‘The wildest words I have ever written, were on the walls of disdain, the closest I have ever come to reality when I was high as the silver cloud in the sheer freedom of the sky. And the most I have ever gotten out of people, is misery, for I am two-headed like Janus, one to the past and the other to the future and I cannot get my mind right. Like the twilight, my heart drowns into the orange of my conscience, and I know no more. The tired sunlight kisses my cheeks and they bloom in subtle radiance. The whimsical wildness of the flowers nod in agreement to my pounding heart’ , Augusta refrained herself from writing anymore. She is tired, tired like the old banyan tree outside her window. She needs coffee. Without any further adieu, she grabs her coat and heads towards the little coffee shop outside her home. Yorkshire is insipid today. The leaves are tossing themselves on the ground of despair, the crunching sound of the shoes of the peddlers passing by are echoing in Augusta’s ears. She is succumbing into a world of anonymity. A world where nothing, no one exists apart from her books, diary and insanity. It was a gloomy day, sure, but gloominess faded in front of what was going inside Augusta’s mind, a wild cacophony, if you might.
‘’One cappuccino please’ , the man in the counter looked up with a bewildered look, as if Augusta had woken him up from sleep.
‘’Make it two’ , an unknown yet sultry voice screamed from the door. Augusta looks back. A man in his 20’s. A man with a pair of glasses, tossing upon the bridge of his nose, a man whose appearance bothers Augusta. She is particularly not interested in conversing with this man. A strange lump in her throat turns up and she feels a tension in the left side of her brain. She repents stepping out of the house. As Augusta searches for her purse in her handbag, the man who does not care to introduce himself, pays her amount as well. Augusta bats her eyes twice. ‘Is he for real? Did he just pay my amount?’
‘Are you going to sit in my table as well, Mr. Stranger?’ , Augusta hesitatingly asked.
‘ I might, if you allow me so’, he grinned.
Augusta dusts off any further intrigue , she restricts herself from asking any further questions at all. She opens her diary and starts jotting down her thoughts. She is melancholic today, she is not in absolute solitude. Her mind is agitated. She has always been a curious cat, something is drawing her towards this stranger, something wild yet so sublime. Something so vivid, yet so blurred. ‘Am I attracted towards him?’, she asks herself. But her conscience stays mumb. Her curiosity gets the better of her and she asks, ‘ Who are you?’
‘I am your stranger’, he murmers in a husky tone.
‘ Is he though?’, Augusta mutters to herself.
They stare at each other. Two eyes to their two souls. Two souls that cannot decipher each other. Others they do not take notice of. Augusta’s heart sinks into the sublime blue water of his glance, and she hinders, her heart ponders over the fact that this man, this particular man is drawing her like a moth to a candle.
‘ I have this book, one of my favourite books. Have you read it?’, he tries to initiate a conversation.
Augusta watches him offer her a very old copy of Virginia Woolf’s ‘A room of one’s own’. Oh! What a delight! She has not read Woolf in years, she cannot remember the last time she had read something so brilliant, yet daunting. Woolf feels unearthly but with an uncanny resemblance to the earth.
Augusta takes the copy of A room of one’s own from his hands and turns the pages over. There are numerous annotations in the book. Some paragraphs, some lines are underlined, some are highlighted. Oh, there are notes written on some pages. ‘ Yes, that is correct infact, that is what I think as well’, she utters unconsciously.
‘Is this your book?’, Augusta asks the man.
‘It is of a friend of mine’, he replies
‘ Ah I see’.
The lump in her throat is back. She is feeling something she can not decipher. There is a wild hullabaloo in her mind, but she cannot get a grip of it. She contemplates the notes, the coffee, the glances and the man. Suddenly, her hands starts shaking, her mouth is dry and her eyes are burning in agony. Oh it is back.
‘I am getting out of this room. Thank you for the coffee’, Augusta excuses herself. She hurries. She wants to get to her room as soon as possible. She needs the medicines. It is back. It is back after weeks. Was there a reason? Or it is back on a whim? Her vision is blurring but she can hear a rustling sound behind her. Someone is calling after her. But she does not bother looking back. She needs isolation, a solace of mind.
BAM!
Augusta could barely see anything. But she saw blood, didn’t she? Yes,she did. Her world perishes in front of her own eyes.
When she opens her eyes, all she could see were men and women clad in white and room full of people lying on bed.
‘How are we feeling today?’, a man whom she considers as the doctor asks. She knows him. It’s doctor Jesse.
‘ I guess, I am okay now. Though there is pain in my limbs’, she grins painfully.
‘ That is okay A, the speed of the truck was enough to get anyone killed. And it did.’
‘ Oh and your fiancé left a letter for you. The police found it in his fist in the scene of the accident’, Jesse hands her a letter, a scrunched paper.
Augusta’s world is shaking. It is revolving in wild abandonment.
Her hands open the paper shakily.
‘’ Dear A, you have made me the happiest of men alive. The man whose world dances in glee when he is with you. Staring at this blank page, I wonder how does it feel to be blank at all? To have no words, no emotions written on you? How does it feel? There is an unspeakable ecstasy in holding pen and staring at the blank pages, pages that outnumber your thoughts, thoughts that wreck you into a million pieces, pieces that you cannot recover. How wonderful and gloomy it is to sit on the terrace on a gloomy night, sky studded with stars, mind flooded with emotions and eyes pooled with tears. Augusta, I miss you. Does melancholy really hits you like a truck or it paves it’s way back to you and overpowers your mind like the fog on a chilly winter morning? I don’t have answers. I just know if i ever let that ink from flowing, I will die. Augusta, do you hear me? Your doctors say that you will recognise me one day, will you? Will you?’
Yours,
Alex
Melancholy hits Augusta right in the places where it should. The paper drops.
The Book Monster 