The Secret

 

A fairytale romance.

That's what they had called it in the papers.

But to be with him was to be doomed for eternity. She found out the hard way. She had known it deep down from the beginning that there was something off about him. He was mysterious. That was a part of his unavoidable charisma. There were times when he'd clamp shut like an oyster from everyone. Even her. She was his cure-all, if only for a while. The day she held his hand, she had shown him a dream so bright, it brought tears in his cold blue eyes. She led him towards light. There were moments where her company filled him with hope. There were times when he thought he could be mended. He was happy and afraid. Because he knew this was a mirage. He would lose her as soon as she came to know of the sunless countenance he so very skillfully hid underneath.

He had never wanted to hurt her. But she stumbled upon something that he had painstakingly kept under wraps all these years.

It had started with animals. Almost all serial killers – in fact, 99% of them – admitted that they started by acting out their violent fantasies on animals before graduating to human beings. It provided an escape to his murky reality. He grew up motherless. The first man he came across in his life, was his abusive and alcoholic father. He drank till he could not get another drop down his throat and then projected his rage on his sons. One of them died under his harsh ways. To everyone on the outside, he was a stalwart in the field of medicine, to him he was the most cruel human being ever.

When she found out what he had done to people, countless people, she couldn't take it. She killed herself. His only light in his dispirited world. Gone. Forever. Shrouding him in darkness for as long as he lived. Leaving him with the monster residing inside him. To live with her memories. He wakes up at night with remnants of her dreams on his pillow. His house still perfumes with her sweetness. Or maybe this hallucination is his poor attempt at reveling in something beautiful that he had. Almost had. He had lost his only ray of hope.

The only solace being, the secret remained. 

This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda.