Promises Better Kept Broken

Divya looked at the corpse lying next to her. It hadn't started to decay yet. There was no foul smell on it. Divya didn't know exactly what a dead, decaying, putrefying cadaver ought to smell like, but thankfully there was absolutely no stench on the corpse whatsoever. And that was a good thing. As long as it did not smell, dealing with the corpse would be easy. Hiding it, keeping it secret would be easy. And Divya didn't know the how, the why or the who but she knew one thing for certain – the corpse needed to be a secret.
Divya sighed and glanced down. In the dimness of her night-light in her bedroom, the metallic, cross-linked chains that bound her to the corpse did not gleam. The first of the chains that joined her left hand to the corpse's right lay across her stomach. The second chain that joined her foot with the corpse's was under the covers.
Divya shifted uneasily in her bed. The shackle rotated around her ankle, but didn't make a sound. Sleep had been difficult for her lately. Ever since she had found the corpse next to her, three days ago, she had been having troubled dreams. She would wake up in the morning unsure of the details of her dream but certain that it had been morbid.
Divya brought her knees to her chest and let her fingers glide along the contours of the cold shackle. She sighed again and traced her fingers along the chain, counting the number of links in it. She stopped sliding her hand along the chain just as she was about to touch the corpse. To touch it would be to acknowledge it. To acknowledge it would be catastrophe.
Divya shut her eyes tighter, let go of the chain that bound her and prayed for a dreamless night.
* * *
The next Tuesday morning went by as usual. The corpse followed Divya around as she went by her morning rituals. When she would move her hands, the chains would lengthen and shorten by themselves; and when she would walk, the corpse would follow her around like a faithful new-born pup. And except for these movements, the corpse remained entirely motionless, unflinching and dead. Thankfully, it still hadn't started to decay even now. No nose-curling, attention-drawing stench. As long as there was no smell, Divya believed she could blissfully ignore the corpse. When she made to her classes, Divya kept throwing furtive glances around her. She had realised three days ago, that no one but her could see the corpse attached to her, and she hardly knew how she would react if someone suddenly found out her secret, but she remained vigilant, making sure no one eyed her suspiciously.
And the next two days passed just as they always had. No one seemed to have noticed the corpse joined to Divya by the silver chains, not even her best friend Tanu who was currently lounging on Divya's bed with her and the corpse.
“You know you've been acting weird lately, right?” Tanu asked without looking up at Divya.
“I know,” Divya said dejectedly.
“Is it because of … you know ...?”
“Umm … no ...not exactly … I don't know … exactly.”
“So have you talked to him after that?”
Divya looked glumly at Tanu.
“Why not?” Tanu asked.
Divya shrugged.
“You should talk to him, you know. Find out what's going to happen,” Tanu suggested.
“There's nothing to find out. Nothing is going to happen. He was upset and angry. He lashed out and said some things he didn't mean. It's normal.”
“He didn't just lash out. He went berserk. He said things that no one should be allowed to take back. And he hasn't even tried to apologize yet. That's not normal.”
“Our relationship does not require apologies.”
Tanu snorted. “Or … you know ... maybe, there's no relationship anymore ...”
Divya glared at Tanu. “Why would you say that?” she said in a hurt and troubled voice.
Tanu took one look at Divya's distraught face and sighed. “Nothing,” she muttered and fell back down on the bed.
That night, after dinner, Divya excused herself to her bedroom feigning a headache. Tanu's suggestion was still rattling through her head. Of course, she knew how things stood between them and for him to apologize was needless. She had forgiven him as soon as it had happened. She had understood, and despite what Tanu had said, she had been right to do so. The corpse lying in the bed next to her caught her eye and her convictions faltered. After a minute of some very juvenile rationalizing, Divya took out her cell phone and called him. After about twenty rings, the phone was picked up but no one spoke.
“Hi,” Divya said trying her hardest to hide the eagerness in her voice.
“Hi,” the voice replied plainly.
“How are you?” Divya asked.
“Fine,” came back the monosyllabic reply.
Divya hesitated. This wasn't turning out to be the happy, reconciliatory conversation she had been hoping for.
“Listen, Divya, my battery is low and I am outside. I'll call you later,” the voice on the other side of the call said hurriedly.
“Okay … yeah ... sure.”
“Bye.”
“B … ”
The call had been cut before Divya could finish her 'bye'. Divya slid the phone back under her pillow and glared angrily at the chains binding her to the corpse next to her. Five minutes later, she had retrieved her phone and had pressed redial. To her great surprise, the phone was engaged. Divya huffed and cut the call. Five minutes later she called again. Still engaged. Divya settled down to another five minutes of waiting. She could feel those ugly bugs – jealousy and paranoia – trying to crawl up her spine and into her head. But she fought them off. Five minutes later, Divya cut another engaged call. And so it went for more than half an hour. Fighting off the paranoia and the jealousy and the anger and the suspicions and the resentment and the self-loathing and the drowsiness kept getting harder and harder. Finally, during her umpteenth waiting spell, she fell asleep.
* * *
Golden drops of the silky sunlight trickled into Divya's bedroom, the next morning and fell on her face. Sluggishly, Divya turned around in her bed and away from the sun. As the drowsiness began to lift, she forced herself to recall that mishmash of emotions that she had been feeling last night. She let herself feel all of it but didn't think about it. She didn't try to analyse if she was right or wrong, what it meant or didn't. She just felt.
With her mind brimming with all of the disappointment and hatred and regret she had been feeling last night, Divya started to get out of bed. She gasped. The silver chain on her wrist had disappeared. She frantically turned around hoping against hope but the corpse was still there. Undeterred, Divya looked under the covers. The chain binding her foot to the corpse was the same as ever. It had not vanished. Divya was disappointed. And that's when it hit her – a foul, rotten, noisome stench. Divya looked back at the corpse. It certainly seemed a bit desiccated. Divya scrunched up her nose, got out of bed and started walking towards her bathroom. For the third time in three minutes, she was taken completely by surprise.
The corpse was no longer walking behind her. It was being dragged along the floor by her foot. Divya sighed, looked at her free hands, felt grateful for the little joys and dragged the corpse into the bathroom with herself.

“I told you something like this would happen,” said Tanu when Divya finished telling her about the previous night. They were both lying in Divya's bedroom, just as they had been the previous evening.
“You did,” Divya sighed. “But, it shouldn't have happened. You shouldn't have been right.”
Tanu shrugged and didn't say anything.
Divya looked around her room listlessly. It was filling up with the stench of the decaying corpse. It was a miracle that Tanu could not smell it. It was taking all of Divya's willpower to not cry out in horror and disgust at the smell.
“Okay, so hear me out one last time,” Tanu said. “You've been going for a year now?”
“Year and a half.”
Tanu nodded. “In that much time, would you say that both of you have contributed equally to the relationship?”
Divya thought about it. “I might have done slightly more.”
“Like what?” “Like whenever we would have a fight, it was always me who succumbed. I never thought he was right but I always submitted and said sorry, because he would become all gloomy and throw a tantrum or something. And then there were all those pep talks I gave him. Do you know how many times he's tried to encourage and motivate me? Zero. If I ever told him about my new projects or grades or anything, never once has he said, well done. And what did I do in return?! Give him endless pep talks. You know how he sometimes goes on these long whining rant about how pathetic he is and how bad his grades are and that he's never going to be anything. Well, I've pep talked him so much, any other guy would have become Zuckerberg by now.”
Divya took a deep breath to calm herself but instead inhaled a very large dose of the stench that the corpse had been emanating since the morning. The malodour had grown stronger but his time instead of grossing her out, it filled her with an ineffable sense of conviction. And without even thinking about it, she continued her rant.
“And that's not even the end! He's mean. He's really, really mean. And childish. And like control-freak possessive. I mean, a bit is fine. A bit is good but he was overdoing it. He was always overdoing it. And even in that, he's never constant! One second he would bloody fight with me for talking to someone else, then go on this long, romantic speech about how much he loved and couldn't bear to see me with anyone else and then just the next day he wouldn't speak two words to me nicely. He would be all gruff and insulting and deprecating.” Divya paused. It almost seemed that she was done ranting, when she blurted, “And he's so so insecure. Like you wouldn't believe! The git has a problem if I get good grades, the bastard. He tries to make me feel guilty and shit about caring about studies. And then he whines! God, how he whines! ”
And finally Divya was done.
Tanu let a few moments pass and allowed Divya to catch her breath. Then she asked, “What kind of incentives? For his grades.”
“All kinds.”
“Okay, and what about last time?”
“Last time, he said things he didn't mean,” Divya said automatically. And then stopped. That didn't ring true anymore. She was starting to see a pattern here.
“Really?” Tanu asked incredulously.
“No,” Divya said. “I think he probably meant all of it. And what's more he's probably expecting me to say that I was wrong and that I am sorry.”
“Yeah, he probably does,” Tanu said. “So, what are you going to do about it?”
“What should I do about it?”
“Call him. Be upfront. Be straightforward. Ask him if he wants to breakup.”
Divya looked apprehensively at Tanu.
“Don't look like that at me! Weren't you listening to yourself?”
Of course, she had been, Divya thought. And Tanu was right. She needed to be straightforward and she needed to get this over with. She picked up her phone from her dresser and called her boyfriend up.
It wasn't engaged.
She started to count the rings.
One.
Was she being too rash?
Two.
He could really have been busy, last night, couldn't he?
Three.
He would have probably called, like he had said last night.
Four.
No, he wouldn't have. He never has.
Five.
And he should have cared enough to call back last night.
Six.
Even if it meant waking her up. But, he hadn't.
Seven.
And that was because, he was a jerk.
Eight.
Without a doubt the biggest asshole ever.
Nine. “Hello,” a sleepy voice said from the other end.
“It's me,” Divya said thinking.
“Oh,” the voice said, and then stopped. Divya waited for him to say something more but the pause stretched itself into an awkward and uncomfortable silence.
“I wanted to talk about something,” Divya said gathering up her courage. She was about to end a year-long relationship. She was about to give up a really, really good friend that she cared about very deeply. She was about to admit that she had wasted almost a year and a half of her life on a git.
“And, I'm going to very un-melodramatic about it. Very straightforward. And I'd like you to be the same.”
“Okay,” he said slowly.
“Do you want to breakup?” Divya asked with bated breath.
And it seemed like hours had ticked by before she heard his voice again.
“I guess that would be best.”
For a moment, Divya was completely flabbergasted. That had not at all been what she had been expecting. A small part of her had been hoping that her worthless boyfriend would have redeemed himself. But, no. He was proving himself to be the perfect spineless pig.
“I guess that would be best!?” Divya screamed into the phone. “I guess that would be best??!! Is that all you have to say, you worthless piece of shit! After all the times we've spent together, after everything I've done for you, all you have to say is friggin' “it would be best”. You know, you really are a self-centered, insecure, immature little bastard. I can't believe I've wasted so much time with you! Fuck off, fucker.”
Divya threw the phone on her bed and looked at Tanu who was looking a little worriedly at her sudden outburst. Divya felt enraged. She wanted to rip something up. And then she heard the clangs of the silver chain around her foot. Divya looked down. The silver chain binding her leg to the dead, dying corpse had broken. And as the chains started to disappear, the corpse got up on its feet. It gave her a smile, and for the first the time ever since the corpse had mysteriously appeared a week ago, the corpse spoke.
“Well done, Divya” it said and then disappeared taking away with it the foul stench that had been clogging up Divya's soul.
Divya looked once around her room to make sure that the corpse had really gone. It had. Divya finally felt free. She felt like a huge, backbreaking weight had been lifted off her. She felt happy. She smiled and looked at Tanu. “C'mon! We're going out to celebrate!”
THE END