This is how it happens...

A strange silence drowned her nights and burned her days. It was a silence she had never heard before, touched before. It smelt almost like fear, but not quite so musty. This made her fear it even more than fear. She sat still in the darkest corner because it was the most obvious thing to do. Moreover, it was the only thing she could do. Darkness shrouded her like wasted memory. She wallowed in it with the pleasure of a person who’s sure to die.

Then, all of a sudden, she did something she had never done before— she started thinking. It’s something normal people never do until they’re alone. She was normal, so she had never considered thinking for herself. That was partly because it’s never polite to think in company; one must always let the company think for everyone. The other part of the reason she did not know. But she knew that it existed. So now that she was alone, she could think; and so she did. She thought because she had nothing better to do. No parties to attend, no sermons to deliver, no clothes to wash. She thought because it was the most natural thing to do in unnatural circumstances. She thought not because she wanted to, but because it was her new-found toy. Something she would soon discard. So she thought while it still gave her some malevolent pleasure.

She did not have to copy others: there was nobody to ape. Her thoughts changed like shades of black. They were as she wanted them to be: Sometimes strange, sometimes sane. But then she began delving deeper than was safe for her. Like all great people before her, she started paving her own beautiful way to perdition. She committed the greatest mistake of all. She started questioning. She started questioning why she did what she did, and this led her to think what it was that she actually did. In the end, it was not her thoughts that drove her mad, it was her questions. In the past, questions had led to the gallows; but she was spared that specific humiliation. She suffered a greater defeat: she rotted till neither her thoughts remained nor her questions.

Her death was quiet: just as she didn’t want it to be. It was another defeat. But it could not quite be called defeat: it was surrender. And that was how she came to be what she was not, and that was why she had to die. Because this is how it happens, and this is how it will continue to be so: without rhyme, fanfare and reason. And then it will begin again. But it won’t matter because nobody knows when it’s the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning. This is how it happens. Amen.

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