You’ll have to move out, the building is unsafe,” the municipal engineers had told her, as they stood at her doorstep staring unashamedly at her buxom form as she cradled the baby in her arms. “Where?” she had asked silently as she quietly nodded her head and closed the door.
Bleary eyed she walked into her kitchen the next morning, her one year old still clutched to her arm. She had cried herself to sleep last night and still dozing in the early morning, she was startled by the sudden tremor and then the deafening crash, as the building tumbled around her. She fell, her baby cradled between her protective hands.
The dust that rose smothered her, the shrieks she heard frightened her and then she struggled to her feet, knowing she was alive. She looked with agony at what was once her home.
The people came, they watched, curious to see whether death had claimed another one. They surveyed the mangled wreck of what was once a living room. Now more dead than alive, she saw the stares that met her gaze and wondered what nightmare they beheld in her.
The phone lay dead upon the ground, but she knew there was no one to call. No one who would call to see whether she was dead or alive, no one for her to call to say that she was lying battered, bruised and bloodied. “Better dead,” she thought, looking at the spliced wire. The baby cried, she put her hand on its little head and stroked it as she shut her thoughts away. Loneliness, grief and pain engulfed her.
The men with fancy helmets and clothes of blue looked in and saw her move, ropes were brought and they slowly tried to pull her out, screaming and shouting she tried not to leave the hole that was everything to her.
The baby cried and tried to clutch on to imaginary walls that had been its home. The men held her down and carried her, quietly doing their duty. Out in the open, she looked back, wanting to crawl back and hide in the only refuge she had ever known. Tears rolled down her eyes and mingled with her blood. Nobody heard her silent sobs.
The two municipal engineers, notebooks in hand looked down and leered at her bleeding buxom figure. She had no door to close this time onto their lusty faces.
“We told you to move out,” they said, “We told you, didn’t we,” they sneered.
“Where?” she asked silently as she closed her eyes and quietly nodded….. even death had no room to take her in..!
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