Short Story

She wanted to feel my pain


  • She was a psychiatrist, young and brilliant and I, another case of depression. That's how we met. Regular sessions with her had made me fall for her and somewhere between recovery and delusion; she felt the same for me. I don't know what made a girl like her fall in love with me, but she did. We started going out and my condition was getting better. Careful medication and her undivided love for me were bringing me back to my sanity. 
    In the next couple of months, we were inseparable and that was when she moved in with me. At times when I used to get the dreaded panic attacks and feel depressed all over again, she would say, 'Ansh, don't worry, baby. I am here, just tell me about it. Talk to me. Make me feel what you feel. Tell me what your voices talk about and I promise, I'll leave no stone unturned to make you better.' 

    I remember watching her research about PTSD, depression and what not. Being a psychiatrist, she knew what medicine, whether physical or therapeutic would make me normal again. Every night, she used to caress my hair and repeat the same lines again. She would kiss the cuts on my hands and say, 'Hey, you are not alone in this. I love you and whatever you go through, is mine as well. Let me feel what you feel.'

    Wait, you did notice me using past tense for her, didn't you? Well, she is dead. I killed her. She wanted to feel my pain and I complied to her wishes. For a week, I stopped my medications without her notice. I started pretending to be fine. At tzx35the end of the week, I sat down with a voice recorder and recorded everything I used to hear in my head. I was ready, ready to make her feel my pain. That night we made love, it indeed was the best. Maybe the fact that following days wouldn't be pleasant for her was the reason I made her feel extra special that night. 

    The following morning, she woke up with a scream. Why wouldn't she? You generally don't wake up all chained, do you? I went near her and said, 'Baby, you wanted to feel my pain. Now, you will.' I placed a pair of high powered headphones over her head and turned on the recording and left. I left her, just like that, for two days. She used to scream and struggle to get herself free and I would just sit there and cry watching her in pain but she asked for it, she wanted to know. After two days, I removed the chains and gave her a nice long bath. She was in shock, her eyes swelled. I fed her her favourite food and made her sleep on the same bed. She didn't even protest. Next, I took a knife and started slicing the skin of her hands, she struggled yet again but somehow I overpowered. She cried and along with her, I cried too. I did this for another two days. She was unconscious now, bloodied and near to death but she wanted to feel what I went through.

    And then, I shunned her in to the confines of a cupboard to make her feel the suffocation I do. For another two days, she lived inside the cupboard, dark and small. After two days, when I opened the cupboard, she was dead. But she wanted to feel the pain.

    And now that she is dead and has been through my pain, I want to do the same too. I want to see what it feels to die. So here I am, with her corpse beside me, some 70 sleeping pills in my hand, eager to die and feel what she did. After all, love is all about understanding each other's pain, isn't it?

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