Blood doesn’t really taste like you imagine it would. It’s red, sure. But it doesn’t taste red.
It’s not sweet like the syrup mom gives you two teaspoons of, to help ease the cough you get sick with after paying no heed to her constant warnings against sleeping with the air-conditioner on with your hair still damp as you felt too lazy to sit by the vanity and use a hair dryer for ten minutes.
It’s not tart like the tomato juice you sometimes swoop out of the mixer and taste a spoonful of, while helping mom cook for your father when he’s about be back from work any moment, and would give her an earful if she takes too long in serving his lunch.
It’s not luscious like the cheapest port wine your friends smuggle into school and strong-arm you into taking a swig of during recess. Or maybe it is. You would’ve known for sure if you’d have taken up their offer.
What you do know for sure is that it tastes cold. Metallic. Which is strange because you’ve been nothing but hot-blooded all throughout your teens; getting into fights with your sister for petty reasons, getting annoyed by everything and everyone. That last bit still hasn’t changed that much, just that now you know how to disguise it behind a veil of likeability. People change, the places you call home change, blood tastes the same.
You still remember the first time so vividly. The first time you tasted your own blood. “Just like yesterday” as people like to say. Yesterdays are overrated. The today you hate now will go into the bottomless jar full of copy-pasted yesterdays you trick yourself into remembering fondly. Nostalgia is an abusive friend. She hurts you again and again, yet you keep holding on.
You remember blood from the inside of your lip gushing into your mouth; cruel and cold, ice and iron. The scratches made by the hard asphalt against your cheek. You were told to fall and fall you did. You can’t remember how much it hurt then, but it’s not hurting now. You didn’t cry then, but you’re crying now.
Never really good enough, were you?
#07 The Hanamichi and the Silver Bridge
Mom always scolded you for acting in ways untoward for a girl. You liked your hair short, traded your tops for t-shirts, your skirts for slacks. You didn’t really want to be a boy, just didn’t want to be told who to be. Playing dodgeball with the boys in school during the P.T. periods in the small basketball court, the one lavishing in the shade from nearby trees laden with pine cones in the summer, you just felt like you were like the rest of them. But then it happened. Your friend lost someone they loved and you wanted to be there for them, but your mom would not have it. She’d tell you that it was no place for a child. But stubborn that you were and always will be, you went along. That’s the first time you experienced grief – how simultaneously silent and wailing, how brutal it is.
And how bloodless.
Mom gives grandpa her condolences, tells him why father couldn’t make it. He nods. The priest announces that the passing ritual is complete and now the body must be carried to the river bank for its cremation. The relatives gather round and lift up the wooden bed it’s lying on. Your friend, barely fourteen, supports one end by his right shoulder. You try to go lend a hand too but this time your mother yanks you back by the arm and whispers with the firmness and controlled fury that makes your heart sink: “This is no job for a girl!”
And that’s how it begins. A lifetime of being told what you can and cannot do.
#08 Kaoru’s Summer
There’s a guy with a broken smile and a bandaged heart. He sees you for who you are.
You wrap your left arm around his right, the two of you seldom fight. But when you rest your head against his shoulder, you just feel… safe. It feels good; thinking about your tiny little tale stolen from the fates and the faeries. He lifts you up when you’re down, off out the trenches filled to the brim with your anxieties and inadequacies. He talks about his childhood; you selectively mention yours. He gushes about the places his parents used to take him and his elder brother – the gifted one in the family. He talks about sand castles and ripened berries and the chicory tree which drooped so close to their apartment building that one could almost reach out and touch it. You nod and smile as if to give the impression that you’re familiar with all these places. But of course, you know that you’ve never been.
He talks of his ambitions and you talk about your pipe dream. You skip out on the repeated failures, the dejection and self-deprecation they welcome along. He’s like you but different all the same. He doesn’t know if he’s good enough, you know exactly how terrible you are. Still, hearing him talk about all that drives him to better himself births a small ember inside your chest as well, urging you to try and do something, be something; something more.
But alas, in time, another fight breaks out. This one’s bad. Well, it’s barely a fight as you’re the only one getting upset. Yet, you have your reasons. A child doesn’t grow up to be who you tell them to be, they grow up to be who you tell them they are. And now, you’re done being told.
You lash out, it all breaks, blood spills out.
Years later, you see him again. The crimson’s turned to grey, the poise’s turned to wisdom. But it’s him. Still him. He sees you and excitedly jogs over to have a chat. He tells you about his new life, about the redeveloped preschool and the local primary’s football ground and the convocation hall in the college two towns over. You nod and smile as if to give the impression that you’re familiar with all these places. But of course, you know that you’ve never been.
#09 The Two Juliets
You don’t remember exactly when, must have been more than half a decade ago. Or you like to think it was, that you were less mature then. For that’s about the only way you can justify snooping around in your sister’s phone.
She’s three years older than you and doesn’t miss a beat to remind you of that every chance she gets. She had a crush on a boy back then. The kind that makes you draw hearts around their name at the back of your Chemistry notebook instead of paying attention to the stability of oxidation states in ‘p’ block of the periodic table. Most people might not have had their mom and dad tell them that they don’t pick favorites among their children. You have. After all, parents only say something like that to the ones they prefer less. Your sister isn’t particularly exemplary at anything that you can’t do just as well. But she does it all by making sure that everyone around her knows that she’s finally done something. It does piss you off at times, yes.
So, you can imagine the devilish delight at finally being able to get some dirt on her. She obviously hadn’t told your parents about her budding romance as they would never allow their daughters to be involved in anything that distracted from their studies. So, you wait it out for the right moment to break the news. A week later, you both were supposed to get your results for the yearly assessments. It being her final school year meant that it was vital for her to score well. But of course, little miss perfect was too busy being in love. She flunked her test. You got straight A’s in yours. And that’s when you decided to drop the bombshell. But then, you took one look at how miserable she already was and you just couldn’t do it. She shut herself in her room and refused to come out to eat or sleep for the day.
That night, you sat down next to her room with your cheek against the cold hardboard door, and fell asleep.
#10 A Once-in-a-Century Autumn
You think you look pretty today.
It’s your cousin sister’s first baby shower. She’s busy attending the guests who’re now coming in thick and fast but her husband isn’t here yet. Everything’s moving and chaotic and eerily close to getting out of control. You help out wherever you can and pretend that everything’s going smoothly. Your cousin disappears into the washroom, doesn’t come out for a good long while.
Half an hour later, you go check up on her. You knock at the bathroom door, she doesn’t respond. You try again, still nothing. You’re worried now. You try her cell phone; no response. You don’t want to alert the elders, who are now waiting on her, as it might make things worse. Then, the door unlocks. She doesn’t step out. You know why. So, you go in. You help her retouch her foundation, fix her running mascara before casually stepping out and making a trip to her room to get the pills she keeps in the blue bottle.
Five minutes later, she comes out in all the glory of a mother-to-be. Everything’s normal. Everyone’s happy. It’s just another diamond day.
#11 4/40
Your father sits by the wheels of his two-decades-old motorcycle, cleaning the underside of the mudguard using a ragged cloth that’s itself stained blacker than the dirt. He sees you approach, gives you a disapproving look for wearing a skirt he finds too short for a girl your age. You don’t hate him. A few years ago, he called your mom a slut for staying at grandma’s place for a day too many. But you don’t hate him. Back when you were but a child, you saw him paint the house walls red in his rage. And still, you do not hate him.
Another day, after watching two people who should have never decided to bring another life into this world scream their lungs out at each other for the umpteenth time, you finally decide to confront them. But of course, only after they’ve calmed down. After all, you’re not stupid. You know your best friend remembers that you fell down the stairs last week itself. You go up to your parents’ room and stand at more than an arm’s distance from your father looking down at your feet as if you’re the one who’s done something unforgivable. From the corner of your eye, you can see your mom sitting on the sofa chair in the corner, sniffling as she looks away. You ask the two of them in a voice guilty of being witness to the shards of your broken family, “Why do you have to fight all the time? You’ve been together for 20 years. Why can’t you just accept each other for who you are? Why can’t you just be happy?!”
You’re pleading now. Not like anyone cares. “There is no happiness,” your father says, matter-of-factly, “this is it. This is all there is.” This is it. This really is it. This is your reality. And still, you don’t hate it. After all, a familiar sorrow is hardly sad.
Next day, you go back to school like usual. They are putting on a play for the annual cultural festival. “The thing about Shakespeare,” the senior section’s English teacher who’s now been serving as the Dramatics supervisor for the upcoming festival, says with a kind of giddiness you’d never associate with him, “is that he asks only one thing of you – your entire soul”. It comes off as way too melodramatic and a few of your classmates, who were forced to join the drama team as extras snicker among themselves, some mimic the teacher. He shrugs it off. It’ll be Romeo & Juliet this year. Everyone’s making a beeline to star as the two titular leads but they don’t interest you. You don’t want to be madly in love, you want to be mad at the ones you love. You just want to learn to hate.
And what you really want is a chance to be who you always wanted to be – not yourself. All you want is a stage, your demons and a dagger to stab them till they bleed to death.
You sign up for Tybalt.
#12 Surely Someone
Love is a needle. If you aren’t careful, it slides past your defenses, pierces your supple skin and bleeds you out, one drop at a time.
Love is not the couple selfies in Maldives on a motor boat going too fast for comfort you see in your Instagram feed. It’s not the hearts and kisses at the end of texts. It’s not the idealized ‘Happily Ever After’s Hollywood tries to sell you. If anything, it’s the slightly burnt casserole minus the two helpings of salt that could make it appetizing but which you still wouldn’t trade for all the Michelin stars in the world because it makes you feel like everything’s normal. It’s the blanket over your body in the morning that you were too sleepy to unfold at night. It’s umbrellas in the rain. It’s chocolate shakes and candy.
But then again, all these things really constitute being loved instead of loving. Loving someone is harder. Falling in love with a person who doesn’t feel the same is just… falling. Breaks you whole when you land. There once lived a Juliet who fell for Romeo the moment she looked at him. Love at first sight. She was fourteen. You were too, once. How you hated being young then. You’re no Juliet but that’s who you are tasked to play today. Today, you have to be in love. You think of the girl whose hands were webbed in blue; the only friend who understood you. She was quiet and kind, soft eyes and a softer voice. That one day when you were sitting by the cleaning room after getting out of history class by taking the teacher’s permission to go use the washroom, she asked who you wanted to be when you grow up. You had no real answer. How could you? You were far too young. But you didn’t want to come off as the clueless idiot you were. So, you told her, “an actor”.
Tybalt is dying. You are him. You too need to die now.
What does that feel like? Does it hurt? Do you see your whole life flash before your eyes? If so, then what comes first, the regrets or the joys? Do you see your father? Is he proud of you, at last?
No time for thinking, it’s your turn to speak. You need to scream out your hate for Romeo. But. What did he even do? Oh, right. He fell in love with Juliet. Even you know that that’s unforgiveable, falling in love. Yet there’s no hate in you for him, only pity for his folly. But you need to still conjure up the hate from somewhere, direct it at someone. And of course, it’s him who’s the first one that comes to mind. Always him. His sickening touches don’t seem to wash off your body even a decade later. You hate this man, down to your very blood and marrow. And so, you soak up all the malice you carry inside for this one man. You build it up till you can take no more.
And then, you scream.
#13 Kageki Shoujo
You live exclusively through fictional characters and stories. They allow you to exist in places you’ve never been and live lives you’ll never have. They also let you be brave, something else you’ll never be. You’ve learnt far more about yourself by watching make-believe people through a screen than from any counselling sessions paid for in advance. You don’t like happy endings if they aren’t earned. You yourself have been working towards one for all this while. You’ve lost and sometimes won but mostly just lost. There’s acceptance in every defeat but it’s no less bitter. You smile and shrug it off but a reminder forever hangs around your neck. You’ve lost so often in so many ways that now, you don’t even hope for it to be any different. You were always told that so long as you did your best, the result didn’t matter. What a load of bullcrap.
The cruel reality is that sometimes you end up giving every ounce of the strength you have inside, end up pushing yourself to the very brink of breaking down just so you could prove your naysayers wrong, just so you could look them in the eye and have them look away for once instead, and still, it’s not enough. Maybe you were born to be a failure.
But then, one day, after giving it your all once more, you walk up to the bulletin board not even hoping for a miracle. You look up at the list of girls selected for the respective roles in the play and for a moment you let your cheery façade drop. In that one moment, you realize that sometimes, only sometimes, you just… win.
