Temporal

A story. ..

Temporal

For my sister... Monali Roy Chowdhury

Temporal

There's no one at the  door and never will be.
That's not even a door. ..but the suggestion of one...in the broken archway...leading to the semi demolished remains of a palatial monstrosity. ..
Some distant British Colonial's last imperial memory.

But timid mice like me at times get desperate...
They see what no one else can see and they're always greedy for something.
I can't tell you what.
But if you're a mouse you'll know it in yourself in a second...
And if you're one of the big cats you'll sense it in me ..your natural prey.

I saw a woman who was standing upon the balustrade...
She was in a far away world from my century my country...of the present.
And her world was swaying her to some gentle indecipherable music from a long time ago.
Rocking  her to beats...from a past performance.

There was another performer.
A slender silky haired baby girl with her cherubic face floating in brief flashes of  sunshine from window to window.....till her force was spent, diffused upon the bland chocolate faced walls...

Where through gaping cracks and brick red maws her awful blood flowed..

This compelled me in terror to stumble in through that accursed archway...

I have always been a rescuer...
Twice I have adopted birds with broken wings....
Fledgeling sparrows, that  I  kept in cotton ball filled shoeboxes and fed whatever I fancied through ink droppers... one flew away when the time was right...the other I delivered to its natural mamma.
Once my brother and I brought a street puppy home.

I had to go  in. For assisting  an unseen child...floating and flat lining like a cheshire cat in my imagination. ..a little lass in distress....an Alice in scary land...
A flower incomparable. ..

My daughter!

The last sudden revelation stunned me through time....
Whorls of temporal episodic waves whirled rotated in soft blackberry waves of motion.....

I was catapulted through spiraling tornado alleys. ..each brick of the house spinning in out through me skinning the blinds of my eyes heart and brain...

Till...
I was set down again.

On a calm green manicured lawn...a motorbike idling ...a tall stranger tipping his hat slightly as he strolled straight at me...

My eyes gazed upon my two arms and my palms eyed me back in innocence  ...

I was not my race not my color nor my shape...
Two slender white wrists fine boned blue veined...not a multitude of chunky  gold bracelets but a number of  rings on each manicured finger...
By my feet a paisley  sunshade and a guitar. ..

And oh wondrous universe!
In my mind the last song I had strummed still humming...vibrating...dilating my eyes and seranading my pulsating veins....

My tear soaked eyes saw...nothing but bright eyed Bonnie...my little lass....and the merry song I was minstrel of to my girl... for one last time.

"My bonnie lies over the ocean
My bonnie lies over the sea
Bring back o bring back
Bring back my bonnie
To me... "
....

He walked towards me like a guardian Angel. ..an angry one....
"Will" I screamed involuntarily. ..
So I knew him. Deputy comissioner of Police...DCP.
"What's the matter?, you got him to confess..?"
His face reminded me of a father whose child has been snatched from him... forever.
My daughter Bonnie was like his own...and each time he came to visit Bruce and me...he brought her a gift....which was always expensive candy and without fail handed to me.
"Bonnie....Your mamma will have to permit me first", he was very respectful. ..called me ma'am at the drop of his ready hat.
And I took the candy  unsuspectingly till I deftly unwrapped the first box and discovered his loving note inside....stormily scrawled and storming into my love starved heart...

The day my husband found out. is really inconsequential. It was bound to happen... Because
I saved them...inside the guitar case....
He told me to play him a love song....and I obliged...As I played he gracefully got up and gently
brought me the guitar case and showered me with love notes from another man....and left the house forever.

I waited...I wanted...? What!
Too much love had been lost between William and me...
Bruce had become the stranger...
But he was my daughter's daddy!

Softly treaded I to where she took  her afternoon nap and strummed upon my guitar...her favorite tune...softly wept I into her blanket and kissed her tiny feet...  forgiveness I dared not ask.

My girl was cold and inviolate to my guilty touch...

Her life breath had expired in  the folds of my sins and the perversion of filial desire to protect...strangled by a man deranged, a daddy turned death dealer. .. in the depths of her own comforter...
A mother's sin visited upon a little baby who requested papa rock her to sleep. ..
And he did it ....forever.

The day Will brought in charges booking Bruce for murder...led him away from me...that was the day I murdered two people. ..my little family....and became survivor. ...

I went to the burial. ..in veiled black. Stony heart I was called...
Whispering taunts did nothing to  taint me....I noticed nothing...the skies turned black and at midnight I returned to play to my Bonnie...to tell her everything my body and soul yelled I could not.  l could never lighten this load. 

I have been returned to this last day of my old life.

For a reason...I remember now. ..This was my last day in the house that murdered my child...
I set sail back to a distant future, my motherland took back to her bosom. ...an unfit daughter and mother...

So why have I returned....to this day again?
What have I to gain what treasure to reclaim the same day I renounced all as irrevocably lost? Child husband and tainted love?
The air crackling....witches cackling....
No that was my laughter!

"Bruce confessed, we hanged him you and I...what more can I offer you?"
"You're my husband's hangman!
How should I love you tell me."

"Bruce was daddy to your little girl,  Abigail.That reason alone bound you to him... Didn't you guess?

What else could I do?...people suspected us because you're a naive gullible fool who wore her heart on her sleeve.

I could never...have got away...with his murder....like he can't with his daughter's.
I told Bonnie to show Bruce your guitar case...I was watching in case he harmed you...
She was dead...not by his hands...I thought he  would kill you in a rage...he didn't. ..I thought he was coming for me...
He wasn't.

He thought he had put her to sleep before accosting you...
He was giving his child to you and you to me...
I brought him in  with murder charges. ..

A saint, Abigail,  crucifies real easy...
He couldn't prove a thing once he knew his daughter was dead. because you finally did destroy ..those letters madwoman...
But for those letters. ...I may never have played my vicious hand...the temptation to win you may have not occurred.
I have killed a little girl in
vain..."

"Do you understand? Why you and I had to come back here now?
I could not tell you then....
You would have gone mad..."

Still I was silent...a little bit longer...just a bit longer...stay your tongue woman...pleaded something within.

Let the guilty speak...

"I have been bound to come back here since that day...
You don't know how Karma works...?
I lived it for that lifetime and the next....I was hitched to you dear Abigail....third one we're having together....
Three's the charm...bound in guilt... and absolved...through confession.
Do you forgive me?
Vijaya.....Abigail can you?..."

"Or else..., do we continue our evil partnership.  ..and from now on with full awareness. ..on my part as well?"

My dry scaly rasp sends shivers...deep into our hearts...

"if I cannot forgive...monster.....I cannot forgive you. ..So I must live with you?
How Many Lifetimes? ..."

They echo and reverberate. ...my screams...panic bouncing off into hysteria horror enveloping us both in a smog....evolution of evil....
A germination...of full realization.

Softly in the background. ..
A guitar starts strumming...
An angel coos ...

"Mother of all my morns and night....
You come and take my leave....
By your love release the spell you cast....
In your love I always live...
...eternally in mother's love I believe
...your presence gives me relief
...go in peace....and stay in peace..."

The singer was gone her halo ,hung upon the horrizon.
The house of horrors shimmered back into its awful shape of ruination.
...The sun light was gone. ..but in the darkness I could see him fading away....
How would I face John
/ Will when I got home back to him my husband, my daughter killer?

Bonnie forgave me....Bonnie who I did not even remember half an hour back in my current life...
Who was waiting for an eternity for one visit from her mother...
I have been forgiven....a life of rot and decay for thirty minutes of repentance....

Memories of you Bonnie...sweet memories now to be forever preserved in bitterness of rediscovered loss. ...as they rush back on raven black wings and cloud my temporal skies...
I realize what my expiation will be. ..

But what of Will?
Murderer of two....My sweet Bruce and beautiful Bonnie?

All the answers greet me at my doorstep like a terrible annunciation...
Yes.... third time was the charm..
John / Will was right.
And his little note was tucked In to a guitar on the floor. ..I had seen just an hour ago...in another lifetime. ..

His eyes were vacant bulging from the path he had taken, of asphyxiation. ..
But I first read his note before I called the police.
All it said....." My release has been obtained....She forgave me".

All rights reserved
(c) Amrita Valan 2014.