The streets weren’t safe after dawn. The town lay shrouded in silence, with the morning brightness haunting. Yet once, it was different.
******
A priestess, her hair dishevelled and her saree frayed at the edges, stepped into the town carrying a crying baby in her arms. She knocked on doors, asking for milk. The doors remained shut. She walked along the streets, her breath shallow.
“Please give my baby some milk to drink,” she pleaded, only to be met with silence.
Through the gaps in one of the windows, she saw that the family was asleep. The sun blazed, yet the town was in slumber, a result of arrogance and neglect. Sweat rolled down her neck, her head spun, and she collapsed under a banyan tree.
Hours passed. The doors never opened. Her baby cried one last time before falling silent forever. She sat frozen, clutching her baby to her bosom, his skin still warm. The town slowly stirred.
Doors opened. The air was alive with motion, yet her baby lay still in her arms. She felt as if the town mocked her. If only they had woken a few minutes earlier.
Words slipped from her trembling lips, “May sunshine haunt the town forever. May it be cloaked in darkness even in the presence of light.”
A fierce wind swept through. The sun shone a thousand times brighter. Blinded, they closed their eyes. Skin tore into blisters. Blood oozed from the wounds. They ran towards their homes, only to find a void. As night fell, the town shimmered under the moonlight. The houses remained where they had been. Lifeless forms lay across the streets, while the living dragged their sick, blood-stained bodies.
The next dawn arrived not with promise but with fear gripping every heart. Families locked themselves indoors. As the moon gleamed in the sky, doors opened, and the town bustled with activity. Years passed. Crops withered, and hunger struck. Children grew frail, suffering from bone abnormalities, while despair weighed heavily on the people. The town began to crumble, sanity unraveling, a thread lost each day. It was the beginning of their end.
*******
The windows creaked a warning. A boy stood on the street, his tiny frame glistening under the sunlight, scanning faces staring at him from their homes. He stood still, his sobs dissolving into the tree’s shadows.
“We should help that boy,” said Vijay.
His mother opened the door a bit and said, “Come inside.”
The boy’s eyes met hers, then drifted away.
Vijay walked to the door, almost crossing the threshold.
“The curse will destroy you if you step out,” his mother said, holding his hand.
“Compassion breaks all curses,” he said and stepped out.
The street twisted, the doors disappeared, and craters appeared threatening to split the earth. The wind blew. Trees swayed like they were possessed. One of the roots from the banyan tree rose and sprang towards them. Vijay scooped the boy and ran. The root spread as if it had grown arms, chasing him. He ran without looking back.
The street dissolved into nothingness. Vacuum and dust swirled in the air, erasing edges, erasing form — no sides, no shape, only an endless tunnel stretching into oblivion. His head spun, and he fell, yet he clutched the boy tighter. His skin turned red and the child gasped for breath. Leaning close, he exhaled softly across the boy’s face, whispering life back into him.
“We will be home soon,” he said, his words broken into fragments.
The boy wrapped his hands around Vijay, his tears replaced with laboured breathing.
Fear melted into tears and rolled down his cheeks. Pus oozed out of the blisters snaking across his skin. He looked at the boy who had wrapped himself around him. The boy closed his eyes and lay still. Vijay bent and checked if the boy was breathing. The boy’s chest rose and fell, slowly. Peace settled within Vijay. A sudden urge to protect the boy as if he were his own surged within him.
He had always wondered if the curse was true. It was sung as folklore. But, now stranded in the middle of nowhere that was supposed to be his home with a boy relying on him, he realised the curse wasn’t born out of vengeance, it was born out of grief and helplessness.
Pain pulsed through him drowning him in unconsciousness, until the moonlight caressed him.
He woke up and saw that all his wounds had disappeared. The boy snuggled in his mother’s embrace, her eyes shimmering with an unspoken solace.
“How are they alive and well?” A man whispered.
“Maybe, the curse is gone,” guessed a woman.
Looking at the moon, his head leaning against his mother’s shoulder, Vijay whispered an apology to the priestess.
