Shame & Guilt

"There. There she is. She is here to kill me. Save me. Save me from her." Rabin peeked outside from the bathroom's door. "There is no one over there. You are just seeing things as side effects of your two days of isolation, hunger, probably sleep deprivation too because of excessive gaming and of course marijuana." Rabin tried to comfort his elder brother. "Can't you see her? She is right there and she has got a knife." Sam shouted with a tint of aggression and fear in his voice. Sam had locked himself in his room for two days, leaving only when he needed to use the washroom. Now he was very hungry and was out to grab something to eat. Two days he did nothing more than decline all of the family proposal to come out of his room. He just stared into the walls with vacant eyes and an empty head and time and again fell asleep in odd hours. Now he was out and trying to have a normal routine as he grabbed milk and bread from fridge and tossed himself in a couch in front of TV. Rabin was doing his laundry when he heard his brother shouting about the intruder in their space. "You must have been smoking non- stop during the whole time brother. I don't see anyone there. And by the way who is she? Does she have a name?" "Can't you see her? Why are you asking her name? You do know her just about as much as I do." "Seriously brother there is no one on the passage. It must be because of your two days of isolation or you are in m*******a effect. Don't do it brother, it's good for nothing." Sam panicked as he shouted "She is coming Rabin, do something." Rabin saw Sam jumping out of the couch, his face turning blue in shock and fear. Rabin took a jug full of water and threw towards Sam. The water splashing on his face made Sam close his eyes and when he opened them there was no one except Rabin. "Where did she go?" Sam asked in amazement and shook. "There was no one here bro. Just trust me brother." Rabin replied being a bit irritated over his brother’s odd behavior. Sam silently went to his room again grabbing his milk and bread. "Don't lock yourself down again brother. Isolation can make people go crazy." Rabin suggested Sam, although he exactly knew what Sam would do. He closed the door behind him and locked it. He threw milk's bottle and bread aiming for a small table on a side of bed but they bounced off of the table and fell to floor. He didn't bother to pick them and just dropped his body on the bed beside door. He stared at the white ceiling in a confused state. He was very sure that he had seen her there in the passage. In white shirt with splashes of blood, and her blue jeans torn around her knee. Her eye liner all smudged in her face because of tears, blood red eyes with messed up hair. And, a knife in her hand. He realized if she was really trying to kill him she would have at least made a little more serious effort to kill him. But she vanished just as she arrived. He knew she would do anything if she really wanted to do things. But to the extent of murder? That may be just impossible. She is crazy but not to that extent. "May be Rabin is right. And why would I think she would try to kill me? We were good friends and we just separated without any goodbyes. Probably that might be trigger for this mental disturbance." Sam tried consoling himself. He adjusted himself properly to try getting some sleep. He felt heavy and weary inside his brain as if his brain had manifested a physical form and had done a great deal of physical workout. But he couldn't get the image of her standing in the passage out of his head and so to refresh his mind he switched on his laptop to play 'Dota 2'. A game with good hype around the globe. But as always, he took out a previously made blunt and stepped towards window to smoke. He finished the blunt and went back to laptop on his bed. Just when he lunched the game, he heard someone say "So you seem to trust your brother and continue on enjoying your life while you got me to hell. No no that's not happening." Sam turned his gaze towards a corner. It didn't get enough lightning and so the things over there seemed to be in grayscale color mode. But he identified her, sitting on floor with criss-crossed legs, wet patches on the shirt which were definitely because of blood as he had seen earlier and a knife on the floor right in front of her. Sam screamed in horror. He rushed to adjacent corner on his bed. "What happened bro?" Rabin shouted from outside. "Sshhssshhh. Tell him that you just lost a game. After all you really do hate losing right." She spoke to Sam in hushed tone. Sam stammered for nearly hundredth of times to finish telling what he had been told to. "You can't stand loss. Grow up brother. We will lose many things in life. But we must always be ready to stand for the next one. But not with your gaming. You should really quit that. Games and m*******a are damaging your brains." Sam had fixed his sight on her all the while he listened to his brother. But he didn't got hold of any words Rabin had uttered. He was enchanted by a lively smile she was giving him as she too listened at Sam getting lectured. "Won't you tell him that I am in your room? If you plan so, let me tell you he won't see me when he will have a look inside here and he will call you crazy and again blame your precious gaming and marijuana." "Are you here to kill me?" "Why do you think I want to kill you? We are friends right." Sam couldn't give an answer to her. "So, that's it. We are not friends any longer. Your silence says it all. Since we are no longer friends, yes I will kill you, but before that I will make you suffer just like I had to." "I never wanted to hurt you. I was just looking for ..." All of a sudden Sam stopped. He couldn't find any word to continue. "It’s definitely not love I guess. It could be fun or more bluntly just s*x right. But your desire for fun cost me. "Do you still want to have some fun with me" she said and stood up. She gave her hour-glass shaped body a good stretch and continued "but that won't be possible anymore." Sam remained silent. He seemed to be lost somewhere. "Don’t you want to know why?" Her voice brought him back. He stammered again as he asked why. "Because I am dead." She said with a straight face and her eyes stared intently at his. Sam froze in his bed. Not able to move even a single muscle in his body. She slowly drifted in mid air towards him and placed herself over his abdomen. She pushed his vest’s sleeves up until his elbow and examined his left forearm. "I heard that you had cut yourself here to feel the pain I had felt when I had cut myself." She folded her sleeve and showed him her cut marks. Sam didn't say a word. She continued "This trick of yours really made me fall for you. I thought you did care for me. But you were just after my body. You know, I was slowly falling for your game of slow seduction. And had that incident not happened between you and me I would have myself proposed you. But somehow your plan for seducing me f****d up and when that failed you tried coating your entire shameless acts with the name of love." She giggled as she slid back in his abdomen and lowered herself until her face was just above his. She gazed deep into his eyes as if she was swimming in a lake looking to find something that she had lost long ago. She ran her fingers through his hands and locked it with his fingers once she caught them. She blew soft air into Sam's face, rubbed her nose tip onto his. Suddenly she straightened herself over his body. "Did that got you excited? I am sorry if I did. You can help yourself when I am gone." After a silence of few seconds she continued. "I would have forgiven you if you hadn't cut yourself or if you hadn't pushed your game of seduction into dreams and hopes of your love. I really liked you and all you did was destroy me." "That was not intentional." "Don’t give me that crap. Every bit was intentional. When you couldn't get my body and realized that you would be guilty when our friends get to know the whole story of your seduction game, you tried to hide your game of seduction with shades of love. And that is why I won't forgive you.” She said with a stern voice and still continued "I know boys do droll over girl’s body, but you seemed different. "Also you are very good at playing with people’s heart. You yourself don't know the extent of effects of your thoughtfully placed acts and words of innocence on someone. Just think, you just wanted to seduce me, and the crazy me, I fell for you. But since your interest lied somewhere else you didn't notice that. "And when I realized you were just trying to seduce me, you just chose to cloak your sick deeds with shades of love. Everything you had done to seduce me, you painted them with the word 'love', so that I would not think of you as a cheap guy. You just wanted to avoid the shame. "In fear of getting your image down in front of our friends, you went frenzy and tried to set things in fine line by following me everywhere and trying to propose me. "You didn't love me. But I did. I would have remained silent for your sake. "And when you couldn't finish what you started, your mission to propose me, you completely fell in the pit of shame. I bet that was the first time ever you felt that you have lost. "You then drifted away from all of us out of shame and low self-esteem. And the crazy me, I started gathering intel on you from any friends who visited you time and again and whom you kept on ignoring. It was then finally I thought I was wrong and I may have misunderstood you all along. "I tried reaching you then. But I was turned down by your parents. "Yet still I kept on hearing stories of your craziness. Then one day I heard you tried to commit suicide." She gave a loud laugh. "A spineless creature like you. Trying to commit suicide. I was such a foolish to believe in that." She again took his left arm and massaged his forearm. "And so just to feel your pain, just the way you did, I did it. I committed suicide." Sam was in shock to hear this. "Don't you want to know what I did to myself?" Sam just shook his head to let her continue as he accepted that he would soon die now. "How about I too play a game of death with you? Somewhere in my heart I still believe that you did love me by the end, and I was too early to reach my decision. I believe that I wasn't able to trust you. May be you would have came back to me once you learned to deal with your shattered self-esteem. I believe that you would have helped me if I had told you about the mental traumas I had to go through. But my ego held me back and I believe you too were under the shroud of your ego. I had always believed in you when I was alive and I never pushed you to the limits to see what you would do. But this time, there are no any limits. It’s your death if you fail." "How did you commit suicide?" "How about we go through game? We will start tomorrow. Enjoy your time until then because I will bring hell with me tomorrow." Sam just stared into her eyes. He gazed them intently just like the times he had learnt that gazing into someone eyes could trigger feelings in their heart. But the purpose for now was definitely not that. "I am a ghost it won't have any effect on me." With those words she disappeared into the soft air that had blown the curtain letting the rays of drowning sun hit her on the face and he could see her blue eyes reflecting warmth as that of the sun contradicting the threat she gave earlier.