An envelope

The shore was muted today. A standstill of emptiness. It was a stale wetness that lingered beneath the feet. A melancholy tint, the orange-ish sky had rendered to the grains , of sand. Yellow and darkened.

The woman was sitting a shore afar, wrapped in a peach shawl with bright blue stones-studded border. That shawl. Her blue dress was falling below her kneecap , with the shawl extending till her ankles. She kept staring at her fingers. Tanned and  a shade of chocolate brown, they seemed in the glint of dusk from the distance.

A mellow breeze was on the move. She closed her eyes with a sudden knowing. In a sudden wince.

“I know your clasp and chains, of gold.”

I mumbled in a certain narration, to myself. I wanted to pause, and hold the wind, to ask why it was serenading on her, with such an impending sedation.

 I felt I could decipher the blasphemy she was in, only if it would stop for my humble question, the wind.

She was not serene.
She kept creasing her jaws to let the wind know of the urgency in her under towed wrath. A subtle leak of a demoniac within.

Her eyes opened.
And , she began chanting again.

“ Drown”.
I felt I knew her chants.

“ Emily, gather up. The matron is calling you back.”

“Yes.

Hand, Adam.”

I murmured looking at the 48 year old hefty man with a clean chin. His uniform also steamed off a stale smell. But, otherwise, the brightest yellow had never dimmed down or astray. In the 8 months that I’d known Adam, he was miserable. He never got excited. Beating up the absolutely psychotic inhabitants daily was such an expressionless obligation to him.

Adam pulled my weight up, gradually. I stabilized my bodyweight on Adam’s biceps, which seemed like another over imposed hand over his own.
It was a little more than terrible to stand up, the pains were cringing the spikes in my belly.

I stood on the large and gooey amoebic hot sand, shuffling my feet faster than my exaggerated palpitations.
I turned my back to the sea and walked ahead. I could see Adam, trying hard to slow down his pace and his bodyweight, to match my steps and render me enough shade. Then, he gasped and fell back.
A step behind me, he was struggling to keep.

A watchful glare of an old sniper, I knew. But.

“Adam, I left my slippers behind, under the rocks. Can you ?”
“What fresh new hell !
Okay.
You wait here, Emily Samuel.”

“Yess-umm Sir.”
I smiled a replyin the barest whisper to his irated ignorance.

I waited a complete second for Adam to retrace our path, back.

I turned around. And, ran.

To the woman in the peach shawl with blue stones studded on it. The shawl. The custom made one.

Of course !!

She was walking into the sea in a trance of the unknown.

I walked fast. I was close, yet far, far away from her.
 I stopped.

“Hannah”

She paused and her shawl fell on the wet sand. She turned her head around.

“Emily.

 Oh!”

Her voice had a sudden tremble.

Hannah looked devastated. I twitched and gave a smile.

“George is dead, Em.

He went ..

Away.”

She stood a few feet away and said in a slightly disinterested decibel. It seemed as if Hannah with all her hyper stupidity was dead now; yet, talking through her rotting corpse of a body.

The smell.

“Oh !
How ?” I raised my voice to a question.

The brown envelope seemed crumpled in her left hand, about to fall.
I opened my fist and took it from her.

And invitation it was, of a wedding.

“…cordially invite..

..

   George
&
Shelley Andrews

..

… on January 22^nd..”

Hannah had looked away, to her succumbing trance.

“Hannah”
 I screamed.

“EMILY !

YOU come with me NOW”


Adam was shouting behind me in a pant.

“I have to go.

 The sea seems so silent , Han.
Night will be soothing.
Good Night babydoll.”

I dropped the envelope. The wet sand slithered it forward with the next wave. And the sea took its course therewith.

I walked away. Adam was hyperventilating.

“I need a cigarette, Adam.” I said in a commanding echo.

“YOU are pregnant, lady. Ask the matron.
And don’t try anymore of your stinky foolery with me.”

I said no more and headed to the herded women in front, joining the queue to enter the already crowded van.

The stench was unbearable in the van. I looked out , it was already dark.
A few minutes went by and the van stopped. The creaky gate opened and we flocked out of the van.

I looked at the board in the glint of the last rays of the twilight.

“St.Xavier’s Home for the Mentally Challenged.”

The relief.

I was home.