing in an abandoned house in our neighborhood. Nobody went there. The boys did not like swings, and the girls did not like the untidy, old house. Our parents did not like either. My friend and I would play there for hours. It felt like a different world to me because no one ever disturbed us there. No person, no sound. One day, when we were having a competition of who could swing higher, back and forth, I slipped and fell. My friend jumped from her swing and came to my aid when the still moving swing hit her head, and she fell on me. I did not know what happened then. I did not know what happened before that either. I did not even know if I remembered that incident.

The girl whispers something in my ears now. "It is mine."

"What is yours?" I ask.

She transforms into my appearance, and I do not feel myself anymore. I become the observer and witness the little girl swinging with my body. It has become her body now.

When we were taken to the hospital that day, I remember waking up to some strange feelings. My hand seemed shorter, my hips smaller. It took me time to fit into my new body, my new big blue eyes, and my long lips. I almost had got used to it by all these years. But what was borrowed had to be returned.

So, I stand there near the door, near the discarded skin and a pool of blue blood, smiling at myself swinging on the blue swing. The girl looks beautiful, finally smiling. My friend.

THE END

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