Regrets.

In the middle of the skin biting, cold night, she stood under a lamp post, pondering on her incessant forlorn thoughts. She had never felt so abandoned before in her entire life. It seemed as if though when she needed someone, everyone seems to have disappeared. She exhaled and inhaled slowly, In between her breaks of sobbing. No amount of crying and consoling herself with her own thoughts could compensate for her suffering.

 It was almost midnight. She had no place to go, other than her old home. She could go back, but she did not want to feel her father’s alcoholic breath on her skin again as he would begin his torture on her incapacitated body. She felt jittery at the thought of that.

She felt a tap on her shoulder. She wasn’t bemused. She didn’t have to guess what it inquired. She turned back, and faced the silhouette. In the dim light and through her blurry vision, caused by her fountains of tears, she could only make out the unshaved, rough chin of the man with eyes that looked at her with lust. ‘How much for one night?’ it inquired. ‘The usual,’ she, having found the voice to speak, answered.

If she had a chance to start over, she would never have chosen this lifestyle. But five years ago, she felt that it was the only way out of her poverty. Ms. Claudia, who had introduced her to this, brainwashed her into thinking that choosing this lifestyle would make her rich. At one point in her job, she even felt beautiful when she saw how men looked at her, only years later she learned what that look meant. Five  years later, she found out she had a father who was alive. He walked into her life, being missing for twenty one years of it. She thought she could be like one of those normal people with a family. A parent. She would give up her job, start over. If only it was that easy.

He gained her trust in a few weeks, gave him a place in her small one-roomed apartment. And despite the fact that she knew he was an alcoholic, she still did a lot for him because she thought, I’m not a saint myself either. But after a few days, he proved how sick he was. The sad reality is that we think we know people and their intentions so well, when in fact we don’t. Humans are a thing of beauty, to think about it, because they can cover up their flaws so well it can be petrifying. Raped and abused, she ran away and came in front of the brothel for refuge. A place she despised and was ashamed of entering on a daily basis, now became her refuge. Oh, the twists and turns.

But who will pity a common prostitute? No one will blame the alcoholic abusive father, his daughter his a prostitute for God’s sake. She must be used to all that, they would say, her body cries out for lust.

At three in the morning, her soul wandered away from her body, which was lying on the stone cold bed of the brothel. It looked down at the still body. Her skin was still radiant and her lips still blood red. Her wrist was cut by a knife. Her left hand still had its grasp on the knife. And then the soul went away to find solace, never returning to its body again.