A RAINY DAY

It was a rainy day. Rain had been pouring heavily. The sound of rain hitting my window pane was near deafening. But I was oblivious to all this. She was leaving in a week to New York. It was as if nothing could cheer me up. I tried to cheer me up by watching all my old favourite cartoons but nothing could help. How long the crush has been or was it crush at all I don’t remember and I don’t know but we went to the same school since childhood. The day when she fell ill and couldn’t go, I too had thrown tantrums to go to school and in turn was thrashed. We were with each other through all joy and pain. She had cried when the school captain had called her “fatso”; I was fuming and had risen to settle the score. Thankfully she stopped me from bouncing this now professional boxer. She still laughs at this till today. She again had shed tears when I got hit on the face with football at a match as soon as I was let into the field. Although my nose was bleeding like a water hose let loose I tried not to grimace for I could see her glistening eyes. May be she had become such a part of life that I had assumed her to be there, someone that will always be. But that was not to be.
She had broken the news two weeks back on a bright, cheerful evening. We had gone out to a movie of her choice; you know women, all that crying and tears movie! Why are women like this? They always like everything that is so idiotically sentimental! Then when I bought two tickets in black she broke the news. She would be gone for ever. I was sad, depressed and probably angry too. She had no right to change my life in such a way. I felt something going hollow within me. How would the days seem without her? The film was boring but today it was making some sense or I was forced into making some sense out of this. Shit! What was I thinking…? I am not sure. I mean I wasn’t even sure if the film was boring or not. Why are men like these? Why are they not clear about what they want? Why do they have to put a façade of strength and hardness? Why after all? It was the most silent of the movies we would have gone to.
As I lay in bed sometimes looking out the window, sometimes at the TV which somehow didn’t amuse me much today. I hadn’t got up from bed since morning. I was having so many thoughts none of them in any coherent order. Every now and then used to remember past time and then laugh to myself, then slowly the hollow laugh would vanish questioning black hole size future which was standing in front of me. Sometimes I went very restless and then the other moment my brain berated me and asked to show restraint. After all, I was a man and had to “learn to accept things”. But what if I gave it a try…then my brain said you will lose whatever you have right now and it’s too late. The day was different; they will be so for the times to come. I wanted them to be back like earlier. But this is the cruelty of life; she doesn’t give you that one thing which you want the most. She gives you test first and a bitter lesson afterwards.
Thankfully rain had left the flights cancelled for next two days which somehow seemed too less to say something or get what I wanted, to stop her. But I couldn’t see her go away just like that and then later cry why didn’t I say or do anything. So what if I lose her; ain’t I going to if I say nothing? Yes, she might cry saying that she didn’t expect this from me but I could now see my life ahead without her. Sure it would be hell in any case but having expressed my feelings it will be lot better to cope.
I went and sat beside the window, picked up my cell which she had gifted to me and browsed through contacts to find her name. My fingers felt weak to press the green button. I pressed the red button, put my head on my knee and cried, the noise reverberating in the lonely room of the lonely world but drowned to the outer world in the deafening sound of the rain.

-This would be my first fiction that I have tried writing. I have tried to focus on pain as a stage instead of as a passing event leading to something else.