Massacre in Red
A luminescent glow flooded the room as the lights stretched from their focal points, Aditya squinted his eyes in frustration. Despite the brilliant colours, his mind only saw in black and white as dread grew like creeping vines on the ruins of the temple.
Closing his eyes, he counted backwards from a hundred, just like his mama taught him. Her wrinkled hands touching his dripping forehead, stroking his eyebrows, forcing his eyes to flutter shut as the oncoming panic attack ravaged through his system like a typhoon. One hundred… ninety-nine…
This, however, was not the gallery during the sweltering summer, but rather in the cold of winter, with moonlight stretching across the expansive temple. Eighty-three… eighty-two…
Centuries of history merging with the final actor’s bow.
Aditya’s breathing became increasingly strangled as he tried to contain whatever was clawing its way out of him, tearing furiously at his throat. Sixty-five… sixty-four…
Hues of grey filled his sight as his muscles tensed ready to flee. The reaction resulted from knowing only hours before, reds, golds, and blues from the final day of the wedding had streaked the four walls. Four walls? Yeah, there were four walls.
Her hands, drawn up in mehndi, a swirling floral pattern. A hidden name on the palms, his fingers dancing over them. Clenching his fist, he imagined her hands loosening them, her bright smile echoing in the chambers of his heart.
The candles’ streaks twist and turn about him, a lightshow that would amaze children beckoning him to follow. One hundred thousand lights… they are still here.
Squeezing his eyes tighter, the emptiness was now replaced with the sounds of children shrieking as they joyously played in the water. His mama watching lovingly as his siblings play, holding his head preciously in her lap. His papa shaking his head, eyebrows furrowed as the young body shudders through another gasping breath. The others dancing in and out, showing the shiny baubles they found: sticks and stones in truth.
She comes closer, Mayari, holding chip chips. This time not showing mama or papa, but the fragile boy watching on, sight tinged with green. His eyes alight as she plops the small creatures in his hand, before darting backwards with the promise of something greater.
The blinding lights, leading him with gentle caresses towards the cliff side. His eyes unseeing turning to the turbulent waves as they broke on the rocks. Twenty… Nineteen…
The world held its breath as the stars rapidly shifted, churning like the butter that he made. The acrid taste still tingling in the back of Aditya’s throat, the delight that was made with love.
Knees buckling, the sound of swords clashing replace the ferocious sound of the waves. Wood upon wood, splintering and cracking filling the air. The older of the two looks on, worried that he is pushing the younger too hard after getting relieved from bed rest only to be met with eyes of determination.
The same determination he has now, one that seems to ignore the lack of sensation he feels in his body and the weakness of his arms.
Maybe it was through sheer will, desire, or the rain hitting his face that Aditya rose, his sight and strength brought back to normal- though there was some shakiness as his soaking clothes were cut through by the wind.
Zero.
This time, looking back from whence he came allowed him to see, for the first time, the damage.
The candles were all out, unsheltered from the weather. The silks in tatters, laying across the bare stone. The red, once symbolising new beginnings and strength, now splattered across the walls. The saffron tinged in that cursed colour.
Striding forward, Aditya knelt before the gods, begging for assistance as he lit a stick of incense, sticking it in a pot of rice to shelter it from the thunder surrounding him.
Walking backwards, his muscles tensed, singed with pain acting as an old friend, longing for shelter. Grabbing a discarded bow and an arrow sticking out of the ground.
The rain not acting as a deterrent as he dashed to find him.
There was a time that Papa thought he was going to lose his only grandson. During that time he, one day at work, noticed a small child given by the foreign delegation for the Raj to raise. The child immediately took to Papa and Mama.
The Raj noticed his subordinate and the political prisoner getting along dandily, so he sent the boy to live with Papa. Papa raised him alongside us- though there was a clear difference in treatment.
This didn’t stop them from forming a quad. But, like in all stories- there can only be one. Aditya was determined for it to be him.
He didn’t know why he was spared over Mayari, but one does not look a gift horse in the mouth.
There is a whole world out there and he will be found.
The lightning bugs surrounded Aditya as he walked through the field- giving away his position, but he wanted to be found by his brother-in-law.
One way or the another, a body would fall and the night would be brought to an end.
Not knowing why he did this, Aditya stared ahead at the house they grew up in.
The summer of rain and laughter. The two boys had snuck out to go to the tavern, the music transcendental. The wood beneath the first boy’s finger slipped, tilting as his system warmed. The other, chuckling at his friend’s reddening face, lost momentum as his own hands lost their grip. Papa obviously came to save them, though neither of them would forget the licks they received and the training they had gone through the next day.
That summer had come and gone, but their home stood fast the following monsoon season, protected up in the trees.
The stinging thorns dissipated the intrusive thoughts currently entrancing Aditya as he followed the pathway to the hidden palace in the leaves.
