There are certain factors in life which one is destined to face and more often than not, they merge when they are least anticipated.

The attic had remained such a thing for me ever since the day I came to this house as a bride. While the rest of the household seemed pleasant, the attic struck me with a sense of vagueness. There was nothing ostentatious about it. There was some incongruity about the way the walls in simple yellow embraced each other. They seemed to capture a fragrance of the eternal silence within themselves. In it one could nonchalantly feel the detachment from the world of chaos and cries. Even the sound of wind seemed to have ceased by its mere presence. I would often creep into it to find some privacy...an obscure nook filled with silence...silence as deep as eternity...A dreadful silence it was, silence that had its tentacles to grasp the soul in an ever motionless manner. The shutting of the small door and the window and my own pulse was the sound that could be heard. After sometime it would be unbearable to stand its overwhelming breath. An escape from its grasp was only to return to the false impregnability the outer world could offer.

Things have changed. The attic no longer frightens me. I can only feel my assimilation into it. The burns on the walls have remained the same over the last few years...burns that still bear my resistance. They seem to face each other in a deep sense of shame. Even the light that enters does not reflect due to the blackness of the walls. The smell that fills the attic would remind me of funerals. The association has only grown...since I was...The black patches on the walls are being slowly eaten up by tiny white insects. The only thing that has not changed is my ashes, scattered on the partly black floor. Tightly shut door and window have sustained my soul. The seal on the lock would never ask questions about my existence.