‘It’ Came After You Were Gone

Monsters seek broken people.

Monsters leak through every crack and crevice of a broken person, settling right in.

When I step into a popular family-run riverside cafe, I wonder if he was ever here. Walking past the town’s oldest bookstore and church, I imagine his feet treading these very paths. He once recounted coming to the hill station as a nineteen-year-old, having fled home, stealing his parents' money.

“Did you meet mama there?” I asked him then. A gentle smile touched his face, much like the soft dawn light. And he shook his head.

The landscape outside my hotel room window changes: snow blankets everything from treetops to the ground. I feel myself turning into an icy mass, becoming one with the outside world, until a call from my boyfriend thaws me.

Night after night, lying awake in my hotel room, I ask myself, do I truly believe I will find him in this town he once visited during his youth?

In my possession are his countless tales and anecdotes, but how many of them are true? I don’t know.

I remember asking my father as a nine-year-old, “Where did we come from? Which is our native place?”

He said we came from across the turbulent sea. In a boat. I think I remember the boat. I remember mostly being bundled up in his arms to protect me against the bitter wind. That is where my memory even starts. My very first memory.

“So where was he born?” I wondered aloud with eager curiosity.

“Why do you want to know?” he asked with his perennial gentle smile.

“Where is my mama?”

He feigned thinking, tapping his finger on his chin dramatically.

“You don’t have one.”

My face probably crumpled at the unexpectedness and unfairness of his answer, as he swiftly added, “Some children—no, no, most children—have a mother, while a few do not. You don’t. And that's fine.”

Even my nine-year-old mind knew something was terribly wrong with his response. It didn’t make sense, and it definitely wasn't fine.

“Everyone has parents”, I reasoned. Then, before he could say anything, I asked eagerly, “Where are your parents?”

His reply was quick. They are no longer on earth.

Where are they if not on Earth? I thought about it, but didn’t voice it.

“Where were you born?” I questioned instead

“Earth. Like you.”

“Yeah, but what’s the name of the place?”

“Mmm, does it matter? It’s just Earth. We are all born on earth. You, me and everyone. Countries are just human-made constructs.”

I cannot express how dissatisfied I was with his answers.

……

Sometimes I think he was a ghost. A beautiful ghost.

On other days, I deepen my anguish by wondering, What if I am not even his child!?

What if he had found me somewhere discarded? That explains why he would never talk about my mother.

There is no shortage of abandonment stories in the world, and maybe my story is one of them—a girl child abandoned by her biological parents and later raised by a stranger, who eventually abandons her years afterward.

When I was young, we had an evening ritual that we maintained for several years. As the daylight faded, we would settle on the veranda, where he would share a story with me. Unlike the kids in my class, I was never burdened with tuition. So every day there’d be a new story waiting for me at sunset.

That changed as the years progressed, and I entered college. Our evening ritual took a hiatus. It only resumed three years ago. By that time, the storyteller was lost somewhere, replaced by someone who spouted esoteric, philosophical mutterings that mostly went over my head.

Something else also changed. His paintings. They weren’t satisfying his soul as they once did. Everything he painted was making him scowl and grunt. Where was his past self—the content painter—lost?

He stopped selling paintings because he stopped creating them. I’m not sure how much it affected him, but it troubled me to the core.

Sometimes, changes are subtle and develop slowly, allowing enough time for those affected to adapt. Other times, however, changes happen rapidly and without warning, striking as quickly as an unanticipated punch.

At a time when painting no longer offered comfort, he suddenly developed an interest in preparing sweets. The countless hours he once spent painting were now devoted to conjuring up sweets I had never even heard of.

Once when I returned from college, I found him in the kitchen, trying one of his four sweets prepared that day. Three of them were made with coconut.

His fondness for everything coconut was insatiable.

“Why coconut? Do you like its taste that much?” I asked him as I snacked on a desiccated coconut fudge.

He gently bit into the coconut fudge, fine wrinkles appearing at the corners of his eyes. He appeared to be analysing the taste, trying to ascertain if his creation had achieved near perfection.

“Oh, I love the taste of coconut. Be it in curries or desserts. It’s very comforting. It reminds me of….” He stopped, his eyes distant. Then, “Actually it’s their versatility that I like the most.”

“What is so great about versatility?” I asked.

“Are you asking about the coconut?”

Was I asking just about the coconut? I didn’t know, so I shrugged my shoulders while reaching for another fudge.

He moved towards the sink to wash his hands.

“Well, the quality of being used for different purposes makes the coconut versatile,” he remarked.

I waited. I knew he wasn’t finished.

After patting his hands dry on a hand towel, he glanced at his creation on a plate before turning his full attention to me. “In life, adaptability is a quality that we cannot do without. It makes life easier. I mean, what can you do other than adapt to changes and move on?”

……

Am I to accept and adapt to this change? A life without him?

Maybe I’m not very adaptable. However, that won't make me wage a war against the inevitable.

So I do nothing and meekly watch the changes slip in. And notice something happening to me.

Every morning, I wake up to find that one memory of my father is missing. Since his disappearance, I have established a ritual of sifting through every single memory of him. But, for the past four days, when I rifled through them each morning, I have found one gone. Which one? I can’t recall. I’m not old enough to suffer from memory issues. Then what is happening?

Someone is stealing my memories of my father from me.

So I rush through his unsold paintings to reassure myself of their presence.

They’re all there.

Present.

Unlike my father.

I stare at them and notice something additional in all of them. Something that wasn't there before. You see, I have seen all of these paintings innumerable times; I know them like the back of my hand.

Most of my father’s paintings are ethereal, dreamlike.

I bring a painting close to my eyes.

A fair maiden, a lithe figure, leaps in midair, surrounded by vibrant, multicoloured flowers from creeping plants that climb up her legs to her midsection, while a white rabbit looks on from the ground. The painting, like the others in the room, appears as though it has been plucked from someone’s dream. I recognise this particular painting, so I know the red umbrella floating towards the edge of the upper right was not painted by my father. It seems as if the umbrella is attempting to sneak into the painting, and a deep exhale of an imaginary wind might just grant it that wish.

I put the painting back and lean over a canvas showcasing one of my father’s final paintings.

A woman in a long red dress, the hem of which spreads out in a spectacular flutter, suggests she was whirling around when she was eternalised. In the background, a tree with a face of a man pining for his love, peers at her through the glass window. Everything is just as my father painted it. Except for the blue conical, pointy hat on the edge of the window frame.

I examine another painting. A group of people gathered around a lakeside, some smiling, one busy rummaging a food basket, and others watching the colourful fishes swimming in the translucent water. In the background are giant mastodons of bygone era, some with their trunks curled around tree branches, and others trying to trample out of the canvas. I remember my father painting this on a sultry evening, shaking his head in discontent after finishing, when I walked in at midnight to remind him for the third time about his dinner. So I know he hadn’t painted the little pink devil-like creature peering out from behind a tree trunk in the far corner and spying on the revellers with an eerie grin.

……

I go through some days in a haze and don’t look for him, as if he never existed. These days are followed by a throbbing ache, the kind we experience when we lose a beloved part of ourselves. Thus begins my ravenous search for him on every street I have already scoured multiple times, as well as contacting his phone number despite receiving the same response that it’s switched off.

At times, I manage to convince myself that I have finally adjusted—adapted to the changes. And these days swim by smoothly.

Sadly, though, nothing lasts long, and I start to miss him so much that I sense the presence of something else in the house. At my workplace. In my head.

First my boyfriend said, “You’re imagining it.”

Then he said, “You’re going through the process of grieving. Sensing a presence after a loss is bereavement hallucinations, and you’re experiencing exactly that.”

At last, he declared with conviction, “It’s a ghost. Your house is haunted.”

Should I accept this change too? Share my house with a ghost without resistance?

I presented my quandary to my boyfriend. He had no answer. And that brought to my awareness another change in myself—a shift in my feelings for my boyfriend.

I was certain in my very soul that he was the one, but now every time we're together, his face seems to distort, as though I'm seeing him through choppy water.

I scramble to recover my old feelings for him, but just like my father, the effort is in vain.

The countless stories my father told me – the treasures I still hold – never mentioned it. The monsters.

First it’s the dream. Night after night, I transform into an animal and run towards my father, but never reach him no matter how fast I run. That’s not the upsetting part. It’s the way he looks at me: without warmth or tenderness. Instead, he wears a subtle frown— a look reserved for when we encounter a stranger acting with unwarranted familiarity. After these dreams, I wake up every morning exhausted.

I cannot shake off the feeling that these dreams are specifically designed for me to discover something.

What are these recurrent dreams trying to tell me?

“Don't be ridiculous!” My boyfriend admonished me. “Dreams mean nothing!”

At this point, I have started to disregard anything my boyfriend says.

Something is changing the narrative of my life. I've started questioning who I am, the account of my life, and even my recollections of my father.

What do I even have to cling on to?

……

They have all changed. My father’s painting.

I no longer feel my heartbeat. After my father’s departure, his paintings were my refuge. They were his second love; the first, of course, was me.

Now they’re gone too. In their place are strange amorphous forms of jarring colour combinations. They hurt my eyes. Everything hurt my eyes.

The air in the studio feels stuffy because I haven't opened the windows in a long time. I lose track of the time, eventually lowering myself to the floor, and staring at the damage with my back to the wall. Slowly, the light outside the closed window changes, and just before the room plunges into complete darkness, I get up and turn on the light.

Yes, my father's paintings are gone, replaced by chaotic splashes of color. But now that I have spent hours staring at them, suddenly they don't seem that bad. They kinda look like the frenzied artwork of an amateurish painter.

I smile. And I can feel the smile on my face.

And the power goes out.

......

I understand that being away from work for more than a week without informing anyone is bad. I mean, I’ll probably lose my job.

My head feels fuzzy. I don't recall the last time I fed my stomach. And why should I? I don’t feel hungry, and my stomach doesn’t growl as it would before.

Weirdly enough, I feel heavy despite losing weight. Like I’m two people melded into one.

I’m worried I may be losing myself. What if one day my father returns and does not find me? I mean, I’m here and yet not. And that will breathe life into my nightmares. The one where he looks at me as if I’m a stranger.

I haven’t lost myself completely yet.

I have taken up to poking myself with my finger.

I poke my left arm and ask myself — Do you feel yourself here?

Yes.

I poke my forehead and ask myself — Do you feel yourself here?

Yes.

I poke my right thigh and ask myself — Do you feel yourself here?

Yes.

Some areas of my body don’t elicit any response. And it worries me.

I have also developed a fear of surrendering myself to the lure of slumber.

What if I wake up one day into someone else?

……

When I open my eyes, I feel the whole house moving.

I haul myself up, and out of bed.

And the house stills.

As a desperate starving person scavenging food in a stinking dumpster, I throw open all the doors and windows of the house. Then I take several intake of fresh morning air while exposing my face to the tender warmth of the sun.

And I immediately feel a shift–the heaviness within me gradually evaporates. I feel lighter again.

I turn away from the warm sunrays and enter my father’s art room.

There they are. All of my father’s paintings are back.

*****

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