Done and dusted

The crossroads were beckoning yet again; it was stormy, dust clouded her vision, the ‘what next’ seemed to hang in uncertainty. The air was pregnant with greyness, the soles of her feet were bruised and bleeding after their tryst with the rough, stony, cracked paths. They had given up; they had refused to undergo the onslaught, but drag them on, she had to. Every muscle in her body was shrieking in protest, but the plot had a mind of its own.

***LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats***

Echoing in the air, these lines seemed to have an uncanny aptness.

She walked alone; the ‘me’ and ‘I’ lived in parallel worlds. The dichotomy of human existence could not have been more apparent. She stood there, where the road ahead forked into two; in a way like her split self, thus making perplexity within more intense than ever before. She felt immobile, limp and feeble. It seemed some power had taken possession of her body; as if she was in the clutches of a demon sapping every bit of positivity out of her and enjoying it with sadistic pleasure.

She could hear someone chuckling. It seemed to inch closer, that dark, devilish scary laughter. She felt bile rise in her throat; the noise was coming towards her. She tried to scream for help, but her own voice seemed to have ditched her. She tried to run, gathering every ion of energy she had. The storm blew with all might, the dust rising in whirlpools.

She took the path that curved towards the right. Her feet desperately wanted to feel some ground beneath, but fate had the last laugh. She fell, for what seemed to be an eternity, through nothingness, fear gripping her from everywhere. She nosedived, falling flat on her face, breathing into the very dust that had deceived her into making the fatal choice. Her face was covered in dust that rose and settled mirroring her frail breathing.

She could feel the blazes consuming her skin. Her flesh stung. The vultures up there were waiting for their moment to strike. And the moment had come. They feasted, pecking at every little bit they could lay their beaks on, till there was nothing left.

The wind blew with pride, consuming the remains of what she was. Done and dusted, she was, indeed.