| Nileena Sunil | October 2026 | Short Story |
You arrive on the patch of land in front of the house. It is your fourth attempt. You are not sure of the date–you managed to wrangle information about the month from your aunt, but everything beyond that was guesswork. You realize you got the right date this time when you see the white Alto drive up to the house. You have vague memories of riding in that Alto with your grandparents when you were a child.
You feel a sense of dread as you realize this is it, the day has finally come. Every cell in your body wants to go back to its original timeline, but you resist the cry. You had made up your mind; you were going to save your mother.
You feel the blazing heat as you make your way to the house. The Alto is now parked outside. You take a moment to look at the yellow building in front of you. You’ve seen it before, during visits to your hometown, but it looked very different. That building was in disarray then, with cobwebs covering the corners, the paint peeling off the walls, and dust gathering on every surface. No one had lived there, after all, since the death of your maternal grandparents. Yet the building in front of you looks new and vibrant. You can imagine your mother spending time sitting on the verandah, reading a book, or watching the birds perched on the large mango tree next to the house.
You’ve hardly ever seen her do either of these things in your home.
You remember the day your aunt told you about the death of your mother. She said that she fell down the stairs and hit her head. You immediately knew that wasn’t true, and she knew that you knew.
You possibly hate your aunt more than you hate yourself. You were a child after all when you lived with your mother.
But then, you were almost an adult when you decided to leave.
You peek into the house through the gap between the curtains. You can see your maternal grandfather, seated on the brown sofa. He’s clad in a white mundu and light blue shirt, his wide-rimmed glasses perched on his nose. Your paternal grandparents are not in your line of sight, but you can see your father. He’s clad in a beige shirt and black pants, his hair neatly combed back. He looks younger than his thirty years. Your maternal grandfather asks him questions, and he seems shy, almost demure, as he answers. His face shows no sign of the cruelty you know him to possess.
You wonder what made him the way he is. How is this rather tender-looking man the same person who would frequently beat your mother up so badly that she could barely stand up?
You make your way around the house and go to the backyard. You tread on the patches of grass, dodging trees, as you reach the cobblestone patch in front of the back door. The back door is open, and you can see into the kitchen. Your mother is there, alongside your maternal grandmother, and your aunt.
Your mother is younger than you are now. She has long hair that reaches her waist. She is clad in a blue-green sari. You realize with a jolt that she doesn’t have her long, winding scar on the back of her arm. She had told you she got it while playing as a child; you now realize that she had lied . You should have known the scar was your father’s doing.
You look at your mother, who is arranging a tray of snacks with your aunt while your grandmother is pouring tea into cups. Your aunt tells your mother a joke, and she bursts out laughing. You listen to her laugh, it is a rare sound for you.
Your aunt once showed you pictures of your mother from long before she was married. Your mother at ten, dressed in a pattu pavada for Onam. Your mother at thirteen, having a picnic in the backyard with her friends. Your mother at fifteen, at the beach with her family. Your mother at nineteen, at your aunt’s birthday party.
She looked so free back then. Like she was her own person, with her own desires and feelings and interests, rather than the hollow shell your father had made of her.
You need to act quickly in order to save her. Today is the day of the first meeting between your parents. If things go as planned, you would be able to prevent things from going any further between them.
By doing so, you’d end up erasing yourself. You had come to terms with this. You planned to sacrifice yourself so that your mother might live.
Your aunt leaves the room. Your mother is now all alone. When her back is turned, you slip into the kitchen. You hesitate for a moment as you think about what you are planning to do next.
If this works, you’d only have a few more minutes to live. A chill runs down your spine as you think about the prospect of death. No, not death. If your parents never married, it would be as if you’ve never existed in the first place.
You want to save your mother. Your mother, whom you had only known as a paragon of love, and a martyr at the altar of your father’s cruelty. Except this time you’d be the martyr and your mother would be saved.
You were fifteen when you came back from a friend’s house to see your father pushing your mother against the wall, and raining punches on her. She looked as limp as a ragdoll. Acts of violence were common in your home, but this time you were actually afraid for your mother’s life. You screamed at your father and tried to get in between him and your mother. He pushed you away with his full strength. You cried out in pain as you hit the ground, powerless against your father, who rarely hit you unless you interfered with his actions towards your mother.
You never got between them from then on. And after you finished school, you decided to leave home. You joined a college in another city and stayed in a hostel. You want to be away from it all, to stay in a place where you don’t have to witness brutality every day. You told yourself there was not much you could have done even if you stayed.
Your plan is to pour dish soap into the tea your mother made. Perhaps that would make your father and his family so sick that they would be dissuaded from going ahead with the marriage proposal. As you take the bottle of dish soap you’ve stored in your pocket, you feel a sense of terror. You’ll be undoing your own existence, after all.
Maybe you didn’t need to do this. You could travel to the time soon after you were born instead, and find a way to kill your father. That way, you will be sparing your mother most of her years of abuse, and you will get to live.
Except your aunt had told you, in a rare moment of candidness, that the years before you were born were the worst years in your mother’s life. That your father had actually calmed down a little after you were born. ‘She would tell me everything that happened. I feared for your mother’s life so many times,’ she had said. ‘THEN WHY DIDN’T YOU DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT!’ you wanted to scream at her. You asked her why she never thought about telling the police, or encouraging her sister to leave her husband. ‘Oh, it was a different time, you know,’ your aunt had said. ‘These things were a lot more difficult back then. Besides, your mother had no job, no qualifications. How would she live without her husband?’
You don’t know what it is like to have a sibling. You are grateful for that, for you knew you wouldn’t have gone ahead with your actions if you did. Yet you knew that if you had a sibling who was being beaten up every day, you would do just about anything to protect them.
You pour the dish soap into the tea, and slip out of the kitchen. Once you do, you once again feel terror unfold in the pit of your stomach. Soon, you would be erased from existence, as you have never been alive in the first place.
You try to picture oblivion, and realize you cannot. You know the human mind doesn’t have the capacity to imagine nonexistence. Yet you know you want to continue living. You want to live and love and sing and feel. But you want your mother to get to do all that as well.
Your mother goes to the living room, the dishes in her hand. You go back to the front of the house and watch through the window. You think of the times you selfishly wished for a sibling, someone to commiserate with as violence wrecked your home. Yet now you are grateful to be the only child. You know that otherwise you wouldn’t do this and erase them out of existence along with you.
You watch as your father takes a sip of tea and spits it out. Your grandparents do the same. You listen to them as they raise their voices in annoyance and confusion; yet you know you are alive, so they can’t have changed their minds yet. You sigh as you hear peals of laughter, and you realize they’ve seen the incident as a comical mistake, one they would laughingly recount for years. You had to do more if you wanted to save your mother.
But maybe you’ve been given a second chance. Maybe the universe was saying you deserved to exist, even at the cost of your mother’s pain. You are tempted to return to your time, to return to your life. You think of the little flat you’ve been sharing with friends after you moved out of your college hostel last year, and all the time you spent decorating it. The internship in your dream company you were eagerly looking forward to. The late nights you spent chatting with your friends. The songs you liked listening to while doing chores in your flat. The way the wind feels against your face while walking down the beach. You think of the smell of earth after it rains. You think of sunrises and sunsets and rainbows, and the radiant smile of the classmate you’ve been secretly crushing on. You want to exist.
But you also want your mother to live.
You make up your mind, and walk up to the front door, and find the footwear your father and his parents had removed. Your father had worn leather shoes and socks, while both your grandparents wore open-toed sandals. You take out a pocket knife and tear through the leather, making gashes that look like open wounds. Then, you slip the knife into one of your father’s shoes.
You then wait.
You think of the day you discovered your ability to travel through time, and the different times and places you explored. You remember how you felt like this gift had been given to you for a purpose. And now, you were close to realizing that purpose.
You wonder if it is too late to go back, to choose yourself over your mother. You look at the torn leather shoes beside you. Would you be able to find a replacement before they find out? You don’t think so. Even if you could, you wouldn’t want to, though there is a part of you that is screaming to be back in its own time.
You slip away and hide behind a tree in the front yard, as you wait with bated breath. You watch your father emerge from the house, along with his parents. Your father does not pay much attention as he slips his right foot into his shoe.
He screams as the knife pierces his toes. He then looks down at the open gashes on the leather. You hear your father curse out loud, in a tone of voice you’ve heard hundreds of times before. You hear your maternal grandparents express confusion and try to make it clear they had nothing to do with this destruction. But you know your father and his parents had already made up their minds. One weird accident they could understand, but two was too much. As they make their decision, the knots of time untie themselves, and you fade out of existence.
The woman who would have been your mother eventually marries another man, a kind and gentle soul who treats her well. She goes on to have two children with him. She develops a fondness for gardening and tutoring neighborhood children, and posting recipes online on her blog. She leads a simple but happy life.
The man who would have been your father also marries another woman. After a short honeymoon period, he begins to get angry, raising first his voice and then his hands against her. When things get too bad, she leaves and goes back to her parents’ home. The man follows her there and creates a ruckus in the neighborhood. The woman and her parents go to the police, and the man eventually goes to prison.
_________________________
Nileena Sunil is a writer, reviewer, and journalist. She has had her works published in Strange Horizons, Flash Fiction Magazine, Usawa Literary Review, 100 Foot Crow, and other places.
_________________________
Photo by Mehrpouya H on Unsplash
Find MeanPepperVine on Instagram @MeanPepperVine
